The Road To The Western Culture

With the development of anthropology, sociolinguistics and sociology, the combination of language learning and culture learning has been an important aspect of English teaching. This thesis is intended to discuss the value of the English Bible for language and culture learning and the possibility of adapting the Bible into a suitable learning material.The thesis consists of four chapters:Chapter One introduces the contents and composition of the Bible. Because the contents of the Bible are not familiar to Chinese learners, the introduction of the Bible is necessary especially for those beginners. The translation history of the English Bible is a process that reflects the development of English language which should be introduced to the learners, too. The knowledge of the English versions of the Bible is also important, especially the knowledge about the King James Version (KJV).The first part of Chapter Two introduces the theories of anthropology, sociolinguistics and sociology that provide the theoretic background of the culture and language learning and influence the pedagogy of English. The second part discusses the difficulties existing in practice, which make the learning practice in classroom unsatisfying. The third part analyzes the Bible's special significance to solve these problems. Therefore the Bible is one of the most suitable English learning materials.The main idea of Chapter Three is to explain the value of the Bible for English learners. The first point is about the influence of the Bible on shaping English, including the vocabulary, metaphor and precedent. The second one is about the relationship between the Bible and the Western culture. It is divided into following parts: worldview, ethics, customs, education, economy and polity.Chapter Four shows the history of the education of the Bible in the West and in China ; the opinions of the adaptation and the content of the adaptation are displayed by two concrete examples, hoping to illustrate the ways to regard the Bible teaching as an important way in learning English language and the Western Culture as well.