Application Of Narrative Approach To English Idioms Teaching Based On The Third Space Theory

Many studies have shown that Chinese English learners’ vocabulary knowledge and cultural knowledge are the main factors that affect their understanding of English idioms.More and more researchers have begun to pay attention to cultural introduction in the teaching of English idioms,but most of them are engrossed in researches on the introduction of the target language culture and neglect the introduction of the native language culture.Learning English as a foreign language,Chinese learners are exposed to a special cultural space,which is not only different from the veritable Chinese cultural space,but also different from the native English cultural space.Instead,the special cultural space is an intercultural third space which is reconstructed by the integration of Chinese culture and English culture.From the intercultural perspective of third space,learners can better understand their native language culture and also their target language culture.In this way,they can not only treat the culture of their native language as an outsider,but also perceive the culture of the target language in an insider’s way,which facilitate them avoiding native language cultural aphasia and the misunderstanding of target language culture.From the theoretical perspective of the third space,this study applied narrative approach to the empirical research of English idioms teaching and cleared up cultural barriers through storytelling,thus improving learners’ idiomatic learning effect and their capacity for cultural perception.In order to improve the accuracy of the experimental results,three groups of idioms with six idioms in each group were selected out as teaching materials through the English idioms proficiency test questionnaire to carry out the repetitive experiments.The three groups of teaching materials contained no new words or difficult words.In this research,60 students from two intact classes of non-English majors were selected as experimental subjects.There were 30 participants in each class,and the two classes got no difference in the ratio of male to female.Before carrying out the English idioms teaching experimental research,the two classes wereevaluated on English proficiency and intercultural sensitivity,of which the results displayed no differences between the experimental class and the contrasting class.In the experimental class,narrative approach was adopted,while the traditional vocabulary teaching method of paraphrase and practice was applied in the contrasting class.The research data were collected by the methods of tests,scale and questionnaire investigations which were analyzed by Statistic Package for Social Science 16.0,and the results of the empirical research are presented in the following:(1)Considering the lexical knowledge of English idioms in the third space,there is no difference in the effect of narrative approach and the traditional vocabulary teaching methods of paraphrase and practice on the memory of forms of English idioms,while narrative approach outperforms the traditional method in the memory of meaning and the mastery of the application of English idioms;(2)On intercultural sensitivity in the third space,narrative approach is more effective to enhance learners’ ability to accurately perceive both native language culture and target language culture and their capacity for rational appreciation of the differences between Chinese native culture and English authentic culture.This study provides a practical teaching perspective for the effective introduction of cultures in English idioms teaching.What’s more,it has also made a deep reflection on the limitations of this experimental study,so as to benefit subsequent teaching and research to a certain extent.