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Foreign Languages Department of Changzhi College GUO Jia

Cultivation of Chinese Cultural Awareness in the Teaching of English Majors ____ A Report of the Cultural Teaching Reform Based on Using of Read about China. Foreign Languages Department of Changzhi College GUO Jia. Introduction. Situation

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Foreign Languages Department of Changzhi College GUO Jia

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  1. Cultivation of Chinese Cultural Awareness in the Teaching ofEnglish Majors____ A Report of the Cultural Teaching Reform Based on Using of Read about China Foreign Languages Department of Changzhi College GUO Jia

  2. Introduction • Situation 1.Chinese Culture Aphasia is a phenomenon which often appears in English learning and communication. (Cong Cong, Chinese Culture Aphasia : Shortcoming of ELT in China, Guangming Daily, 2000-10-19(1))

  3. 2.Zhang Weimin and Zhu Hongmei(2002) did a research into the English proficiency of expressing Chinese culture, and the subjects involved were137 non-English majors from Qinghua University. The result shows that about 70% of the subjects can not express Chinese culture in proper English.(Zhang Weimin & Zhu Hongmei, Chinese Culture in English Teaching at Tertiary Level, Qinghua University Education Studies,2002,1)

  4. 3. Ji Jingtong and Song Li(2005) made a similar survey of the students of Ha’erbing Institute of Technology and got the similar result. (Ji Jingtong & Song Li,Sino-US English Teaching,2005,2)

  5. 4.In China, English learners take the responsibilities to learn cultures of English-speaking countries and to introduce Chinese culture to the world.

  6. Theoretical Underpinnings • 1. Language and culture are closely related and cannot be separated. (See Kramsch, C. Language and Culture . Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. 1998; Samovar, L. A. & Porter, R. E. Communication Between Cultures. Beijing: Foreign Language, Teaching and Research Press, 2000;Deng Yanchang, Liu Runqing, Language and Culture: A Comparative Study of English Culture and Chinese Culture. Beijing: Foreign Language, Teaching and Research Press, 1989.)

  7. Theoretical Underpinnings 2. Widdowson(1983)pointed out that learning purpose(s) should be set up in the process of language learning, and in most cases such purpose (s) should be concerned with communication, esp. intercultural communication, bidirectional rather than unidirectional, which means both absorption and spreading are necessary. (Widdowson, H. G. Learning Purpose and Language Use .Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983)

  8. Research questions: • Is instruction of Chinese culture in ELT helpful in cultivation of Chinese cultural awareness and English proficiency of expressing Chinese culture? • If any, to what extent is it helpful?

  9. Participants The reform was conducted among all the second-year English majors of our department. The participants consisted of 183 students from five classes.

  10. Materials Read about China, a book containing reading materials on Chinese culture and exercises regarding reading comprehension, was taught as a complementary material in Extensive Reading Course. No extra teaching hours were given for the teaching of this book, and it was done every week and lasted for one term.

  11. Data Collection • Questionnaires, tests, and interviews were conducted before and after the teaching reform. Questionnaires were aimed to find the students’ understanding of language and culture; tests were to test the students’ language ability of expressing Chinese culture; interviews were used to find deep reasons .There was no time limitation in questionnaires while the students were required to finish their test papers in 20 minutes without the aid of dictionaries.

  12. All of the data were collected in March, 2008 and July, 2008. The questions of the questionnaires were designed according to those of Wang Zhenya(1994) andZhong Hua(2001) . The questions of the tests papers were based on the ones by Zhang Weimin and Zhu Hongmei(2002). (Wang Zhenya, Analysis of Test of Culture, In Hu Wenzhong (ed). Culture and Communication. Beijing: Foreign Language, Teaching and Research Press,1994; A Survey of Culktural Proficiency of Non-English Majors, Foreign Language World, 2001,4;Zhang Weimin & Zhu Hongmei, Chinese Culture in English Teaching at Tertiary Level, Qinghua University Education Studies,2002,1)

  13. Results and analysis • Questionnaires: 175 and 181 effective questionnaire sheets were collected respectively before and after the reform. The data regarding the subjects’ answers to both of the questionnaires are shown in Table 1.

  14. One more question was added to Questionnaire 2: What do you think is the difficulty in learning Chinese culture in the process of English learning? 30.1% of the subjects think they do not have a full understanding of Chinese culture, 47.8% of the subjects think they are in short of English language ability to express Chinese culture, 5.9% of the subjects are not interested in learning Chinese culture in English, 16.2% of the subjects do not offer clear answer.

  15. The results of the two surveys show that most of the students have a correct understanding of culture in terms of the superiority and inferiority. They also realize the importance of learning Chinese culture in ELL and the importance of culture in communication. Furthermore, most of the students think it is necessary to learn Chinese culture in ELL. The differences of the figures of the two surveys show that there is an improvement in the students’ understanding of culture, and the urge of learning Chinese culture is enhanced.

  16. 2. Tests 183 effective pretest papers (Test 1) and posttest papers (Test 2) were collected respectively. The same aspects were involved in the two test papers: food, customs, and places of historic interest and scenic beauty, while some adaptations in terms of the detailed items were made in the two test papers. The reference answers are based on the translation in the dictionaries called Longman Chinese-English Visual Dictionary of Chinese Culture and A Practical Chinese-English Dictionary of Classified Situations.

  17. Results: Among the answers to the first question regarding Chinese food, 34 of Test 1 and 58 of Test 2 are acceptable. Most of the subjects used explanations to answer the questions about Chinese customs, among which 42 of Test 1 and 68 of Test 2 are expressed fairly well. As for the last one concerning places of historic interest and scenic beauty, 28 of Test 1 and 46 of Test 2 are acceptable.

  18. 3. Interviews After the analysis of the answer sheet of Test 1, the author interviewed 12 subjects, among whom 6 were the best ones and 6 were the poorest ones in terms of the answers in Test 1. When required to give the reasons for the difficulty in answering the questions, the poorest ones said that they had hardly read anything about Chinese culture in English, and culture in their text books is about English speaking countries.

  19. The reasons for the good performance in Test1 given by the 6 best ones are as follows: • —They have read English books about Chinese culture. • —They often read English magazines and newspapers published in China, such as Beijing Review, China Daily, 21st Century etc. • —They learn English in the daily life. For example, they pay attention to the English names of Chinese food on a menu when they have a dinner in a restaurant. • —Their teachers give some complementary materials concerning Chinese culture.

  20. After the analysis of the answer sheets of Test 2 , the author interviewed 18 subjects, among whom 6 were the best ones, 6 were the poorest ones, and 6 were the ones who have made the greatest progress. 4 of the best ones in Test 2 were also the best ones in Test 1, 3 of the poorest ones in Test 2 were also the poorest ones in Test 1. When answering the influence of the teaching reform, 13 of the subjects gave positive answer. They thought the reform was helpful not only to the improvement of their language ability, but also to the learning of Chinese culture. What’s more, it made them become responsible for the introduction of Chinese culture to others. 2 subjects believed that it is not so effective to have such a reform, and they have learned only some English expressions concerning Chinese culture. 2 subjects took the reform as a burden in learning English. 1 subject did not give clear answer.

  21. Conclusion The data show that the reform is helpful in the cultivation of Chinese cultural awareness. Whether it is helpful to the study of Extensive Reading Course is not the concern of the present essay and may be left for further study. It is not helpful if only English culture is introduced in ELT. What’s more, English is an international language, therefore, cultures concerning more countries should be involved in ELT, and the culture about the mother language , Chinese culture in our case, cannot be ignored.

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