On The Effectivness Of Solving Culture Shock In English Language Teaching In Middle Schools By Applying Dual Coding Theory

Culture and language have close relation with each other. We can not separate them because language is the carrier of culture, and there is a good metaphor to describe the relations between the two factors. That is, language is like an iceberg on the surface of a big ocean, while culture is like the unseen iceberg hidden under the water. If language teachers treat teaching linguistic knowledge as the main task of their teaching and neglect culture factors behind the written forms of this language, they would be unaware of the existence of culture shock among their students. If students only believe learning a new language is to master grammar, vocabulary, sentence patterns and other linguistic forms of this language but pay no attention to the importance of culture in the process of language acquisition, they could not become real masters of this language because they could not communicate with foreigners in the real context. A big wall which causes the failure of the communication would stand among the native speakers and language learners-culture difference. And students are good at Chinese ways of thinking, therefore culture shock appears in the process of communication. In fact, for the junior middle school students who treated English as a necessary subject to learn for the first time, they had never had a close contact with it before, so they were the group of people who were easily to experience culture shock. Because the existence of culture shock blocked the way for students to learn English well, the author tried to find a sufficient way to solve this problem.In 1971, Allan Paivio, a psychological professor in American, put forward the Dual Coding Theory (DCT) in his book Imagery and Verbal Processes. This book states that there are two separated and interconnecting systems working together in the information process. One is specialized for dealing with nonverbal information; the other is specialized for dealing with language. The main function of nonverbal system is to generate mental image through visual and other modalities, so it can also be called imagery system. The main function for language-specialized system is to process language information, so it can also be called verbal system. These systems can function independently, or cooperate with each other. With the cooperated work of the verbal and nonverbal systems, the interest of learning a new language for language learners would be greatly increased. So the comprehension of this language would be better and memorization for this language knowledge would be easier.This thesis aims to have a research on the Dual Coding Theory and tries to know the effectiveness of applying this theory to solving culture shock in junior middle schools. It discussed whether culture shock can be effectively eliminated by the application of DCT by means of presenting both verbal and non-verbal information to help students form images in the process of language learning. And it also explored whether the application of DCT could activate students’ interest in language learning.An experiment based on the Dual Coding Theory was conducted in Cao Ba Middle School for a semester. Two classes from Grade 7 served as the subjects in this experiment. One class used the conventional ways of teaching and the other class was the experimental class which applied models proposed by DCT in the teaching process by means of presenting learners both imagery information and verbal descriptions to help learners’ better understanding of this new language. The results of this experiment proved the effectiveness of applying DCT in solving culture shock in language teaching. After one semester of teaching guided by DCT, the English proficiency for students from the experimental class was largely improved and this can be concluded from the post-test conducted at the end of the semester. At the same time, the ability for students to comprehend materials from the original books is easier than before, which showed that the chance for the appearance of culture shock for these students from experimental class was decreased. By this way, the learning interest for students was increased with the moving out of the big block which culture shock had once caused in the process of language learning.All the students from both the experimental class and controlled class finished the pre-test and the post-test. Results from the two tests were processed by the statistic processing software SPSS. Based on the results of the experiment, this thesis wanted to prove the application of DCT can be an effective solution to culture shock which appeared in middle schools, and learners’interest in learning a language could be stimulated by teaching methods recommended by DCT.