Cultural Stereotype And Its Implications For English Culture Teaching Of English Majors

Cultural stereotype is a complicated form of categorization and generalizationthat mentally organizes people’s experiences and guide people’s behavior towardsanother group of people. As a dominant cognitive factor affecting efficientintercultural communication, it has long been the research focus of sociology,psychology and intercultural communication. On the one hand, the process ofstereotyping is one of the major ways to generalize cultural differences, thus it servesas a basic strategy for people to speed up their cognitive process and to deal with thecomplexities in the world; on the other hand, over-generalization or simplification ofdifferences by cultural stereotypes may create barriers to intercultural communication.Thus, in foreign language teaching which aims to foster intercultural communicationcompetence, it is especially important for both teachers and students to know how tounderstand correctly and use cultural stereotypes properly.From the perspective of intercultural communication, this thesis mainly analyzesEnglish majors’ stereotypes of American people in the process of college Englishteaching and learning. Based on previous theories on cultural stereotype, the authordesigns a survey by using quantitative methods to study the role of cultural stereotypein the process of college English teaching. To carry out the study,106undergraduatesfrom English major in Xi’an International Studies University, sophomores and juniorsrespectively, are selected as the respondents to testify the author’s hypotheses thatstereotypes exist in the minds of English learners, and to analyze the sources ofcultural stereotypes as well as investigating their influence on interculturalcommunication. In order to help people achieve a more comprehensive understandingof cultural stereotype, the author discusses its definitions, formation, characteristics aswell as categories. The positive effect and negative effect of cultural stereotype arealso reviewed. The author attempts to find effective cultural teaching methods forEnglish majors so as to guide students to establish objective and correct culturalstereotypes and thus improve their intercultural communication competence.In an attempt to find effective culture teaching methods, the present thesis is practically significant in that it intends to help learners make full use of theadvantages of cultural stereotypes and continuously rectify incorrect culturalstereotypes, all in an effort to enhance their intercultural communication competence.Meanwhile, the present study has some empirical implications on guiding cultureteaching for English majors as well as enhancing culture learning efficiency. Theauthor hopes that this thesis can arouse people’s awareness of cultural stereotype inintercultural communication and thereby improve their intercultural communication.