A Study On The Deep Obstacles Of English Majors In Intercultural Communication And The Implications For Foreign Culture Teaching

An interdisciplinary subject, intercultural communication (shortened as IC), also called cross-cultural communication at its early stage, was established in the 1950s in the United States. Ever since then, it has been greatly developed through effective integration with various subjects like anthropology, psychology, linguistics, sociology and many others. In the early 80s of last century, IC was introduced into China by some scholars of foreign language teaching and research. Thanks to the quick social and cultural development in China, study and research on IC has also been accelerated.In recent years, the domestic research focus on IC has been directed to dynamic analysis of the root of the difference between cultures. Researchers have been more aware of the cultural influence on communication, particularly the influence from the deep structure of culture which is subtle and may become obstacles for intercultural communicators. Entailed in the sub-consciousness, the elements of the deep structure of culture have not been seen as a key theme for research, so inadequate study was conducted on them. Out of the elements of the deep culture structure, one essential factor is the so-called social values, an evaluation system which determines people's concept of truth and falsehood, good and evil, beauty and ugliness.Much theoretic work, so far, has been done on the value system which is rooted deeply in cultures. And in foreign language teaching, content concerning values has gained increasing attention. There have been even quite a number of papers summarizing the experience on how to promote students'awareness in this realm. But a general review of the previous studies shows that a large proportion of the research focuses on relevant theories or experience summary which means a shortage of concrete subjects for research, convincing observation and experiments.Based on the previous studies, this thesis attempts to conduct a research project with six parts concerned with the close relationship between values and intercultural communication. Meanwhile, with the help of questionnaires and interviews, this research is about to probe English majors'value-related obstacles in intercultural communication so as to put forth some possible implications for the culture teaching in English learning. The final goal is to help students minimize the IC obstacles and nurture competence for intercultural communication.In accordance with the investigation results, the thesis makes a detailed analysis on reasons that contribute to the deep obstacles in intercultural communication. As for integration of cultural teaching into the English teaching, the thesis also provides a series of countermeasures. There exists much difference even in basic understanding of values, so self-improvement awareness is important and a first step for intercultural communicators. What is also concluded includes the equal importance of home and target culture learning, for students should be emphasized in cultural teaching. Teachers should pay attention to students'weakness in profound understanding of deep structures of Chinese cultures and in free expressing of Chinese-characteristic phenomena and things. Besides, teachers and the department of teaching affairs should design and implement a practical syllabus and curricula for cultural teaching and learning. Last, the university administration should improve the infrastructure construction and establish a quasi-authentic intercultural communication environment.