高中英语教学中文化失语研究

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Research Background
Scholar Jespersen (1904) says that the highest aim of teaching language is tolearn another country’s culture. The concept of intercultural communicationcompetence (abbreviated as ICC) has almost come into being in the late 1950s and theearly 1960s. The scope of the content of ICC are various according to differentstandards. According to Spitzberg and Cupach (1984), ICC can be divided intomotivation, knowledge and skills, which are the most basic and influential kind. In theearly 80s, the concept of intercultural communication has come into China anddeveloped rapidly. The intercultural communication integrated system has beenestablished since then. In 1995, the first ICC Seminar of China was held in HarbinInstitute of Technology. In 1999, Professor Wen Qiufang (1999) comes up with twokinds of competence. The research of intercultural communication is very active inChina. It is estimated that until 1993, the thesis about intercultural communication ismore than one hundred.With the development of global economy and the frequent communicationbetween the people from different countries, the importance of English is becomingmore and more obvious. Not only English culture should become the environment andthe object of English language teaching, but also the learner’s native culture andcultures from other places of the world can, and should become a part of Englishteaching content. Only in this way, English can meet the needs of act as aninternational language (Zhang Hongling 2007: 18). In intercultural communication,the phenomenon that many foreign language learners lack of the capacity of mothertongue culture expression is called “Chinese Culture Aphasia” by Nanjing UniversityProfessor Cong Cong (2000: 10) and Professor Cong Cong points out that throughoutthe multi level of English teaching in our country, there is a common sidedness. Thecultural content is increasing, however, there is only strengthened the introduction ofthe material culture, system culture and spiritual culture of each level of Englishworld. Chinese culture expression, as the main body in the communication, isbasically still in the been ignored state. After the search of the thesis on the internet,the author finds that the number of thesis which is from the perspective ofChinese-English culture is really small. However, with China’s influence in the worldis becoming more and more significant, the importance of explaining Chinese culturein English is becoming more and more obvious. Thus, the teaching of Chinese culturein English class is the requirement of the new era.
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1.2 Purpose of the Research
Intercultural communication has become a very hot topic in recent years. Alot ofteachers and scholars have already recognized this point. The new syllabus alsoemphasizes the cultivation of student’s cultural awareness and ability. However, afterthe study of the research in recent years, we can find that the researches have beendone and the results of their researches are mainly focus on the field of the input ofEnglish culture. The teaching of Chinese culture in English class has not been paid somuch attention. Liu Yonghou and Liu Yanshu(2004) point out that the ignorance offoreign language cultural input and national language culture has reached an extentthat we have to pay much attention. In the 1920s, literary critics began to criticize theinvasion of western literary thoughts and the loss of literary thoughts in ancient China.Hence, “Chinese literature aphasia” comes into being. The concept of “ChineseCulture Aphasia” in foreign language teaching is first proposed by Professor Cong(ibid) in Nanjing University. He finds that there are many Chinese young scholarswhose English level is very high but can not express Chinese culture in English whenthey communicate with westerners. They can not show the deep cultural literacy andthe independent cultural style they should have. When western counterparts inquireConfucianism or Taoism with respect, they have nothing to do but have to saysomething else. This article he publishes has aroused the attention of the education ofChinese culture in foreign language teaching. Zhang Weimin, Zhu Hongmei and otherscholars (2002) from Tsinghua University conduct a Chinese culture topic ability testfor non English majors and English majors. The test includes Chinese things, likefolklore, historical places of historic interest and scenic beauty. With the increasingnumber of students from senior high schools choosing to study in colleges abroad, theinput of Chinese culture in senior high school has also become quite necessary.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Culture
Culture is a very broad concept. It is very difficult to give it a precise definition.Many philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, historians and linguists have beenworking hard to try to define the concept of culture from the perspective of theirrespective disciplines. However, so far there is still not a satisfactory definition. It isestimated that the number of different definitions of “culture” is over 250.Hammerly (1982) divides culture into the information culture, behavior cultureand culture of achievement. The information culture generally refers to the social,geographical, historical knowledge etc. that mastered by general educators. Behaviorculture refers to people’s ways of life, behavior, attitude, values and so on. It is themost important factor for the success of communication. Achievement culture refersto the artistic and literary achievements. It is the traditional concept of culture.According to the structure and category, H. H. Stern (1992) divides culture into broadsense and narrow sense. The broad sense of culture is the so called culture with a bigC and the narrow sense of culture is the so called culture with a small C. Kramsch(1999: 6) defines culture as “member-ship in a discourse community that shares acommon social pace, history and a common system of standards for perceiving,believing, evaluating and acting.” Newmark (1988: 94) thinks that culture is “the wayof life and its manifestations that are peculiar to a community that uses a particularlanguage as its means of expression.”
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2.2 Language
Language is the most important tool for human communication and thedefinitions of language are various.Liu Runqing (1989: 49) believes that “language is a kind of symbol system,which is composed of the aspects of phonetics, grammar, vocabulary and the levels ofphoneme, morpheme, word, phrase, sentence and discourse according to certainstructure.”From the perspective of structural features of language, language is a symbol system. It is a level system that composed of phoneme, phone, word andphrase, sentence and text. From the perspective of functional features of language,language is a tool of thinking and communication. (Shu Dingfang et al. 1996:147).Language is a system of symbols, the bottom of the system is a set ofphonemes, and the upper layer is a sequence of symbols and symbols thatcombined of meaning and pronunciation. The upper layer can be divided intomorpheme, word and several levels of sentence. Morpheme is the smallest symbol.Morphemes make up words. Words make up sentences. (Ye Feisheng et al. 1997:7).Chomsky (1965) considers that a language to be a set (finite or infinite) ofsentences, each finite in length and is constructed out of a finite set of elements.If we view language as a communicative system, then language is not theone peculiar to people, though human’s language has some characteristics thatother animals don’t have, the basic characteristic of human language is itscreativity: speakers can compose some basic language units to infinite sentenceswith good organization and grammar, most of which are novel and haven’t beenheard or spoken before. (Fromkin et al. 1999: 23).
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Chapter 3 Methodology.......24
3.1 Research Questions......24
3.2 Research Subjects........24
3.3 Research Method....26
3.4 Research Procedure......27
Chapter 4 DataAnalysis......35
4.1 Analysis of the Questionnaire to Students.......35
4.2 Analysis of the Questionnaire to Teachers.......40
4.3 Analysis of the Tests and Experiment....45
4.4 Analysis of the Textbooks......55
Chapter 5 Conclusion.....65
5.1 Major Findings .......65
5.2 Pedagogical Implications.......67
5.3 Limitations ........71

Chapter 4 Data Analysis

4.1 Analysis of the Questionnaire to Students
From the above figure, we can see that the number of students who with a goodknowledge of Chinese culture is larger than that of western culture. The number ofstudents who know Chinese culture is also larger than that of western culture and thestudents who with less knowledge of Chinese culture is much less than those whowith less knowledge of western culture. Above all, it shows that compared with thewestern culture, student’s mastery of Chinese culture is much better than that ofwestern culture, which indicates that it provides a good foundation for the teaching ofChinese culture in English class.From the figure we can see that 29.6% of the students learn western culture inEnglish class and 19.8% of learn western culture from textbook. 50.6 % of them learnfrom newspaper, film and other channels. 2% of the students learn western culturefrom other channels. For the channels of learning Chinese culture, 17.2 % of thestudents learn Chinese culture in English class and 12.4% of the students learnChinese culture from textbook. 46.9% of the students learn from newspaper, film andother channels. 23.5% of the students learn Chinese culture from other channels.The above figure shows that the number of students who learn western culture inEnglish class and textbook is much larger than that of who learn Chinese culture inEnglish class and from textbook. We can also see that the students who learn westernculture from newspaper, film and other channels are much more than those who learnChinese culture from these channels. This maybe because that the material of westernculture in English teaching is much more than that of Chinese culture and the teachingof Chinese culture has not been paid so much attention to.

conclusion

First, most students agree that both western and Chinese culture should be taughtin English class and the importance of Chinese culture. However, compared with thelearning of western culture, the importance of learning Chinese culture in Englishclass has been paid less attention to. Second, we can find that lots of students areinterested in Chinese culture and have good knowledge of Chinese culture, which laysa good foundation for the teaching of Chinese culture in English class. However, thenumber of students who are interested in explaining Chinese culture expression inEnglish is much less than that of Chinese culture. It also implies that the importanceof Chinese culture expression in English class has not been paid much attention to.Third, a majority of students think it much easier to express western culture thanChinese culture in English. Then combined with the results of the test, we can see thatthe student’s ability of expressing Chinese culture in English is quite weak. Forth, thenumber of students who learn western culture in English class and textbook is muchlarger than that of who learn Chinese culture in English class and from textbook,which implies that the teaching of Chinese culture in English has not paid muchattention to and the content of Chinese culture is not enough in the textbook. Fifth, wecan find that most of student’s preferable ways of learning Chineseculture is throughplaying some films and TV programs in the class. They think this can make classmore interesting and these ways are much more vivid and can leave them more deepexpression. Teachers can take these into consideration in the process of teaching ofChinese culture.
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References (omitted)