Intercultural Perspective On College English Teaching: Obstacles And The Breakthrough

The relationship between language and culture is one of the basic research problemsin the field of linguistics and foreign language education. Language is the product of theculture, it is also the carrier of culture. A person cannot learn to use a language withoutlearning the culture related to the language. Language teaching is culture teaching, theprocess of learning and using a foreign language is actually the interculturalcommunication.From the intercultural perspective, China’s college English teaching objectives haveextended from developing students’ language competence to communicative competence,and then stressed the cultivation of intercultural communicative competence. Due to thedifferences between the social backgrounds of the native language and the target languageculture, and college students are learning a foreign language in the native languageenvironment, it is easy to form their own cultural stereotype. The selected contents of thetarget culture in college English teaching stay in the surface, it is hard for the collegestudents to contact with the deep cultural heritage of the target language. In order to avoidthe interference of the native language to the target language teaching, China’s collegeEnglish teaching even deliberately avoid the native language and culture, to some extent itled to the "aphasia" of native culture among college students These are the defects of thecurrent college English teaching.In order to strengthen the teaching of culture in English language teaching to, it isimportant to focus on different cultural heritages of different languages in the deepstructure of values and ways of thinking, rather than just generally introducing theetiquette, customs, Political news. To enable students to hold the holistic knowledge andunderstanding of the target culture, it is necessary to strengthen the reading of the classicsor West Canon in college English teaching. Doing so will not only help to improve the students’ language competence, but also benefit the students on improving interculturalcommunicative competence. Accompanied the foreign language teaching, it willinevitably develop a phenomenon of "culture input”, on one hand, we should pay attentionto overcome cultures simplistic generalization even prejudices due to our own culturalstereotype, and seriously learn the valuable heritages of the target culture; on the otherhand, due to the Western ethnocentrinism or superiority, the West is unwilling to face theimpact generated by China and hold the discrimination against the Chinese culture, wehave to deepen the non-Western perspective exploration in the research, to promote thecultural dialogue on an equal footing, we could help the Chinese teachers and students usetarget language to introduce and spread Chinese culture, to promote foreigners’understanding of the Chinese culture, and to maintain the right to speak.The process of modernization of the world facilitate the intercultural communication,the network makes the exchange, collision and fusion of different cultures throughout thewhole world. College students are the earlier ones to contact with the multicultures. Underthe influences of foreign cultures, students in a sense became the "cultural immigrants".intheir homeland. In order to foster intercultural communication competence of collegestudents, they not only have to learn to understand English, express Western culture, theyhave to use English to express their own native language and culture. But the loss of the"authentic" English expression of mother tongue and native culture in College EnglishTextbooks led to the Chinese students’ failure to use English to articulate their mothertongue and culture of Native Culture in intercultural communication. So, Chinese studentsare not only at the edge of the target culture, but also at the edge of the Native Culture,they become "marginal men" in the cultural sense. How to get out of this predicament isan important issue for college English teaching and reform.The so-called intercultural means one person could communicate between two ormore cultures without obvious conflict. The most important quality is his clear culturalself-consciousness that is cultural awareness. Cultural self-consciousness enable a person to recognize the similarities and differences between the native culture and other culturesin intercultural communication, and view his own native culture from a different frame ofreference, at the same time he could also take a more detached stance toward differentcultures, rather than blindly excluse or assimilate. Cultivating such a culturalself-consciousness, one need to understand the deep structure of different cultures, tounderstand the "other" on the basis of clear awareness of self-cultural identity, and then toreconstruct his own cultural identity. College English learning is the process of contactingand communicating with the target culture, it is also the process of college students to beaware of their cultural identity and to reconstruct cultural identity. In College Englishteaching, it is important to help the students be aware of the importance of culturalself-consciousness, to establish their own cultural identity, improve interculturalcommunicative competence, to become intercultural, this is the ultimate goal of foreignlanguage teaching.In order to improve college students’ intercultural communicative competence,college English teaching should incorporate the contents of target culture and the nativeculture hierarchical and systematically into College English textbook, students should beexposed to the Chinese and foreign classics; highlight the cultural connotation of thelanguage in college English teacher training, conduct the integration of teachers, to forman interdisciplinary team; comprehensively reform the college English test in order toimprove the quality of foreign language teaching...