A Survey Of Chinese Culture Aphasia Among Non-English Major Students

It has long been a consensus that culture teaching should be involved in foreign language teaching in English education circle in China,which has also been stipulated in English syllabus issued by Ministry of Education of China.However,in the practice of college English teaching,the culture teaching mainly focuses on the target culture,but the mother culture has not received enough attention(Cong Cong,2000;Xiao Longfu,2010).A new kind of "dumb English" was born:students passively understand and acquire western culture,but being unable to express and spread Chinese culture in English in the process of intercultural communication.Students' English expressiveness of Chinese culture are extremely weak.This phenomenon is called "Chinese Culture Aphasia" by researchers(Cong Cong,2000;Zhang Weimin,2003),After the introduction of the phenomenon of Chinese Culture Aphasia,numerous scholars have done a series of relevant researches and have achieved great progress.Nevertheless,the early studies mainly focused on testing students' English expressiveness of Chinese culture without conducting comparative studies on students' English expressiveness of Chinese culture and western culture.With reference to Chinese cultural content involved in An Introduction to Chinese Culture and translation part of CET 4 and CET 6 reformed in 2013 and western cultural content involved in An Introduction to Western Culture,this thesis is intended to explore the current situation of Chinese Culture Aphasia among Non-English majors and its plausible causes.The research takes non-English major undergraduates enrolled in 2015 in Southwest Petroleum University as a case for study.By using the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods,580 students are asked to participate in the test and questionnaire,and 20 of them are chosen to have interview.This research is carried out to examine the following issues:(1)What are the college students' English expressiveness of Chinese culture and western culture respectively?(2)What are the college students' attitude towards the Chinese culture in English learning?(3)What possible factors cause the Chinese Culture Aphasia among non-English major students?Major findings related to the above research questions are listed below:Firstly,students' English expressiveness of western culture are apparently better than their English expressiveness of Chinese culture and Chinese culture Aphasia does exist among non-English majors at Southwest Petroleum University.Secondly,a majority of the students have positive attitude toward Chinese culture in English learning and they are also interested in Chinese culture.However,many of them are unable to express Chinese culture properly in English.This may indicate that students' English expressiveness of Chinese culture is not much related to their attitude and interest.Thirdly,the reasons that cause the phenomenon of Chinese culture Aphasia among non-English majors are inadequacy of Chinese culture in college English textbooks,insufficiency of introduction of Chinese culture in English teaching,and weakness of learning initiatives among students.On the basis of the findings of qualitative and quantitative analyses,the study presented some implications for tackling the phenomenon of Chinese Culture Aphasia among non-English major students.In addition,limitations of the study were listed so as to provide some suggestions for future study in this field.