Culture Differences and English Teaching

Jin Wang

English Language Teaching, 2011, vol. 4, issue 2, 223

Abstract: Language is a part of culture, and plays a very important role in the development of the culture. Some sociologists consider it as the keystone of culture. They believe, without language, culture would not be available. At the same time, language is influenced and shaped by culture, it reflects culture. Therefore, culture plays a very important part in language teaching, which is widely acknowledged by English teaching circle. This thesis depicts the relationship between culture and language. As a result, the gap of cultural differences is one of the most important barriers in English teaching and study. Among the students, lacking of cultural background knowledge can, to a great extent, hold up the improvement of English teaching and become a noticeable problem. At present, the objective of English teaching has broken free from the traditional listening, speaking, reading and writing, and the demand for cultural background knowledge in language learning has been gradually concerned. Presentation of history of the country which has the target language, cultural background knowledge and customs is the proposed solution to the problem. This paper mainly discusses how to present cultural background knowledge and expose learners to it in the need of English teaching at Chinese schools so as to solve the problems caused by cultural differences, help learners grasp the crux of the language and develop their comprehensive English ability.

Date: 2011
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