The Lack Of Chinese Culture-Specific Items In New College English

Language is media and carrier of language, while culture reflects and restricts language communication. They are interdependent. Different nations live in different ecological, physical, social and religious environment, which correspondingly produce different beliefs towards the world among different living groups. Therefore, culture-specific items of cultural peculiarity appear. In China's college English teaching, the phenomenon of "Culture Aphasia", caused by the inexpressiveness of Chinese culture-specific items in English, often leads to the failure in intercultural communication. While it is the imbalance of culture components in college English textbooks,especially the lack of Chinese culture-specific items directly caused this failure. In order to improve the competence of intercultural communication, there is a need to make full use of college English textbooks to enhance the introduction of Chinese culture-specific items.In the thesis, the review on the studies of culture teaching in the west and China shows the necessity of combining language and culture teaching in foreign language teaching, specialists and scholars also indicate the importance of teaching Chinese culture in foreign language teaching in China. The relationship between language and culture, language teaching and culture teaching, intercultural communication as well as Chinese culture-specific items, provide theoretical support for the study. However, the lack of Chinese culture-specific items in college English books and how to integrate Chinese culture-specific items into college English teaching haven't caught due attention. The thesis aims to explore a new way for college English teaching based on systematical analysis of New College English. This thesis centers on studies about culture-specific items in College English Books. Through the detailed analysis of cultural components in New College English according to Byram's criteria for good textbook evaluation, the thesis indicates the imbalance of culture-specific items contained in textbooks and indicates the necessity of introducing Chinese culture-specific items into college English textbooks. Then the author designates some typical teaching experiments on the introduction of Chinese culture-specific items into New College English. The results show that students'linguistic skills as well as intercultural communicative competence are greatly improved. Finally, the author discusses the results and limitation of the present study. Furthermore, suggestions for future research in college English teaching are presented.