Avoiding Barriers In Intercultural Communication And EFL Teaching

Being a member of the human society, it is impossible for us not to communicate every day. With the rapid development of science and technology, and transportation, there are more and more frequent interpersonal and intercultural communications. The earth has become a "small village". However, communication is closely related with culture, cultural differences will cause different ways; principles and taboos will surely appear in intercultural communication. It is beneficial to the development of the human society and the advancement of the human race, if we can avoid or overcome these misunderstanding; and barriers. In accomplishing this task, FLT plays a very important role, because FLT does not only mean making the students master the knowledge of language such as grammar and vocabulary, and knowledge of culture, but also mean helping the students develop communicative competence and use the language taught to communicate effectively.This paper tends to analyze the relationship of communication and culture, causes of intercultural communication barriers, and how to avoid, even to overcome these barriers through FLT. Besides, this paper tries to analyze from the angle of the reform of educational system, teaching materials and teaching methods in China, and at the same time reveal their relationship, and relationship between them and the teaching results. This paper holds that first, Chinese students and teachers should have more freedom in teaching, and learning; second, the old teaching materials which mainly emphasizes the knowledge of language and emphasize the knowledge of culture should be changed; third, the old teacher-centered method should be changed, too. On the contrary, teaching should be student-centered. Only through these reforms, can Chinese students really master a foreign language, develop communicative competence, and learn how to avoid barriers in intercultural communication, and finally achieve effective communication.