Self-and Alien-representation Of Cultural Information Regarding Cultural Learning In Foreign Language Teaching

The strong connection between language and culture is a well known assumption that most if not all language and cultural studies have to use as reference.Learning a foreign language is nothing else than getting to know and learning a foreign culture.Based on the theoretical and research methodical approaches from both cultural and foreign language studies,the present study examines the presentation of cultural information in two Chinese textbooks for beginners used in German foreign language teaching-The New Practical Chinese and Liao Liao.Thus creating a perspective comparison of the understanding of what is culture,the chosen cultural information and its way of presentation.Following the analyzed aspects are scrutinized with regard to the concept of cultural learning in foreign language teaching.Analyzing the cultural information in the learning materials the author finds it necessary to first deal with the concept of culture.Regarding the highly complex topic of definition of culture for purposes of different strings of scientific research the present thesis will mainly focus on and discuss three versions of the concept of culture,namely differentiation theoretical,totality-and meaning-oriented concept of culture.Based on the critique from Claus Altmayer regarding concepts of culture used in foreign language teaching the present work focuses the analytical aspect mainly on the two main concepts presented by Altmayer,namely cultural concepts of interpretation and cultural learning for his work on cultural studies transformed regional studies in the context of foreign language teaching.Based on these the concepts of self-representation,alien-representation and cultural information are accessed in the present study.With the model of ZHU Woxin,a Chinese didactics expert for Chinese as a foreign language,cataloging cultural information as "big C culture" and "small/little c culture"the quantitative and qualitative summary of cultural information is being conducted.Firstly the distribution of cultural information in the starting language,namely German,is quantitatively examined and following also qualitatively analyzed regarding approach of presentation and mediation of certain cultural topics,including an assessment with respect to the goal of cultural learning.Following the cultural information in the target language,namely Chinese likewise are examined and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively respectively,while including a discussion of presentation and mediation of the Chinese characters that are viewed as special cultural carriers in contrast to the alphabetical system.Following the analysis we can deduct that the self-representation,meaning the representation of cultural information from the perspective of the Chinese authors is biased towards big C culture namely the judgemental concept of high culture,printing a fact based and positive picture of China.Therefore the representation of traditional and high cultural aspects,especially regarding literature and arts,is favored and conveyed.In contrast to this the alien-representation,namely the representation of cultural information from the perspective of the German author is oriented more towards the concept of a meaning-based concept of culture to guide the learners towards a process of reflection and understanding regarding cultural representations.The choices of cultural information are thus favoring the every day and practical representations of culture,especially regarding eating and drinking habits.The results of the analysis are not only meant to help cultural mediation and cultural learning in foreign language learning but as well preparing for cultural interactions in any intercultural context.