Cultivating College Learners' Communicative Competence Through Cultural Teaching

Applied linguists and language teachers have been increasingly aware that a second or foreign language can hardly be acquired or learned without addressing the culture of the community in which it is spoken. A second language learner's understanding of a second culture is fundamentally affected by his or her culturally-defined world of view, beliefs, and presuppositions. The beliefs and presuppositions have important pedagogical implications and need to be considered in second or foreign language teaching and learning. In cross-cultural communication, linguistic knowledge alone is not enough in guaranteeing successful interaction with native speakers. Cultural mistakes are worse than linguistic ones because they tend to create misjudgment, or ill feeling between native and foreign speakers. EFL teachers should stress the cultivating of learners'cross-cultural awareness while they pass on linguistic knowledge.The study of communicative competence has received more and more attention in the field of English learning and teaching, and a great deal has been discovered about the culture teaching and communicative competence. I take these findings as a starting point and develop the discussion in the context of English teaching and learning in China. The intent is to set out the theoretical principles and practical justification for studying communicative competence and working to develop it with our learners. Underpinning this discussion is a desire to enhance classroom methodology and promote the abilities of language learners, for raising communicative competence is a central concern of every language learner and teacher.Similar to some of the research literature on culture teaching and communicative competence, the scope of my present research is mainly concerned with the teaching of culture and the enhancing of communicative competence of non-English majors. But my probe into the domain of cultural teaching and communicative competence is within four main spaces. The first deals with the notion of culture, such as its definition and characteristics. The second is mainly concerned with communicative competence. The third elaborates the relationship between culture and communicative competence. The fourth is concerned with cultural teaching.Accordingly, my discussion in the thesis aims to bring together some of the varied facets of the whole picture for the reader and present a brief analysis of how to cultivate learners'communicative competence through cultural teaching. The importance of both theory and practice are revealed and recognized, for neither could be ignored in dealing with culture teaching and communicative competence. Thus, a basic theoretical introduction to the topic is properly provided, and then some empirical suggestions for the culture teaching for the enhancement of communicative competence are included.This thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter One traces and describes the current perspectives on cultural teaching both at home and abroad in recent years. The second chapter examines some theoretical issues. Some concepts such as culture and communicative competence are discussed. The relationship between culture and communicative competence is also presented. This chapter also explains the underlying theories based on which the cultural teaching experiment is done. The teacher should make sure the theories serving as the basis for the experimental study, the aims, the principles, the strategies, the contents and the outcomes of cultural teaching. Chapter Three describes an experimental study of cultivating learners'communicative competence through cultural teaching which is conducted in Shandong Jiaotong University in the first semester of 2007 to 2008 academic year. The objective of the experiment is made clear at the beginning of this chapter and then the subjects and the instruments and the designs for the instruments are presented. This chapter focuses on the procedure, data collection and analysis, results and discussions and the major findings of the experimental study. The last chapter describes some pedagogical implications and approaches to teaching language and culture that have sprung from these discussions.