A Study Of College EFL-learners’ Cultural Identity

Nowadays,globalization has become the irreversible trend in time.Just like economic globalization,different cultures from all over the world also take advantage of modern information technology and advanced mass media.With the fast communication and integration,the culture also attains more opportunities to collide with each other and then gives us a complicated multicultural environment.The comparison and collision between different cultures and value system unconsciously influence one’s consciousness and one’s identification goal in thoughts,local culture,western culture and personal value.According to the viewpoint of the Post-colonial Theory,with the development of globalization and modernization,the countries which have earlier beginning,fast development and absolute advantages in economic and technology still hold serious cultural hegemony towards those later-developed modernized countries.Actually a more private colonization in legal form—cultural colonization has been caused.In Post-colonial Theory’s opinion,the reason of such situation is related to both eastern and western countries.On the one hand,the western developed countries depend on their economic strength to promote compulsive cultural transmission and assimilation to developing countries actively;On the other hand,in order to keep pace with western developed countries in modernization,the developing countries have to obey to some dominant and recessive cultural aggression from the western countries so that they gradually lose their local culture and national pride.In one word,no matter what kind of reason it is,the cultural imperialism and cultural colonization have become unmodified facts.College students who are excellent persons among the peers are valuable brainpower,the hope of the country and the future of the nation.The period of university life is crucial for the formation,establishment and development of their world view,outlook on life and value system.During this period,the mentality of college students has the feature of curiosity,sensitivity and strong deformability.As the "Post-90s" college students,they have a stronger thirst for knowledge and a strong power to pursue,understand and accept the new things.After entering the college,faced with the changed and complicated environment off study and life and various cultural phenomenon and value systems,they absorb different cultures actively or unconsciously.The lack of ability of identification and ideological consciousness makes many college students feel puzzled about the cultural phenomena of different value systems.The western customs,philosophy in daily life and aesthetic consciousness gradually penetrate into their value systems,while the value systems in excellent traditional culture gradually decline among college students.It obviously shows the lost of traditional culture and the shake of value systems.The traditional culture doesn’t attract enough attention from college students and it is in danger of hard inheritance.Language is the carrier of culture.When English learners study English knowledge and skills,they will also meet with a problem of how to treat with the national culture of target language and native language,which is also known as the identification problem of two different cultures.Therefore,we need to learn about the present situation of how English learning influences the cultural identity of college students.This dissertation,based on the theory of bilingualism theory about cultural identity brought by experts at home and abroad,investigates the identity status of a part of English learners——the college students about their native culture as well as target language culture through quantitative research and then analyzes whether factors like English learning,gender and family backgrounds(rural/urban)can effect college students’ changes of cultural identity in mother tongue and target language in the process of English learning.Through the semi-open and formal interview of qualitative research,this dissertation discusses questions in terms of from what approaches both English majors and non-English majors get to know English culture,to what extent they embrace it and how they understand and value their mother tongue and target language as well as the superficial and deep culture beneath them.’The conclusions analyze factors that influence students about their cultural identity of the native language and the target language,the extent of English learners’ recognition at different cultural levels,and the performances.Based on the study results,this dissertation puts forward the enlightenment,from the perspective of pedagogy,about the optimization of college English education,including the establishment of correcting cultural perspective,the construction of cross-cultural context,the cultivation of cultural skills and the reinforcement of educators’ concern concept.At the same time,this dissertation offers some suggestions in English teaching practice,that is——to penetrate mother tongue culture and to excavate the essence of target language culture when it relates to English teaching,in the hope of enabling college students to form a rational understanding and value standpoints of their mother tongueculture and the target language culture and finally to optimize college English education.According to the research contents,this dissertation uses literature method,questionnaire survey method and interview method to investigate the cultural identityon native language and the target language of college students.The overall structure of this dissertation is composed of six chapters.The first chapter is the introduction,which introduces the reasons of choosing this topic,research purposes,research significance,concept definitions,research design,research methods and so on.The second chapter is literature review,which is related to the research on language learning and cultural identity both at home and abroad,as well as the review of existing research.The third chapter is the theoretical basis of the research.This dissertation mainly uses Lambert’s Subtractive Bilingualism and Additive Bilingualism theory concerning with the cultural identity on second language learners,Gao Yihong’s Productive Bilingualism and Disruptive Bilingualism theory concerning with cultural identity on foreign language learners,and the constructivist learning theory.Finally there is the enlightenment of the above theories given to the research.The fourth chapter is the empirical research that is an investigation on the cultural identity of the sample college students.The empirical research includes two parts.One is the questionnaire survey and the other is interview.At last there is a conclusion of the research.The fifth chapter is the theoretical enlightenment of college students’ English educational optimization study,which gives some suggestions to the previous chapter from the macro theory.It contains four aspects,including establishing a correct concept of culture,creating a cross cultural context,training cultural skills and intensifying educators’ caring theory.The last chapter is the suggestions in English teaching practice.This chapter also studies the results of the previous chapter from two aspects,which are the infiltration of native language culture and excavation of the essence of target language culture under the perspective of constructivist learning theory.On the studies of foreign language learning and cultural identity research,empirical research is the most from the perspective of research methods,including researches of the immigrants,cultural identity and the researches of bilingual or multilingual users’cultural identity.Non-empirical researches are macroeconomic theories related to language learning and cultural identity.Domestic researches on English language learning and cultural identity is clearly insufficient in quantity.It is found that the doctoral dissertations on the students’ cultural identity is not in from keywords or topics searched in CNKI.Domestic researches in this area is based on a survey of empirical research.They can be divided into two parts according to study objects.One part is specifically designed for the study of English major students in colleges and the other part is other various study objects with the exception of English major students in colleges,including the studies on non-English majors and English teachers,comparative studies of English and non-English majors.The research significance of this dissertation lies in:First of all,in terms of the theoretical significance,comprehensive language learning and cultural identity related to the research,from internal and external mechanism,the formation of college students’ cultural identity restriction mechanism is summed up and cultural identity mechanism in theory is riched;In the point of the researchmethod,we have learnt from the former researchers designation of questionnaire and perfect it,enhance the reliability,rich qualitative research,increase the proportion ofthe interview,and perfect the empirical research.At the same time,the research objects are expanded to the English major undergraduate and graduate students of a normal university,rich language learning and research on the relationship betweencollege students’ cultural identity,which is out of the need for comprehensively showing and deepening the pedagogy,linguistics,intercultural communication and soon.Secondly,in terms of the practical significance,based on the analysis of the questionnaire data and interview results,we can know college English majors and non-English majors of different bilingual phenomena from the perspective of Englishlearning objective understanding,namely the identity status of the native culture andthe target culture.According to the survey results from the perspective of pedagogy ineducational practice,we put forward relevant educational enlightenment:English teachers and education administrators in colleges and universities in the teaching of professional English in college English teaching.Through the college English teaching,it is to cultivate students’ cultural awareness and cultural self-confidence,stimulate students’ love of Chinese culture and the practice of emotion and ambition,to strengthen college students’ core culture values,enhance the ability to choose college of foreign culture and deepen the cultural function of education in colleges.This is the new era to enhance the national cultural soft power and improve the quality of the national strategic reservation of personnel.