Cultural factors in university oral English teaching---开题报告

一、Literature Review

Since culture is so essential in CET6 what is the situation of culture teaching at home and abroad? In the following, the emphasis will be on an investigation of the history and present situation of culture teaching at home and abroad.

The situation abroad: Since the 1960s, a great many educators have concerned themselves with the importance of the cultural aspect in foreign language learning, with Hammerly (1962), Seelye (1964) and Damen (1967) being among those who have considered ways of incorporating culture into language teaching.

In the 1970ss an emphasis on sociolinguistics led to greater emphasis on the situational context of foreign language use. Savignon's (1972) study on communicative competence，for example, suggested the “value of training in communicative skills from the very beginning of the foreign language program”.

It is only in the 1980s that scholars began to dig into the dynamics of culture and its vital contribution to “successor language learning. For example, Littlewood (Byram, Morgan et al., 1984) advocates the value of cultural learning, although he still keeps linguistic proficiency as the overall aim of language teaching.

Furthermore, in the 1980s and 1990s, advances in pragmatics and sociolinguistics laying the very essence of language, which is no longer thought of as merely describing or communicating but, as persuading, deceiving, or punishing and controlling (Byram, 1989), have rendered peopled frames of reference and cultural schemata tentative, and led to attempts at “bridging the cultural gap in language teaching”（Valdes，1990).

Kramsch (1999) also believes that culture should be taught as an interpersonal process and, rather than presenting cultural facts. Teachers should assist language learners in coming to grips with the “other culture”

At home: In the early 1960s，with regard to the teaching of foreign culture in language programs, Chinese educators began to realize the importance of culture teaching, just as Chen Shen said:

With regard to the teaching of foreign culture in language programs, Chinese educators came close to r if they did not reach, a common point of view that foreign culture has a legitimate place in the foreign language curriculum. (Chen, 1999:33)

In 1978, a National Foreign Language Education Conference was held in Beijing. It was made clear by the Ministry of Education that to achieve the goal of modernization, China needs more personnel who should “be both specialized in various fields and be in good command of one or more Foreign Languages'3 (Ministry of Education, 1979:1). In the same year, a proposal was put forward to the Chinese Education Ministry by Guangzhou Institute of foreign language to produce a communicative English course specially suitable for. Chinese learners. Books compiled by Western specialists were introduced to Chinese universities, accompanied by the invitation of foreign experts in language education to China. The “communicative approach”，which aims to develop student^ communicative competence, began to win favor in foreign language classrooms. Concerning the relationship between language and culture and ways of introducing Western culture in foreign language programs, a number of articles and books were published (Deng, 1981; Hu? 1988)* Meanwhile there was a nation-wide discussion about Chinese culture and Western culture and a debate about what China should learn from the West, which highlighted the need to place the study of culture in foreign language education in the framework of interaction between Chinese culture and foreign culture.

After 1989, due to the first development of discipline of students，intercultural communicative competence by means of integrating culture teaching with language teaching, courses on target culture such as “ A Brief Introduction of Britain and the US”, “History of English and American Literature”，“European Culture”，“Language and Culture” and so have been added to the curricula for English-majors in most universities and for non-English majors in some universities. Plenty of materials introducing target culture have been selected into foreign language textbooks. Attempts have been made to integrate the teaching of foreign culture into language classroom (Hu & Gao, 1997, Chen, 1999). All these efforts have greatly increased students9 cultural awareness and widened students5 view.

The first session of intercultural communication conference in Harbing in 1995 indicated that the study on intercultural communication and culture teaching reached a new stage. Culture teaching is not only applied in foreign language major curriculum but also in college English classes. However, the situation and results of culture teaching in college English classes are not satisfactory in a strict sense. The proportion of culture teaching in foreign language programs is still quite low. Target culture is mainly confined to “cultural knowledge information”. The problem of how to integrate culture teaching into language teaching still remains unsolved. It is often found that students are randomly exposed to foreign culture in language class* There seems to be a lack of systematization in culture teaching, especially for non-English majors. According to Michael Bayram et al (1989) culture teaching includes three means: contrast, knowledge teaching and field research. Contrast is the most popular way of culture teaching for linguistic teachers and the main means adopted by the present researcher.

二、The Paper Outline

文章内容中有案例分析

1. Introduction

1.1 Research Background

1.2 Research Object

2. Culture in Foreign Language Teaching

2.1 Definition of Culture

2.2 Culture in Language Teaching

3. Cultural in College Oral English Class

3.1 The Importance of Culture in Oral Class

3.2 Culture Input in the oral class

3.2.1 Shaping Students' Cultural Awareness, Optimizing Students' Ability

3.2.2 Coordinating Culture Input and Language Learning

4. Application of Culture in Oral Class

4.1 Setting the scene，feeling the cultural impact of the East and West.

4.2 Finding the cultural differences from the expression of barriers.

5. Conclusion

三、Bibliography 

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