AnalysisofInfluencesandEffectsoftheWesternCulturalBackgroundtoEnglishTeachinginMiddleSchool1

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1、浅析西方文化背景对中学英语教学的作用及影响Analysis of Influences and Effects of the Western Cultural Background to English Teaching in Middle SchoolContentsAbstract.1Key words.1I. Introduction.2 1.The concept of culture.22.The reationship between language and cultural background knowledge.2II. The Importance of Knowing

2、Western Cultural Background Knowledge in English Teaching2III. The Four Aspects of the Influences of the Cultural Background Knowledge to English Teaching.61. Historical cultural background.7 2. Regional cultural background.7 3. Social cultural background.8 4. Religious cultural background.8IV. The

3、Differences of Language and Thought Patterns between the Western and the Eastern.9 1. The differences of language between the western and the eastern.9 2.The differences of thought patterns between the western and the eastern.11V. How to Decrease the Negative Influences of the Cultural Differences i

4、n English Study.111. Learn about the history of English development.11 2.Learn about the history,cultural and customs of the western countries.12 3. Learn some ways to teach cultural background knowledge.13VI. Conclusion.15References15Analysis of Influences and Effects of the Western Cultural Backgr

5、ound to English Teaching in Middle SchoolAbstract: This thesis focuses on a brief introduction on the influences and effects of the western cultural background to English teaching in middle school. Language is a kind of cultural carrier, and language and culture are inseparable, so when the teacher

6、teaches this important languageEnglish, they should put the western cultural background into it in order to master language art for those students who are studying English. They can also know the western culture which is helpful for the middle school students to enlarge and enrich their interest to

7、study English. But there is a cultural gap between China and western countries due to their own geography, history, religion and translation. To know these cultural differences is the key point in English teaching action. This paper intends to discuss some issues on the four aspects of the influence

8、s of the cultural background knowledge to English teaching, the differences of language and thought patterns between the western and the eastern, and how to decrease the negative influences of the cultural difference in English study. Key words: cultural background； communication； language learning

9、；English teaching摘要：这篇论文主要介绍了西方文化背景知识对中学英语教学的影响及作用。语言是文化的载体，语言和文化是密切联系的。因此，教师在教授西方这门重要的语言英语时，必须要把西方文化背景知识掺杂进去，让学生在掌握语言这门艺术的同时，对西方文化也有一定的了解。这样有助于学生对学习英语产生兴趣。但是中西方文化在地理、历史、宗教及传统等方面存在着不同，所以中西方之间的文化差异也就成了英语教学中的重要问题。本文就西方文化背景知识对英语教学影响的四个方面，中西方语言及思维方式的不同以及怎样减小文化差异在英语学习中的负面影响等问题，做出若干探述。关键词：文化背景，交流，语言学习 英语教

10、学I. Introduction1. The concept of culture Culture, that is, beliefs, social customs, lifestyles, behaviors and all the other products made by a people at a particular time, which is known as a set of cultural traits (Altering 1993:127). The knowledge of formal culture of a certain nation is usually

11、obtained by taking courses in school where it has nearly always been a component, as the English language curriculum in China. And the knowledge of the general culture is gained by living in the target country, by reading books concerned or by the teaching of a teacher, and so on.Culture is the pron

12、oun of the whole society, which represents the total outcome of our mankind society. A society can not be without culture, and the culture also can not be without its society. Because of the different regions, history and development degrees, different countries and nations have different cultures f

13、rom each other. 2. The relationship between language and cultural background knowledge Any language is a component part of a culture and a tool with which to study the cultures and to communicate. The language and the cultural background knowledge are closely and intricately related as part and whol

14、e (CAI Yuen-e 1997:21). Different countries have different cultural background. If these cultural background differences are ignored by foreigners in the communications with native speakers, misunderstanding may be created even though the structures of language are perfectly correct. Again, in forei

15、gn Language teaching and learning, two languages and two cultures come into contact; without the knowledge of the cultural background of a target country, the teaching and learning of a foreign language, therefore, can never be made effectively and the learners can not understand the language correc

16、tly and apply it in practice effectively. So studying English need to pay attention to value both the language knowledge and the culture background of the language, to make a good understanding of the cultural background difference between English and Chinese.II. The Importance of Knowing Western Cu

17、ltural Background Knowledge in English TeachingAs is well known, language and culture are inseparable. Language is a tool for human communication. Language is the carrier of culture. It can inform that language can be shaped by the culture. It is hard to say how for they influence each other, as jur

18、y lot man, former Semitist if soviet union, said: “no language can exist unless it is steeped in the context of culture, and no culture can exist which does not have its corner the structure of natural language.”Culture is an abstract concept. It is really very hard to name it exactly, lots of philo

19、sophers, socialists, historians and linguists tried to definite it from their own angles, but until now there is not a recognized definition. It is said that different people have ever given about 150 definitions about culture from which we can see their understanding on this word. Usually, people v

20、iewed culture in broad sense and narrow sense. The broad sense means the total of material and spiritual wealth created in the human historical developments. Including the transportation, cloth, objects, institutions, techniques and language that characterize the life of the human community. In a na

21、rrow sense, culture refers to local phenomenon; every new generation will inherit the original culture from their ancestors. They exert great contribution on enhancing the old culture and renewing the new one.Culture has the distinctive style, it is the symbol of a nation, e.g.: the western tend to

22、accept thanks and compliments more directly and frankly than Chinese do. When a native English speaker expresses us his gratitude, a Chinese speaker may feel embarrassed and would sometimes say “no, no” to decline whatever expressions of gratitude. However, English speakers, in a similar situation,

23、would say something like “Im glad to hear “or “Im glad to be of help” to acknowledge and accept the thanks. To native speakers of Chinese, expressions like “Not at all” or “Its nothing” which are sometimes used by Englishmen to turn down thanks May sometime lead to misunderstandings. Similarly, many

24、 native Chinese speakers will feel embarrassed when they hear compliments like “You speak excellent English” or “You have acquired a native English speaker accent”. To show their modesty and those they do not deserve a compliment; they tend to use an emphatic “no”. English speaking people, unlike mo

25、desty Chinese, will accept compliment is sincere, it is not expression of pride or impoliteness and that the praise is not unworthy achievement. Therefore, they think it is inappropriate to show false humility, or pretended modesty. Though the pursuit of the inter-relationship between language and c

26、ulture has never been dominant in the focus of intense and sustained research efforts. Language is an essential and important part of a given culture and that the impact of culture upon a given language is something intrinsic and indispensable, we can say that it has become axiomatic to say that the

27、re existed a close relationship between language and culture. We generally summarize the features into three points.First, every language is part of a culture, such as, it can not but serves and reflect culture needs, and the language is one of the aspects of the social culture. The relationship of

28、language to culture is that of part to whole. Culture is a wider system that completely includes language as a subsystem. From the connotation of culture, it includes material and spiritual wealth. While, language is just one of the spiritual wealth created during the human activities.Second, on the

29、 other hand, language is the carrier of culture. It is a mirror, which reflects the culture of a nation. Language can reinforce and preserve a culture, its beliefs and customs, and sometimes even conditions in its future course of developments. As long as a language is in use, the culture it represe

30、nts will survive. Even when a culture is disappearing, it can still be studied by looking into its language. Language not only express facts, ideas, or events which represent similar world knowledge by its people, but also reflects the peoples attitude, beliefs, world outlooks etc. in a word, langua

31、ge expresses cultural reality. There is a very simple example. To the title of some relatives, China and English exists lots of obvious differences. In English there are two words uncle and aunt, while Chinese has a complex system of kinship terms. It distinguish伯，叔，姑，舅，姨。This indicates that Chinese

32、 are more particular about these relation distinctions while English people do not need to make these distinctions so often. Cultures differ from one another. Each culture is unique. Learning a foreign language well means more than merely mastering the pronunciation, grammar, words and idioms. It al

33、so means learning to see the world as native speakers, learning the ways in which their language reflects the ideas, customs, and behaviors of their society, learning to understand their language” of the mind”. Language a language, in fact, is inseparable from learning its culture. However, it has n

34、ot been given enough care in our teaching for a long time. Although many students have acquired four skills listening, speaking, reading and writing according to the demand of our traditional syllabubs, they often make mistakes in application of language. When English as a foreign language is taught

35、. Its learners cannot automatically acquire the culture. Any foreign language learners have experienced the situation in which they couldnt understand the easy thing just because their lack of cultural background knowledge. Why is culture so important to foreign language teaching? The answer is in t

36、he close relationship between langrage and culture. In order to understand such relationship, we have an overall understanding of culture; Different scholars have different definitions of culture. Scholars have given more than 300 definitions so far. But none of them has been accepted completely, ho

37、wever, most scholars agree that culture involves traditions, actions and ideas. For example, when mother telling her baby” Do this, dont do that.” She is performing two things: first, she is using language to communicate with her baby. Second, she is using language to pass on some traditional or cul

38、tural biases or taboos to her baby. So, without language and culture. Also from what the mother says about cultural: dos and donts, we learn some traditional institution of a certain community.In this sense, we many say that language is part of culture. This is another aspect of relationship between

39、 language and culture. From the above, we will know the language-culture relationship is language shapes and is shaped bad culture. Let us look at an example.A typical lexical example is “privacy”. When I first arrived in the U.S.A., the dean told his secretary to arrange for me an office in case I

40、might want to have my privacy. When an American friend paid a visit to the basement where I was sheltered, she said:” so you have your privacy.” Then, when I touched on the U.S. Constitution, I found that one of the civil rights of American is privacy. All of this can be explained by American value

41、individual independence, or individual liberty. According to Alfred Kramer, a famous American anthropologist, the values of American can be induced into 21 points, among which the first one is “individualism”, that is “the belief that each person is a distinct entity and ought to assert and achieve

42、independence from others.” So from this example we can see language should be taught in culture, or we can say, take culture into consideration in our English language teaching.It is obvious that common emotions and thoughts cant be understood apart from the cultural references, and then these refer

43、ences must be taught in the language classroom. Furthermore, understanding language is not sufficient for good intercultural communication, either. Culture distinction influences our daily communication. In vocabulary, for example, similar words in different languages have different meanings and nua

44、nces. So an English teacher couldnt separate cross-culture communication teaching from language teaching.As I have mentioned, language is the carrier of culture, and a part of culture. However, language is influenced by culture deeply. If we dont make sense of the culture, we cant interpret some Eng

45、lish words correctly. For example, black tea, we may understand the phrase like this: the color of the tea is black. In fact, the Chinese meaning is “black tea”. So teaching culture has been considered important purpose of language teaching. Without understanding cultural meanings, it is not possibl

46、e for us to understand language as its native speakers do, no matter how well they can manipulate the vocabulary and grammatical forms of the language.According to the recent media and information revolutions, people are more and more concerned about the whole globe around them. So effective communi

47、cation is essential for peaceful coexistence and therefore leaving us many of the problems one facing the world. The constant flow of information from country to country and continents to continents in our shrinking world creates the need for education that encourages and supports the development of

48、 language and intercultural communication skills. Without understanding the culture difference, all of these cant come true. III. The Four Aspects of the Influence of the Cultural Background Knowledge to English teachingFor a long time, in China, English teaching has just focused on the language for

49、ms (such as phonetics, vocabulary and grammar) and ignored the effect of background knowledge of culture. As the carrier of culture, the cultural background of language is rather extensive. Lacking of the necessary cultural background may hinder people from comprehending language. For instance, when

50、 the President Reagan took up his post, an American told a Chinese teacher: “the United States has gone from peanuts to popcorn.” The syntax of this sentence is very simple. However, the Chinese teacher did not understand the sentence at that time until her friend explained to her that former presid

51、ent Jimmy Carter owned a big peanut farm while the present president Reagan is an actor and people eat popcorn while they watch TV. She suddenly realized the real humorous meaning of this sentence. From this case, we can see that to comprehend the language, not only depends on the comprehension of v

52、ocabulary and grammatical structures, but also depends on the comprehension of relevant background knowledge of culture. The differences of cross-cultural background in reading comprehension of English can be classified as the following aspects.1. Historical cultural background Not familiar with the

53、 history of England and American. Students are also unable to understand the whole text. Take the text The Woman Who Would not Tell for example. It tells a story about an ordinary South Federal woman. She had good reasons to hate the Civil war. One of her brothers was killed and another taken prison

54、er. Then her young husband, a Confederate officer, was captured and sent to an unknown prison. But when she saw a badly wounded Union soldier in her attic, she did not report the presence of the Union officer to the Confederate army. On the contrary she took care of him and sent him back to the army

55、. The background of this text is the famous American Civil War. In order to get all-round and profound understanding, students must know this period of American history, know the cause and the characteristics of the war, or they will not understand the phrases in the text like Yankees. Union soldier

56、, Confederate officer, etc, why the war broke out between the north and the South? Abolition of slavery is one of the main reasons. The North and the South have different opinions on the problem of slavery. Capitalism economy developed quickly in the northern states. But in south the slavery economy

57、 was on dominant. Because the slavery restricted development of American economy, the North demanded to abolish but the South absolutely opposed it. Another main reason is that the Federal government faced the danger of separation when President Lincoln came to power. One of the purposes that Lincol

58、n launched war was to abolish the slavery and propel the economic development. The other purpose was to safeguard the union of American. Knowing this period of history and the character of the war, students can deeply understand the text and know that the ultimate aim of the war is to maintain the d

59、evelopment of American.2. Regional cultural background Regional culture, here, refers to the culture that can be shaped by natural conditions and geographical environment of an area. These effects on culture may lend themselves to creating comprehension barriers to Chinese students of English readin

60、g. For example, shall I compare thee to a summers day? Thou art lovelier and more temperate. This poem is a part of Shakespeares sonnet 18. He compared the lover to a summers day, which is difficult for Chinese students to understand. Only knowing some relevant geographical knowledge, can they get r

61、eal understanding of this sonnet? As Britain is a high latitude country, the average summer temperature is about 20 degrees and the daytime is very long, from about 4 oclock in the morning to about 10 oclock at night. Therefore, the summer in Britain is pleasantly cool and delightful. It is obviousl

62、y different from the hot summer of most regions in China, especially, in south China, where the hot summer is very hard to endure and causes people to feel unhappy. British poet Shelleys poem “Ode to the West Wind” compares the west wind to the warm and delightful wind that brings forth spring. Howe

63、ver, to Chinese people, the west wind not only means cold but also means declining and depressed.3. Social cultural backgroundLanguage is an important component of culture, the existence and development of language are influenced by society, and the social phenomenon and vocabulary of a certain hist

64、orical periods reflect the objective history of society. Such vocabulary may confuse foreign readers. For instance, when American President Nixon was in his second term of office, Watergate became a well-established and common term. It stands for a political scandal in the Nixon era associated with burglarizing an office of the Democrat Party located at the Watergate Hotel. In Washington. Elements