Psychological Process Of Communication And Culture Teaching In CET

Culture and communication are inseparable. Culture conditions communication, it dictates every stage of communication, while communication promotes the development of culture. In intercultural communication, misunderstanding occurs frequently because of the cultural barriers. How to overcome the barriers and make intercultural communication successful had become the main concern of the thesis.The thesis makes a further analysis to the psychological process of communication which includes six interrelated elements: context, participants, messages, channels, noise and feedback. Among them, messages and participants are the most culture-influenced. In the perceptive process of communication, the mental data bank plays an important role where one's accumulated experience and knowledge are stored. In the process of intercultural communication, the schema model is used to illustrate the process of which peoples from different cultures communicate. They actually communicate with the respective cultural background schema of the target culture in their mind, instead of the actual culture. However the cultural background schema can be enlarged by culture acquisition.Based on the analysis of the psychological process of communication, this thesis suggests a feasible way to improve students' cultural awareness and communicative competence, that is to help students establish the cultural background schema in their mind and activate their cultural schema. Approaches and skills of how to establish and activate the cultural background schema are offered and illustrated by case studies in this thesis.