Cultural Empathy Versus Cultural Imperialism

With the expansion of English and intercultural communication, western culture andideology flood the world in an overwhelming manner, which invade the cultures of weakencountries with its overpowering advantages, and exert a subtle influence on life attitude, beliefand values of related people. Some scholars call such phenomenon "cultural imperialism".Taking cultural teaching of Chinese EFLT into consideration, the thesis integrates theunderstanding and analysis of "cultural imperialism" into teaching practice, and puts forwarda new teaching concept---"cultural tension". That is, on the one hand, EFLT aims to educatethe students who can communicate with others from different cultural backgrounds, thus, withthe influence of globalization, our EFLT must strengthen cultural instruction and developcultural empathy in students. On the other hand, with the invasion of cultural imperialism,more and more Chinese students worship western culture, while giving up their own culturalbelongings. Therefore, a cultural tension is formed between the development of culturalempathy and the resistance of cultural imperialism, which can be described as "motion instatic state". That is to say, there is a motive tendency in static state, or we can say, that is astatic state in tension. If the force in one direction became too powerful, the dynamic balanceof the cultural tension would be broken. For example, if we developed cultural empathyexcessively, it would result in the over-adaptation to the western culture;however, if weresisted cultural imperialism excessively, the ethnocentrism, national identity would disturbcultural acquisition. Therefore, "too much development of cultural empathy" and "too muchresistance of cultural imperialism" would all destroy cultural tension in EFLT and fail in ourcultural teaching. Consequently, how to maintain the exact balance to reach the best results onboth the fullest information of cultural empathy and clearest resistance of cultural imperialismfor students? That is the demand raised by cultural tension.On the basis of the issues above and its theoretical background, the succeeding empiricalstudy, which is described as a questionnaire, exemplifies the following points: Chinesestudents' acceptance of western culture, the attitude of Chinese teachers and students tocultural empathy, students' solicitude of Chinese culture, and the understanding of resistingcultural imperialism. It is clarified that imbalanced condition exists in cultural tension, and itis necessary to balance such tension.Based on the empirical study and the theory of "cultural tension", the thesis gives somepedagogical suggestions in EFLT: (1) maintaining the principle of cultural empathy inmoderate degree;(2) improving cultural learning in implicit way;(3) establishingmulti-cultural awareness;(4) enforcing authoritative direction;(5) aiming "productivebiculturalism" as the purpose in cultural teaching;(6) developing "cultural creativity";(7)insisting on "cultural tension" consciously.In addition, with reference to the practice of "cultural tension" in EFLT, some questionsare raised as "How do we establish multi-cultural awareness in the students"? "How do wecombine cultural creativity with EFLT curriculum designing"? "What kind of other ways forbalancing cultural tension can be raised for our EFLT"? "How do we conduct the test andevaluation in teaching practice of cultural tension"? All of these need further research.