在教学中如何减少中西方文化差异对英语阅读理解的影响-文学学士毕业论文.doc

difference between China and the West”.
2.2 The conceptions of Chinese and Western culture
Chinese culture mainly takes nature as an object of worship rather than study and conquest, as the object of image rather than inquiry. On the problem of dealing with interpersonal relations, the Chinese culture pays attention to the groups and harmony but takes light of individual and resistance. Chinese culture always seeks the unification of man and nature, social harmony as the main theme of life ideals, develops the concept of groups but opposes the independent will of human. The concept of harmony in Chinese culture, in the same way, also embodies and develops the spirit of obedience, submission, conservation and complacent, with little sense of protest and rebel courage. Therefore, it forms Chinese cultural character as modest and prudent, reserved and introverted.
In the west, the philosophers from ancient Greece and Rome put their sights on nature at the beginning. They explored the mysteries of nature and dominated the nature, being the host of nature. Nature is just the object for people to recognize and conquer. They emphasized people’s independence, strong will of pursuit freedom and independent spirit. In dealing with the interpersonal relations, the west prefer to individual freedom and personal independence, emphasis on the life’s value and dignity, the acquisition and protection of private property. The westerners use every means to achieve their aims. They will face all the challenges directly and never give up or abandon, so they have formed a straightforward, open-minded and strong character. (谷彦君, 2002)

3. The Impact of Cultural Difference on Reading

3.1 Impact on vocabulary
Vocabulary is the basic element of language. It is the crutch of the whole language system, so it can reflect the differences in culture more widely. Wang zuoliang(1979) once said, “A word not only has the literal meaning, but also has the deep meaning. Therefore, people who have different culture backgrounds will have different understandings of a same word.”

3.11 Conceptual meaning
Conception meaning is the basic meaning of a word. It is abstract, and does not have direct contacting with the objective things. Not understanding words’ conception meanings correctly will cause communication conflict.
For example, in Chinese, “uncle” refers to father’s younger brother or some elders younger than father. But in English it refers to father’s brother or mother’s brother. There are many words like that, such as grandfather, father-in-law, and cousin and so on. Another example, “drugstore” is different between English and Chinese. In the USA, drugstore not only sale drugs but also food, drink, etc,. However, In China, drugstore only sale drugs. (苏小河, 2005)

3.1.2 Connotative meaning
Connotation meaning is the meaning beyond conception meaning. Usually it has direct contacting with the objective things.
For example, “intellectual” has different meanings in Chinese and English. In Chinese, “the intellectual” includes university teachers, university students as well as doctors, translators, engineers and all other college-educated people, even the middle school students are also considered to be “intellectuals”. But in English speaking countries, intellectual only includes the persons who have a higher academic status like university processors, not ordinary university students.
Another example is “individualism”. In the west, it has become a commendatory term of the modern west values and the cultural essence. It is a spirit of fighting. It is also the summary for the individual freedom and individual right, achievement of self-value. However, in Chinese, it is a typical derogatory term. It has the same meaning as egoism, self-center and selfish. (苏小河, 2005)

3.1.3 Collocative meaning
Collocation meaning mainly refers to the combination relations between word and word. We cannot apply our mother tongue’s collocation rule into the English learning.
For instance, “Hong cha”(红茶) is translated as “black tea”; “black coffee” is translated as “nong coffee”（浓咖啡）in Chinese，but the Chinese “nong cha”(浓茶)is translated as “strong tea”. In Chinese “yu hou chun sun”(雨后春笋), “duo niu ru mao”(多牛如毛) are translated into English as “spring up like mushrooms”, “as plentiful as blackberries” respectively. If we translate them as “spring up like bamboo shoots” or “as plentiful as ox hair”, the foreigners may not understand what they mean. “Dragon” in Chinese is a symbol of emperors in the ancient times, it is a mascot. But in English, “dragon” is a monster. It gives people a terrible impression. And people often relate “dragon” with “evil” or “ferocity”. So we can see “Asian four tiger” in English but not “Asian four dragon” as is in Chinese. And we often say, “wang zi cheng long” (望子成龙). We translate it as “to hope that one’s son will become somebody” but not “to hope that one’s son will become a dragon” (苏小河, 2005)

3.2 Impact on sentence
Cultural differences disturb reading not only in vocabulary, but also in sentences. Sentences are making up of vocabulary, but not a simple stacking of all the words’ meanings.
For example, a young Chinese went to swimming, and he came back in a minute. His foreign friends wondered why he came back quickly. He said, “There are so many people in the swimming pool, like sesame paste cooked dumpling”. His foreign friends didn’t understand the sentence. They neither ate sesame sauce(芝麻酱) nor seen cooked dumpling. In the west, people always say “It was packed like sardines” to describe so many people in some place. For this parable, Chinese may understand its literal meaning, but can not understand the deep meaning. Sardines are not familiar to Chinese, even a little flat tin was crammed with sardines, and it is difficult for Chinese to understand the crowded scenes. (李丹, 2007)
For another example, In British school, when teacher asks the students what“tea breaks do matter” means? Almost all the students answer, “They can be used by the workers as an excuse to take time off from work”. Because they do not know that afternoon tea is very important in British’s daily life, so “tea breaks do matter” means “they are an important aspect of the British way of life”. (李丹, 2007)

3.3 Impact on thought
Language is not only the tool of communication, but also the tool of thought. Thought is mainly expressed through language. When do some reading, we can find that English and our mother language is different in the means of coherence between sentences or paragraphs. In the literary style and rhetoric, English papers, reports, advertisements, contracts, poems have obvious difference with Chinese.
For example: a dialogue (廖道圣, 2001)
A：Can I help you?
B：Yes，I am looking for a pair of white gloves．I think I wear size six．
A：The white gloves are on this counter．Let me see…here is size six．These are nice and they wash well, too.
B：Oh，I’ll try them on．Hmm…They seem to fit. How much are they?
A：Five dollars．
B：All right．I will take them．
A：That’ll be five-twenty with the tax．
Question：How much are the gloves?
It’s an easy understanding context. But students will feel confused: It mentioned two prices and which one is the answer? The majority of students answered five dollars, because they did not know that in many western countries, people need to pay taxes when they shop. However, in China, we do not.
Another example, in the text of Big Bucks the Easy Way (John Hardy. 2005), the father encourages his son who goes to college to make money by himself, rather than always ask parents for money. When the son meets difficulties during the process of making money, the father only said superficially, “You are a college student, and you should know how to do.” When reading here, the Chinese may say, “Why the parents do not put out a hand to aid? It’s unthinkable!” So when study the text, teachers should introduce some westerners’ value orientation, their life idea, their diplomatic relation to the students. The American advocates independence. The majority of Americans think that it is very important to take good care of oneself independently. The American parents are the same as other parents. They love their children, but the ways are different from Chinese parents’. They believe that early education is necessary for their children, and the children are taught that they must be independent in economy. After entering college, from the president down to the ordinary people’s children are making money by themselves while studying. But Chinese parents' love to their children is more external and direct. It reflects on every aspect. Only to understand this cultural background knowledge, can we understand the father’s practice. (林震, 2007)

4. The Necessity to Introduce the
Culture Background into the English Reading Teaching

Hu Wenzhong(1999) divided culture into two main categories: “knowledge culture” and “communication culture” according to the needs of foreign language teaching. The so-called “knowledge culture” is the cultural factors when people with different cultural backgrounds communicate with each other. They do not directly affect the accurate transmission of information in verbal and nonverbal. The so-called “communication culture” is the cultural factors when people with different cultural backgrounds communicate with each other. They directly affect the accurate transmission of information in verbal and nonverbal. He said, “In language teaching, communication culture is more important than knowledge culture.”(1999)The process of students’ reading is also a process of cross-cultural communication. Therefore, understanding of foreign readings is a complex process of cross-cultural communication. Almost all the foreign reading materials that students read come from English-speaking countries’ newspapers, magazines and literary works. The themes range from biographies, society, cultures, daily life, science, and customs and so on. These materials not only reflect the customs, rituals, daily life, interpersonal relationships, common culture of English-speaking countries, but also reflect the values, time orientation, and the pace of life. It is impossible for students to understand what the authors want to express just by their knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, voice and sentence. In addition, the language itself is a cultural phenomenon. The process of language learning is also a cultural learning process. Thus, it is necessary to import the relevant cultural background knowledge into the reading teaching.

5. Culture Teaching Methods in English Teaching Process

One problem in foreign language teaching continues to be of critical importance: students make comprehensive mistakes when reading English texts. This kind of understanding error or comprehension barrier is closely related to the cultural differences reflected by Chinese and English languages. Foreign language reading comprehension is, in fact, a cross-cultural communication event, and students’ familiarity with the target culture is the premise of successful reading comprehension. In the process of foreign Language reading comprehension, readers’ task is not just to acquire knowledge, but more importantly, to communicate cross-culturally with the writer and critically absorb the cultural heritage in the target language. In recent years, more and more English teachers and learners have realized the importance of culture in learning and teaching foreign languages, however there are still quite a number of teachers who, in the process of teaching reading, emphasize only language itself and neglect the cultural knowledge of the text. Obviously this method of teaching is not very helpful in improving students’ ability to comprehend the text. Actually, many English learners might not understand what a sentence means or what a paragraph is about even though they understand every single word and all the grammatical structures in the sentence or the paragraph. This phenomenon can be explained as a result of English learners’ ignorance of the social cultural implications and backgrounds of the English language. For the purpose of improving the teaching of reading comprehension and students’ reading ability and making students aware that cultural knowledge plays a vital role in text comprehension, English teachers should first fully aware of the importance to understand the differences between Chinese and West culture, and read every kind of books to improve their cultural accomplishments. Secondly, when teaching language knowledge, teachers should teach cultural knowledge as much as possible. Su dingfang(1996) has proposed three important principles: practical principle, stage principle, suitable principle. The three principles require the culture contents should be closely related to students’ existing language knowledge, daily communication, and their future career. In order to teach cultural contents to students effectively, to exclude the cultural barriers, teachers can take the following methods based on the three principles.

5.1 Pre-class
Nowadays, almost all the English reading materials are selected from the original materials. So before teaching a new text, teachers can encourage students to find some information about the text through the internet, the library and other means. Of course, teachers can also recommend some relevant culture books for students, such as the original work of English literature, the history of English speaking countries, social culture, customs, economy and so on.
Through a lot of reading, students can understand the foreign cultures more comprehensively and concretely. For example, the topic of a new text is about rugby game. Rugby is unfamiliar to students, so it will be difficult for them to understanding the new text. At this time, teachers should ask the students to find some relevant terms and rules of this game before the class.
Furthermore, teachers should work out different teaching programs and choose different reading materials according to the students’ different situations. For the lower grade students, teachers should help them mainly understand the cultural information. The materials for them can be the English-speaking countries’ language, diet, dress and other common cultures. Regarding to the higher grade students, teachers should introduce a richer culture, such as English-speaking countries’ concepts, values, attitudes, communication rules and so on. (王林, 2004)

5.2 In-class
In the class, teachers can take some interesting teaching ways to arouse students’ learning interests.
Firstly, teachers should give students systematic culture teaching. Teachers should cultivate

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