Language is a part of culture and affects culture. Some sociologists think that language is the foundation of culture. Seeing from another aspect, language is affected by culture. In a word, language and culture affect each other; if someone would like to comprehend a language, he must know of culture of that language first, at the same time, if he wants to comprehend culture, learning the language is the first step. For learning a foreign language, persons should not only master pronunciation, grammars, vocabulary and idioms, but also know how to use the language to express their thoughts, habits, and action. In fact, learning language and knowing culture can not be separated. The basic goal of foreign language teaching is to enhance and develop cross-cultural communicative ability of students. Therefore, bringing cultural background knowledge bases on a goal that is to improve cross-cultural communicative ability of students. To achieve this goal, cultural teaching in foreign language education should contain two duties: introducing cultural knowledge and developing cross-cultural communicative ability. This article elaborates emphatically the importance of cultural teaching in English teaching and gives a set of classroom-teaching methods for the purpose of enhancing the cross-cultural consciousness of students. And it introduces some methods to improve the cross-cultural consciousness and the sensitivity of students in English teaching, and the methods to improve the cross-cultural communicative ability from different channels. At the same time, this article discusses some existing problems and the counter solutions in the process of English cultural teaching.
Key Words
English cultural teaching; cultural background; cross-cultural communicative ability
Language is a part of culture and affects culture. Some sociologists think that language is the foundation of culture. Seeing from another aspect, language is affected by culture. In a word, language and culture affect each other; if someone would like to comprehend a language, he must know of culture of that language first, at the same time, if he wants to comprehend culture, learning the language is the first step. For learning a foreign language, persons should not only master pronunciation, grammars, vocabulary and idioms, but also know how to use the language to express their thoughts, habits, and action. In fact, learning language and knowing culture can not be separated. The basic goal of foreign language teaching is to enhance and develop cross-cultural communicative ability of students. Therefore, bringing cultural background knowledge bases on a goal that is to improve cross-cultural communicative ability of students. To achieve this goal, cultural teaching in foreign language education should contain two duties: introducing cultural knowledge and developing cross-cultural communicative ability. This article elaborates emphatically the importance of cultural teaching in English teaching and gives a set of classroom-teaching methods for the purpose of enhancing the cross-cultural consciousness of students. And it introduces some methods to improve the cross-cultural consciousness and the sensitivity of students in English teaching, and the methods to improve the cross-cultural communicative ability from different channels. At the same time, this article discusses some existing problems and the counter solutions in the process of English cultural teaching.
Key Words
English cultural teaching; cultural background; cross-cultural communicative ability
