A Cross-Cultural Study On College English Teaching

In the 21 st century, the globalization of economy and the development of science and technology have gradually made the contact among countries and areas increasingly frequent. As a vital communicating tool for Chinese people, English plays an important role in their dealing with foreign affairs, collecting information,introducing Chinese culture, and improving Chinese soft power as well. Therefore, it is necessary to cultivate more talents with enough English skills and better cross-cultural communicating ability. Correspondingly, the college English teaching emphasis should be shifted to the communicative ability and cultural literacy of students since they are facing heavier cross-cultural communicating tasks. However,there are still some drawbacks in the current college English teaching. Therefore,this thesis has made a research on this issue, both theoretically and empirically. It brings up solutions for the problems in the end.First of all, this thesis analyzes the requirements for Chinese talents today and the current situation of China’s college English teaching. Then it illustrates the importance of cultivating students’ cross-cultural communicating ability. Through analyzing problems from the perspectives of cross-cultural communicating, English teaching and applied linguistics, this thesis makes it clear that language, cultural and communicative abilities are actually integrated. As a result, the ultimate goal of college English teaching should be developing students’ cross-cultural communicating ability. Next, this thesis analyzes the causes of the teaching drawbacks mentioned above, then it points out that the problems are aroused by the vague teaching objectives and guidelines, deficiency of cultural information in teaching process, and the cultural gap between the west and the east.Finally an empirical study was made on the college English teaching in Fudan University, Suzhou University and Qingdao University, which have done many innovative and pioneering jobs in English teaching. Based on the analysis of these three universities’ teaching, a conclusion was made as follows: College English teaching should make a good balance between native culture and English culture, the instrumentality and humanity of English, and language teaching and culture teaching,which can help students to eliminate the influence of the “Chinese cultural aphasia”and build up cultural awareness. Although this thesis is the threshold research on cultivating cross-cultural ability of college students and the research result may be affected by the limited sample size, it still has certain value to college Englishteaching and the related study today.