Astudy On The Teaching Of Culture-loaded Words In Senior High School

Language and culture are heavily tinted with each other. Language is a part of culture and plays an important role in it. Language reflects culture reality. Sapir acknowledged the close relationship between language and culture and he held : they were inextricably related so that people could not understand or appreciate the one without knowledge of the other.(Sapir,1929) Thus, learning a language is inseparable from learning its culture. Vocabulary is central to language and carries the most cultural factors. Cultural distinction is most prominent and widespread at lexical levels. Many words are loaded with culture meaning except for some core words. Culture-loaded words and expressions are loaded with specific cultural information and indicate deep national culture. As we all know, English and Chinese are two languages with a long history, so there exist a large number of culture-loaded words in the two languages. Deeply embedded in culture, the same word may have quite different connotations in the two languages. For example, the word"owl"will arise an unpleasant feeling in Chinese, for people believe the appearance of this animal will bring bad luck to them, while in English, the word is the symbol of wisdom and often used in a commendatory sense. Such differences in the connotations of words more often than not become a depressing obstacle for successful inter-culture communication. In view of this, enough attention should be paid to the teaching and learning of culture-loaded words.With the development of science and society, with China's entry into WTO, inter -culture contact is on the rise and English is becoming increasingly important. More and more experts and researchers in China have realized that the ultimate goal of language teaching and learning is communication but not grammar or sentence pattern. Language teaching and learning should be integrated with culture teaching and learning. The Criteria of English Course for National Elementary Education issued in 2001 presented culture awareness and viewed it as a guarantee to use language properly. In addition, the criteria included the aims students of different levels should obtain and presented the matter about culture understanding, hoping students would treat foreign and Chinese culture objectively through fostering awareness of culture. However, due to the examination-oriented educational system and Chinese teaching traditions, in current English class in senior high school, culture teaching still holds an inferior position. Far less attention is paid to cultivate students'cultural awareness and therefore, students, communicative competence in intercultural communication is very poor. For lack of cultural knowledge and cultural awareness, students frequently commit errors or even blunders in their communications with English native-speakers, which will definitely have a negative influence on their intercultural communication.The thesis starts with the literature review of former studies on culture teaching both at home and abroad. And it also presents the current situation of culture teaching in Senior English class, especially the problems existing. Then the thesis presents the theory relative as the basis for further analysis and discussion. In order to explore the effective way to culture teaching, the author made an experiment which consists of two tests, and two questionnaires. Then after the experiment, the author put forward some suggestions concerning how to teach culture-loaded words , hoping to improve students'ability to communicate with native speakers .