英语在跨文化交际中的作用~如题,求一篇关于“英语在跨文化交际中的作用”的英语小论文,大概500字左右~如果好的话会追加悬

〔Abstract〕 With the development of globalization,China’s entry into WTO and the coming Olympic Games in 2008, international contacts have become more and more frequent. The society is in great need of personnel who have a good command of knowledge and are able to communicate with people from different countries. How to make English teaching meet the needs of social and economic development has become an urgent task to English teachers. Therefore, developing students’ intercultural communicative competence has been paid more attention to in English teaching. Nowadays, it has been prescribed into the New English Curriculum Standards. Obviously, Middle School English teachers are facing the challenge of exploring appropriate means of culture instruction in their teaching contents. However, because of the testing system, teachers’ academic proficiency, students’ attitude and so on, culture introduction has been ignored in middle school and students’ intercultural competence is poorly developed. Since language and culture are inseparable,one cannot master the spirit of a foreign language without knowing its culture. Culture teaching should be given priority to in English teaching. In the hope of improving culture teaching in middle school English classes, practical principles and effective techniques are suggested. This article proceeds with the understanding of culture, analyses the differences between Chinese and Western cultures, discusses how to help students to learn culture differences at the beginning of English learning and how to relate Chinese and Western culture differences with language differences so as to develop students’ cultural sensitivity and their abilities to use various ways of communication flexibly, so as to enable students to carry out intercultural communication with English.
〔Key Words〕; intercultural awareness; intercultural communication; differences in languages and cultures
【摘 要】 随着全球化的发展,中国进入WTO,2008年北京奥运会的临近,国际间的交流越来越频繁.社会迫切需要具有跨文化交际能力的全面外交人才.如何使英语教学迎合社会经济发展的需求,如何提高学生的跨文化交际能力是对英语教师和目前英语教学的提出的新要求.中学作为英语教学的基础阶段,由于注重学生跨文化意识的培养,新课程标准已经把这部分作为重要内容.中学英语教师面临着文化与英语语言知识教学的新挑战,然而由于我们的测试系统,教师的学术水平及学生的学习方式等问题,中学的文化教学依然很薄弱,学生的跨文化交际能力低下.
【关键词】 跨文化意识；跨文化交际；文化语言差异
1．Introduction
Professor Deng Yanchang once said,“Learning a foreign Language well does not simply mean mastering its pronunciation,grammar and vocabulary. In fact,the learning of a Language is inseparable from the learning of its culture.”〔1〕The fundamental function of language is to communicate. A successful English teaching is to help language learners cultivate a good communicative ability. But nowadays we also can see that after many years of English study, students still find it difficult to communicate with native English speakers. The reason is that they lack the knowledge of western culture. Therefore, English teachers are facing one problem: furnishing students with the knowledge of culture background and improving their intercultural communicative competence in English teaching. Then cultural awareness indicates that foreign language learners have a good command of cultural knowledge of the target language, a strong competence of adjustment and communication .In addition, they can think and react in the ways as native speakers of that dimensions of culture. It is difficult to cultivate and enhance learners’ cultural awareness although they have well realized the existing differences because they often unconsciously attempt to superimpose their native culture onto the target language, which greatly hinders an effective intercultural communication.〔2〕
2. The necessity of intercultural awareness cultivation in middle school English teaching
2.1The requirement of syllabus
“Language is system of arbitrary, vocal symbols by means of which the members of a speech community communicate, interact, and transmit their culture.”〔3〕 This definition is given to emphasize that the function of language is not only a tool of communication but also an important vehicle of culture. So learning a foreign language is a process of acquiring the language and its culture for communicating purpose. English syllabus currently points out that the ultimate goal of English teaching is to foster students’ intercultural communicative competence. Culture is the content of language; every language reflects its own culture. People’s language should adapt to the context. What to say, how to say it, when to say it, and to whom to say it are all determined by the underlying beliefs and values.〔4〕As Wolfson (1983) noted, “In communicating with foreigners, native speakers tend to be rather tolerant of errors in pronunciation or syntax. In contrast, violations of rules of speaking (pragmatic failure) are often interpreted as bad manners since the native speaker is unlikely to be aware of sociolinguistic relativities.”〔5〕 In the new syllabus for Senior Middle School English, it shows that students of Full-time Senior Middle School English not only should grasp vocabularies, grammar, and pronunciation, but also properly grasp the relationship between language teaching and culture understanding.〔6〕 Hence, we should carry out cultural teaching in middle school and improve students’ intercultural awareness.
2.2 The present teaching materials
Nowadays, intercultural awareness and intercultural communicative competence have been prescribed into the New English Curriculum Standards. The newly organized teaching materials of junior and senior middle school involve some western culture, for example, greeting, western festivals, literature, music, body language and so on. Then culture becomes an important part of English teaching. It is unwise, in order to save time, only to teach English with the neglect of cultural introduction. Barriers in English learning sometimes come from the lack of cultural knowledge.
Some teachers have attributed their students’ poor reading and listening comprehension to linguistic deficiencies. They believe that so long as their students grasp the meaning of every word, every sentence, and every text passage, they will have no difficulty in comprehending the whole text. This idea is not correct. English reading materials inevitably convey western culture. When we teach Christmas Day and Thanksgiving Day, some cultural background knowledge of these festivals can help students overcome obstacles in the text and grasp language knowledge better. In addition, many words, in the text book of middle school, have relations with cultural contexts, such as, old, name, dog, pork, beef, lookout, breakfast, and some words to express colors. For example, in the text book “blue” and “green” are not only the meaning of colors, each has its implied meanings. “Blue” in English often associates with unhappy feelings, “in a blue mood” or “having the blues” expresses a sad, gloomy or depressed mood. “A blue Monday” (the first day of week-work or school after a pleasant, happy weekend) has the similar meaning. Also, in English, “green” is also used to indicate a person who lacks experience, or a newcomer who is not familiar with local customs. Language and culture evolve together and interact with each other. According to the New English Curriculum Standards, in middle school, teachers should not neglect the cultural factors existing in English teaching. Definitely the intercultural awareness can’t be neglected in English teaching at middle school.
3. The current situation of intercultural awareness cultivation in middle school English teaching
China has now become a formal member of WTO, Beijing will host the Olympic Games in 2008. What’s more,our country has been taking effective measures to further the opening up and reform policies. Consequently, more and more cooperative and exchange programs will be held between China and foreign countries. There should be more students with intercultural competence to meet this need. It’s necessary to communicate with people from different cultural backgrounds. But what is the result of English teaching in our middle schools? Despite the great amount of time,energy, and money spent on English teaching, it is rare to find a Chinese middle school student who is able to communicate with westerners successfully after six years of English learning. In fact, learning a foreign language well means more than merely mastering the pronunciation, grammar, words and idioms. It also means learning to see the world as the native speakers do.〔7〕 Therefore, language and culture should be taught at the some time. However, there are many problems in intercultural awareness cultivation in middle school.
3.1 Teachers’ attitude
Nowadays, most middle school English teachers still follow the traditional grammar-translation method; they neglect cultural teaching in English teaching. The New Curriculum Standards emphasizes the necessity of developing students’ intercultural competence. However, at present, in the senior middle school the college entrance examination still seriously affect teachers’ teaching idea. It’s most valued by students, teachers as well as the authorities. In order to help students score high on linguistic proficiency, teachers pay a lot of time to explain vocabulary and grammar knowledge in the class. In this case, students have improved their language knowledge, but their intercultural communicative competence has not enhanced. In fact, it has violated English teaching goal and the education for all-around development principle. Mr. Winston Bareback,the foreign language teaching expert of the USA indicated, teaching language without culture is the best way to cultivate a fool with fluent spoken language.〔8〕Obviously, its consequence is serious. What’s more, some teachers regard cultural teaching as their extra burden. They are not so experienced in culture instruction and not so confident to act as guides. Meanwhile, they don’t have a desire to go on studying; they prefer to let their students to learn cultural knowledge all by themselves. Under this circumstance, intercultural awareness cultivation cannot achieve the ideal effect.
3.2 Students’ motivation
Motivation refers to factors that determine a person’s desire to do something. There is a general assumption that students, who learn English in order to facilitate communication with native English-speaker, are the most strongly motivated. However, most middle school students in China learn English just for the purpose of passing exams; thus, they do not have a strong desire to communicate with people of the target language. So it’s not difficult to understand that they show little interest in English cultural knowledge, but indulge themselves in grammar learning and vocabulary building. Although majority of students are interested in the western culture, they rely on the teacher excessively and fail to search for deep understanding by themselves.
3.3 Students’ poor intercultural communicative competence
Though some teachers attach importance to improving students’ language competence, especially their reading skill, they ignore the differences of cultures in teaching English. Consequently, they fail to provide the students with an introduction of culture of English-speaking countries which lead to the students’ “communication block”. Kramsch’s keen observation should not be unnoticed:
“Culture in language learning is not an expendable fifth skill, tacked on, so to speak, to the teaching of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. It is always in the background, right from day one, ready to unsettle the good language learners when they expect it least, making evident the limitations of their hard-won communicative competence, challenging their ability to make sense of the world around them.”〔9〕
The following examples show the result of students’ lacking cultural knowledge:
(1) Both Chinese and English have many idioms, but in middle school, English teachers seldom introduce this respect. Consequently, students usually translate idioms with literal meaning which cause many misunderstandings. For example, when students want to describe: “运动会上运动员“个个生龙活虎”, they may say: The athletes on the sports ground are all as lively as dragons and tigers. In Chinese “dragon” is the symbol of “power” and “full of energy”, while in Western country it shows “disaster” and “evil”. If you describe a person as a dragon, it means the person is a Devil. So here it’s more suitable to say: The athletes are full of vim and vigor. In Chinese “dog” is usually used in a derogatory sense such as “走狗”, “狗仗人势”. But in English, it has commendatory sense, e.g. “lucky dog” means “lucky person”, “a Jolly dog” means “a happy man”.
(2) Then take a conversation as another example:
Student :( eager to strike up a conversation and compliment)
Sir, you look very much like the pop star Billy Joel.
Teacher :( flaring up with wide-open eyes)
Nonsense! I don’t look like him.
Quite a lot of Chinese students will feel confused on hearing such a conversation. “Why the teacher becomes so angry at this polite compliment?” Is there any linguistic incompetence revealed in the student’s inaccurate pronunciation or grammatical mistakes? The answer is “No.” Instead of grammatical errors, the student has made a pragmatic failure. There is a major difference between Chinese people and English-speaking people in how to compliment others. For a Chinese, being likened by others to a film star or a famous singer can be taken as a compliment. But the English-speaking people believe that individual identity prevails over interpersonal similarity. The student in the above example transfers his Chinese expression of compliment into English, thus arousing the teacher’s anger. And this is why we say the ignorance of the target language culture is great handicaps in the acquisition of that language.
(3) Now let’s look at a student’s writing. Moreover, when middle school students write an English thesis, they frequently use Chinese thinking mode to express.
If students were asked to write a composition on “My Parents and I”, many students may begin like this：Most parents love their children. They take good care of their children. They care about their studies and would like to do all they can to help them. Some parents love their children too much and allow them to do anything they like. Some parents are strict with their children. My parents love me but are strict with me...”
In fact, “the difference between the Chinese and western modes of thinking plays an important part in writing. Chinese are accustomed to thinking in a spiral way, while English and Americans in a linear way. This difference in thinking often leads to misunderstanding.”〔10〕 In writing, Chinese students like to explain many things at first, finally come to the subject. Sometimes a student’s composition is perfect in terms of grammar and logic. But when a foreigner read it he or she may be confused. They may think that the subject of Chinese student’s thesis is unclear. Because when they are writing they like to “come straight to the point”.
Generally speaking, the current situation of intercultural awareness cultivation in middle school is still far from being satisfactory. Most students are short of the cultural sensitivity and lack intercultural communicative ability. In this condition, they are unable to meet the needs of the political and economic development of the country.
4. Cultivating students’ intercultural awareness in middle school English teaching
4.1. Principles of intercultural awareness cultivation
Just knowing the role of cultural knowledge is not enough to improve students’ communicative competence. The key problems are concerned with the content and approach of intercultural awareness cultivation, that is, how to achieve the improvement. Thus we should follow these principles while conducting cultural teaching in middle schools: (1) The Principle of grading; (2) The Principle of adaptability; (3) The Principle of Practicability〔11〕
4.1.1 The principle of grading
Grading principle means the English cultural content should be selected and taught step by step according to students’ language levels and ability. The cultural information can not exceed students’ comprehensive ability.
4.1. 2The principle of adaptability
In fact, English culture is so extensive in notion that we are unable to cover everything about in middle school time. Adaptability means when the teacher analyzes the texts, some cultural knowledge information which is related to the text should be introduced. At present, teachers in the middle school are used to spending much time in vocabulary, grammar and sentence structure. So the cultural acquainting is limited and even eliminated. To overcome this problem, teachers can encourage students to read after class.

All of these worthy goals require using English. Everything will be easier for you, and you will be able to accomplish more of what you want to accomplish, if you speak English well. Much of your succ...