application-of-cultural-introduction-in-english-reading-teaching--英语专业毕业论文设计.doc

Ⅰ. Introduction
Many students believe that, when English learning achieved certain level, master the accurate pronunciation, learn a lot of vocabulary and have complete grammar knowledge, even if learned language, thus can accurately express their thoughts, freely with foreigners communication. And the actual situation is not so. For example: in “reading comprehension”, all words all understanding but understand the real meaning; in the “language”, the article structures of language understandable, but real “Chinglish”, etc. English reading ability is a comprehensive ability, although in the reading process didn't come across a new word, no grammar obstacles, but without certain cultural background knowledge, you sometimes baffled. The result is the direct reason, students are lack of understanding to western culture background, exist because of the language, national, cultural tradition and thinking mode etc caused by the different communication obstacles. If not put some relevant cultural background knowledge to students as it is difficult to explain clearly is introduced, the content of the material, students also difficult to grasp the connotation of the content. I think, English teaching for the relevant cultural background knowledge introduction is quite important. English reading in Senor Middle School has always been considered one of the most important parts of foreign language learning. Without reading, nothing can be done in the development of the competence in listening, speaking, writing and translating. Reading courses, or rather, intensive reading ones fill up a large component of the curricula. Obviously, students and teacher should pay great attention to the importance of reading courses. How can Chinese students achieve proficient reading?
Ⅱ. Some problems in English reading
A. Know little about the cultural background knowledge
The Senor Students’ knowledge narrow, only to take the textbook knowledge learning, has neglected the extracurricular knowledge learning. Students to text vocabulary by the virtue of the cultural background knowledge know very little. Whether word, sentence, or understanding of textual structure, relying on in certain social and cultural knowledge. Only to infiltrate each other's language cultures to, can feel everything becomes vivid rise, learning can be fun, language expression can use it freely, we can avoid English learning process, and we can understand the article deeply, appreciate and express accurately.
B. Lack of grammar knowledge
Grammar learning English is very important; some students focus on vocabulary memory, but ignore the grammar of master, it’s also the key to master English well.
C. Lack of knowledge integration
Part of students’ elementary language knowledge is not solid, such as spelling words, sentences grammar mistakes in classical the questionnaire.
Ⅲ. The importance of introducing cultural background knowledge
A. The definition of cultural background knowledge
Cultural background is the context of one’s life experience as shaped by membership in groups based on ethnicity, race, socioeconomic status, gender, exceptionalities, language, religion, sexual orientation, and geographical area. There is an extensive terminology to describe different kinds of knowledge. Consistency in the use of these terms is a recognized problem; subtle and dramatic differences exist between different people’s definitions of the same term (Alexander, Schaller & Hare, 1991; Duchy & Alexander, 1995). Background knowledge is all knowledge. Learners have when entering a learning environment that is potentially relevant for acquiring new knowledge (Batemans & Simons’ 1996). Learning English is to learn a completely different culture and Chinese, are familiar with English culture way of thinking, values and customs. A collective expression for all behavior patterns acquired and socially transmitted through symbols. Culture includes customs, traditions, and language.
B. The importance of cultural background knowledge
Cultural background knowledge in English teaching arose in eighties of the twentieth century. It has been closely linked with the reformation and open in China. Cultural background knowledge is arranged in various kinds of English text books. They make every effort to teach cultural knowledge during language teaching. In order to have students experience the cultural atmosphere of the English-spoken countries unconsciously. However, at present in English teaching in China, teachers pay more attention to teaching language knowledge while ignore the culture of the target language countries. The breakdown arisen from the cross-cultural communication because of the lack of social customs, values, idea, clothing, food, shelter and transportation and so on. In English-spoken countries, No understanding the cultural background knowledge of the target language countries can affect the practice of language knowledge on the significance, goal and approaches of the cultural background knowledge. How to develop the cultural consciousness, how to know the behavior and manners of the people in English-Spoken countries, how to make comparison with eastern and western cultures. Through the comparison, we can understand Chinese cultural deeply. Through English study we can know world culture better and develop our world consciousness. English teachers required to teach students basic language skills, to the neglect of English-speaking countries to teach cultural background knowledge; students learn if knowledge of the language simply does not understand the language and cultural survival to difficult to accurately grasp, understand and use language. Some experimental results show that the reader's experience can make readers are familiar with the article content, help reading comprehension (Johnson 1982); Hudson (1982) use schema theory study reading and foreign language skills background knowledge, the relationship between the results of his experiment shows that foreign language readers' background knowledge in reading, once inspired than foreign language ability produce bigger role.
It is well known that reading is of decisive importance in English learning. English syllabus for senior high school takes reading ability as the first priority in four basic skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. How to improve reading ability is a goal for Senor Students. It is agreed that improvement of reading ability depends on linguistic competence, reading strategy, affective factor, prior knowledge, positive transfer of mother tongue on foreign language and so on, while cultural background knowledge plays a vital part to some extent. Cultural background knowledge is defined as properties of geography, history, economy, education, political institution, custom, art, religion, way of life, social tradition etiquette, etc, in a given country from a broad viewpoint. When we do some reading, cultural background knowledge related can facilitate reading difficulty. Students make comprehension mistakes when reading English texts. This kind of understanding error or comprehension barriers 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.( Byram 22) In recent years, more and more English teachers and learners have realized the importance of culture in the learning and teaching of 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 backgrounds of the English language.
In English, some simple vocabulary and phrase because of the unique historical and cultural background and become a specific meaning of nouns. Waterloo （滑铁卢） originally refers to central Belgium an anonymous town in 1815 napoleon rate, because in this battle armies world famous. The battle ended in napoleon defeat of Waterloo, so a word will become “fiasco” and “destruction” of such tragic outcome of the nouns. If you don't understand the cultural history background, students would not understand “meet one’s Waterloo” the real meaning this idiom. This word has become a famous movie title, namely “Waterloo Bridge”, the title of the film directly reveals the theme, but the translator and tragedy didn't take it for《滑铁卢大桥》 , but smart use of traditional Chinese cultural knowledge in Chinese history, borrow another scene, the famous love tragedy, translate it for 《魂断蓝桥》, and the film's classic subject complement each other, be Chinese audience beloved. If the translator of English culture background without the understanding, is unable to translate such classic of lovers. The unique historical and cultural backgrounds are important in English reading.
Lack of cultural background knowledge, understanding will produce deviation; using judgment may also be affected. 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, the comprehension barriers Chinese students encounter when reading English texts, and proves that these comprehension barriers all belong to cultural barriers. As our English teaching materials Britain and Ireland The dialogue itself is very simple.
Zhoulan: ---Are you English?
David: ---No, I'm not.
Zhoulan: ---But you speak English.
David: ---That's correct.
Zhoulan: ---Where are you from then? Canada?
David:---No, I'm from Britain.
Zhoulan: ---But I thought you said you weren’t English.
David: ---Right, I'm British, but I'm not English.
Zhoulan: ---What are you then?
David:---I'm Scottish, I'm from Scotland.
Zhoulan: ---Where's that?
David: ---It's to the north of England, its part of Britain.
Zhoulan:---Have you got a map to show me?
I'm puzzled. In this conversation why does Zhoulan feel puzzled? Because Zhoulan is lack of British cultural background knowledge. Although England and Britain can refer to and British, but strictly speaking, English especially refer to People of England, because England just is a part of Britain, Although England is humongous and population, but after all it cannot represent Scotland, Wales and Ireland. As people in these areas, they usually don’t want to say into is the England man, to accept Welsh/Irish /Scottish, as for British, they are acceptable, this is why David said: “I ‘m British, but I’ m not English. I’ m Scottish”. In this dialogue, if students master this background knowledge, it will be easy to master this dialogue. So in this conversation on background knowledge for students appear extremely important introduced, there is no words and grammar's explanation.
Some words in English and Chinese may share the same rational meanings, but the meanings of emotion, feature, and collocation are quite different. Such as word “dragon” which is a symbol of an emperor or sovereign power in Chinese figure and does not have any negative meaning at all, but in English-speaking culture, the word “dragon” is a symbol of evil which is a barbaric monster and dragon which is an enemy to people (Hu 1996. 243).if someone say “she is a dragon” which means the woman believes in a angry or unfriendly way. In follow, the word dragon has different imaginary meanings between Chinese and western people. Therefore language is product of culture because language expresses cultural reality, language embodies cultural reality. (kramsch 2000).
Two language systems in Chinese English some corresponding word meaning is roughly same, but different cultural content will make derivative, meaning only in different, different cultural background and on the basis of understanding to the right.
The same word in different culture represents different cultural connotations in different culture background, they create associations also can have differences. So, those vocabularies have richer cultural connotation. In addition to improve literal meaning understand outside, more important is to understand their social and cultural meaning, then can attain to the words application freely. The use of it Chinese-English color words for example, red in Chinese-English two languages is the same as the original meaning of existing in nature, refers to the “red color”. But the expression of the social and cultural meaning is quite the opposite: in Chinese language is the most powerful commendatory word, For example “prosperous”, “Gong Bang”(红榜), “red envelop”, “red” and “off”, “red may”, “red sun” “red heart”, etc; there are weddings on the bride, Hero model wears the red silk in a celebrity, and wear red flower, all expressed festival, prosperity, and happiness. But English is widely divergent; use it to show anger, banned and dangerous, for instance, red alert, and red flag. To most Chinese and Westerners, white has some meanings in common. White suggests purity, innocence and honesty. e.g., Mary一 is a white girl. (Pure and innocent)Tom is a very white boy. He never tells lies. (Honest)But in this sense, what does the term a white lie mean? Can a lie be pure and innocent? Actually, a white lie is a harmless one, intended not to hurt someone. For example, your mother bought a dress for you that she was very satisfied with, and wanted to know if you liked it. Maybe in your mind, it was out of the fashion or the color was not to your taste. But you said, “Oh, I really like it” in order not to let her down. It was a lie, but a good-intentioned lie. The connotation of white in Chinese also includes something unhappy. At funerals, Chinese pay respect to the dead and express their sorrow by wearing white and writing elegiac couplets in white paper. In the West, however, white is the traditional color for the brides at weddings, and to wear white at funerals would be offensive. So care should be taken in translating the phrase红白喜事. To avoid misunderstanding, we can put it simply as weddings and funerals. Talking about red and white, there is an interesting coincidence in Chinese and English. In Chine