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An English Teacher Should Raise the Students’ awareness and Ability of Intercultural Communication

2009-09-09谢雨蕊

课程教育研究·新教师教学 2009年7期
关键词:红茶分类号外语

谢雨蕊

【Abstract】 An effective and successful English teaching should change the old type of teaching which the students learn the language just for the language. It is very important for English teachers to introduce some knowledge of the culture of a language. Teachers must pay attention to raising their students awareness and ability of intercultural communication.

【Key words】 English teaching introduction of the culture raise the students awareness and ability of intercultural communication the methodology of English teaching in the classroom

【中图分类号】G623.31 【文献标识码】A 【文章编号】1001-4128(2009)07-0040-05

I have heard that a Chinese student who went to America to study was killed because he couldnt understand Americans spoken English Freeze. In America, “Freeze!” means “Stop! Stand still!” Its a daily useful expression. Probably that student only knew one of the meaning of Freeze—— be so cold that water turns into ice, but he didnt know its cultural meaning in America. So he was killed. This miserable example tells us: If the student knew much about the cultural difference between Chinese culture and the western culture. Such misfortune would be avoided.

So we can conclude: It is not enough to teach knowledge about language in English teaching. Teachers must pay attention to introducing the cultural knowledge. Because of different cultural backgrounds, cultural experiences, way of thinking, norms behaviors and customs, it is not surprising to find that people have many difficulties and obstacles in understanding one another and communicating with one another. It is cultural difference that gives rises to many miscommunications. Therefore, English teachers can enhance their students sensitiveness and adaptation about intercultural difference. The students should raise awareness of “the other culture” to build bridges across misunderstanding among different cultures. Furthermore, the students should also respect their cultural differences in intercultural communication and improve their communicative abilities to avoid unnecessary misunderstanding in intercultural communication. But, at present, there are not enough emphasis in many fields of foreign language teaching. Here, I want to state some teaching methods which need introduction of English culture from four aspects—— words, listening, text and grammatical teaching.

1 Show the cultural meaning of the words

It is quite difficult to master the rich cultural meaning which lie in words. So the teachers must introduce the cultural meaning of English words so as to the students know there are not-correspondence phenomenon between English words and Chinese words.

For an example, the association of the meaning of words and cultural meaning is shown in the not-correspondence of the words metaphor and its association meaning, which lead to different natural environment, different social and cultural background and different customs. Of all such words, those which represent animals are good examples. Take dog as an example. A student of mine was employed in an interview by a big company. He got a chance to have a practice in that company. I said to him: “You are a lucky dog.” He became unpleased. The other students were confused. Thats to be expected because those students were impacted by Chinese traditional culture. Dog in Chinese is used to indicate that people disgust dogs. Its a derogatory term. Its very easy for the students to get confused. So the teachers should tell the students: “In the western culture, dog is likened because it is very honest to its master. In English- speaking countries, dog is a pet. Dog is named “Mans best friend”. Dog is a symbol of Positive. All the words concerning to dog are either commendatory or neutral. In English, dog can be likened ordinary peoples life and behavior. A lucky dog in idiom means a lucky person. After the student heard that, he nodded his head. At the same time, I added some other phrases: top dog (means an important person); my old dog (means an old friend of mine); “Love me, love my dog.”、“Every dog has its day.” etc. Meanwhile, the teachers have to introduce to the students when these words, sentences should be used in order to let the students use them correctly. Later, when I mentioned a lucky dog, I found my students all know what it means and how it is used.

2 Create the cultural situation of language

When the students learn to speak English, they often have faulty formulation. That is because the way they speak is unsuitable in the communication. What they said are not true of the customs in English- speaking countries. They speak English on wrong occasion. They make mistakes because the speakers are not talking according to Englishman or American social customs. The faulty formulation is a barrier of communication. The students are lack of English cultural knowledge, so in English teaching , the teachers ask the students to remember the communication phrases, in addition, the teachers must help the students summarize those cultural factors in daily oral expressions, so that the students can learn the rules of communication.

2.1 Learn Englishmans polite expressions as well as the cultural psychology which people respect each other and treat each other in equality.

The polite expressions such as “Thank you.” “Excuse” “Excuse me.” are often used in oral English. When they express refusal, they will say: “Im afraid; Sorry; Thank you all the same.” They seldom say “You should do something…” instead of using the euphemism “Would you mind doing something…? Would it bother you if…? Would you please do something…? Shall I …? Id appreciate it if you could” etc. When they suggest something to somebody, they will say: “Youd better do…; You might as well do…; Perhaps we could…; Lets… ,Shall we? How about doing…? Why not do…?” When someone wants to offer help to the other, he will say: “Would you like me to…? Shall I do…?” Etc. I asked my students to be polite so that my students can communicate with Englishman easily and naturally.

2.2 Remember Englishmans taboo and respect the other people.

Englishman and American think someones age, marriage and income are all their privacy. The students can remember the following four words: I, WARM, WHERE, MEAL. I—income;W—weight; A—age; R—religion; M—marriage. There are seven questions not to be questioned.

(1) someones income

(2) someones weight

(3) someones age

(4) someones religion

(5) someones marriage

(6)Have you had your meal?

(7)Where are you going?

In order to raise the students ability of communication, the teachers encouraged the students to practice oral English. I can create several situation of language.

A.Play roles

I painted some famous scenic spots all over China: The Great Wall; Eastern Pearl ; The Green Lake Park; Stone Forest etc. I arranged two or three students to act as an American tourist and a Chinese tour guide. They made up a dialogue of situation. So, I told the students like this: Suppose Student A is an American tourist, who is now in Kunming for sightseeing. Student B is a Chinese tour guide. They are talking about the scenic spots in Kunming. Please make up a dialogue between them.

The students can act as different roles to have intercultural communication. They are told to keep some basic etiquette of communication in English. The students are asked to pay attention to using polite expressions and avoiding taboos of topic so that the students cab feel different atmosphere of communication and culture.

B.Do exercises —— make single choice or multiple choice

This type of exercises are designed to correct the students unsuitable expression of social communication.

For example:

M:A lovely day, isnt it?

W:_______________ .

a. No, it isnt.

b. Isnt it lovely?

c. Maybe youre right.

d. Thank you. It is.

The answer is b.

The students should know: Talking about the weather with the westerners is a suitable topic, but the teacher must remind the students to refute the speaker. If an Englishman says: “A lovely day, isnt it?” In fact, even if it is cloudy and it will rain. You just have to answer like this: “Yes, its really lovely.” Or “isnt it lovely?” You cant answer like this: “No, its awful.” or “Its a terrible.”

C. Learn to tap the text for the cultural message

The reading materials in English textbooks is widely chosen. They have plenty of contents. Lots of texts concern about the typical cultural background knowledge of English speaking counties. The teachers not only ask the students to understand the main idea of the students to tap the text for the cultural message. The students can understand the text better. They also can enlarge their cultural view.

For example, if you want to introduce Different Ideas about Food and Drink to the students, firstly, you can ask the students themselves to compare with the difference between the eastern food & drink and the western food & drink. After reading some materials, the students can easily receive the following message: Chinese people are fond eating chicken, fish and seafood while American people like to eat steak. Tea in China and England are both the national tea, but in England, the people like to put some sugar, milk and lemon into the tea. I tried to ask the students: How to say 红茶 in English? The students answered without question: “red tea”. When I told them the correct answer to be “ black tea”, all of them got puzzled. Then, L explained to them like this: Because the perspectives of Chinese people and English people are not the same, when Chinese people observe the color of tea water, they found the color is red, so we call it红茶. But when British people find the color of dry black tea leaves is black, so they call it black tea. The collocation between one word and another word is often established by usage. It is unable to be completely put the collocation rules of mother tongue into learning English. Besides, the students must be told that the meaning of tea in English doesnt match with tea water. It also means small, flat sweetened cake, usually eaten hot with butter at tea such as a huge tea .At the same time, I arranged some homework to the students. They must read the other reading materials about tea in England. The students can understand the history and habit of which English people drink tea. Especially ask the students to comprehend such an old saying: If you are cold, tea will warm you; If you are heated, it will cool you; If you are depressed, it will cheer you; If you are excited, it will calm you. You can know the reason why English people are fond of tea. Tea is a necessary part on English peoples daily life.

Such an introduction of cultural background knowledge, not only did the students comprehend those messages in the text, but they also know what the tea culture is. Such methodology of teaching can become so interesting that the students can focus on listening to the explanation of the text.

There are a great deal of cultural messages which is worth tapping. For instance: Western Festival customs, the different attitude of treating the old people between Chinese and Westerners and the scientific spirit which the westerners probe the mysteries of the nature etc. When I teach texts, I have used the method of comparison and multimedia. Moreover, I ask the students to have a discussion or get on Internet to search for materials. Meanwhile, by using these methods, the ability which the students can consciously use cultural background knowledge have been developed It has been proved that the richer the students cultural background knowledge, the better they comprehend the text. Their confidences of learning English become more and stronger.

D. Feeling the cultural impact of grammar

Grammar is a structure form of language. It indicates some basic regularities which some words are connected to form phrases, some phrases are organized to form sentences and some sentences are combined into an article. Different ways of expressing language can be attributed to different background.

When I taught English, I found that the students spoke Chinglish easily, especially when they do the exercises of translation (esp. Translate Chinese into English). For example, when I asked the students to translate a Chinese sentence:( 她是我母亲的一朋友), many students were easily affected by Chinese. Most of the answers are: She ‘s my mothers a friend. Although lot of students knew the correct answer: She is a friend of my mothers, they didnt know why “s” is added behind my father because they thought that the structure “of” can express the attributive relation. This is because the students dont know the cultural difference and the way of thinking between Chinese people and English people. So I must tell the students: English gives most of the weight to the combination of form while Chinese gives most of the weight to the combination of the meaning. Subordinating conjunction if, because, when, although, so that indicate subordinate relation in English while Chinese people express and communicate by means of the internal logic relation between sentences.

In order to understand the cultural difference of this kind of thinking habit and feel that it affects the way of expressing of language. Here is an example. Lets see these two sentences: (a) If winter comes, can spring be far behind?

(b) 你不娶我,我不活了。

When we see If in sentence (a), we can understand the grammatical relation easily, but when we see sentence (b), we cant see If just from the word order until we understand it from the internal logic meaning. Sentence (b) is a typical Chinese sentence. After my explaining these two sentences, the students can understand why the sentence(She is a friend of my mother.) is correct. Then, I analyzed further: English gives most of the weight to use various connecting methods to get the complete combination of sentence structure and logic meaning. The double possessive case exactly show the relationship between She and my mothers friends is a partial relationship. After listening to what I explained, the students all got it. We can conclude: It is easy for the students to accept the grammatical phenomenon from the cultural perspective. The students can get half the result with twice the effort. If what I teach in the class is only about the grammar, the students will feel dull, which dampen their enthusiasm of learning English.

In short, English teachers dont only pay attention to language teaching. The culture of the relevant countries should be introduced and the cultural difference of language affects the language should be paid attention to. English teachers realize the importance which the culture affects language study. In English teaching, the teachers should raise the students awareness and ability of inter cultural communication. By doing so, the students can learn English well, enjoy from learning it and use English correctly in communication.

参考文献

1 跨文化交际读本,上海外语教育出版社,2007,第1版。

2 胡文仲,跨文化交际概论,外语教研出版社,1999。

3 贾玉新,跨文化交际学,上海外语教育出版社,2006。

4 许力生,跨文化交流入门,浙江大学出版社,2004。

5 杨自俭,英汉语比较与翻译,上海外语教育出版社,2002,第1版。

6 陈安定,英汉比较与翻译,中国对外翻译出版公司,1998,第1版。

7 关世杰,跨文化交流学,人民大学出版社,1995。

8. Intercultural Communication Book of Readings, School of Foreign Languages Yunnan Normal University, July 2008, Kunming

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