A Survey Of Cultural Meaning Acquisition Of Culture-loaded English Vocabulary By English Majors

College English Teaching Syllabus for English Majors indicates that one of the ultimate objectives of English instruction is to cultivate English learners' intercultural communicative competence. At present, the importance of integrating culture into foreign language instruction has been attached by the academic circles. However, the situation of the cultural meaning acquisition of culture-loaded English vocabulary by English majors has not been paid enough attention to by researchers. Vocabulary has a larger culturally loading capacity, compared with phonetics and grammar. It is undoubted that the cultural meaning acquisition of vocabulary affects the total culture acquisition.The present study attempts to make a survey among junior English majors to find out the status quo of their cultural meaning acquisition of culture-loaded English vocabulary and tries to probe into the possible reasons accounting for the status quo. The reason for choosing junior English majors is that after they passed TEM-4, theoretically, they are supposed to meet the curriculum requirements. But what is the real situation of their cultural meaning acquisition of culture-loaded English vocabulary? This is the focus of the present study.Both quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis were adopted. The former included a test of culture-loaded vocabulary and a questionnaire for students; the latter included a semi-structured interview. The test paper was designed based on the Language and Culture part in the Self-study Higher Education Examination (Wang Zhenya, 2001-2009), which is authoritative. The content of the self-study test papers is the culture knowledge which is supposed to be acquired by English major undergraduates. In this study items that focus on vocabulary were picked out. Thus it can be used to reflect the status quo of English majors' cultural meaning acquisition of culture-loaded English vocabulary. In order to make the study more scientific, a pilot study was arranged before the survey and the items on which students got highest and lowest scores were removed. The questionnaire was based on Dr. Moore's study in 1996, which was used to find out the possible reasons accounting for the status quo of the subjects' cultural meaning acquisition of culture-loaded vocabulary. Based on the results of the vocabulary test and the questionnaire, the qualitative analysis employed a semi-structured interview and 10 students were selected out of the 60 subjects through stratified random sampling according to students' performance in the vocabulary test. The interview was used to explore the specific reasons from the aspect of culture embedment in vocabulary instruction and the cultural meaning acquisition of English vocabulary. The major findings are as follows:1. Students' cultural meaning acquisition of culture-loaded English vocabulary is rather inadequate and unsatisfying (95% subjects failed the test). They have just acquired the literal meaning but turned a blind eye to the cultural meaning.2. No matter what category the vocabulary in the test belongs to, the acquisition level is all quite low. Especially students have not acquired the cultural meaning of the vocabulary that relates to the Christianity and Greek-Roman mythology, the origin of western culture.3. Although most students take an active attitude toward culture instruction, according to the results of the survey, they have not grasped the culture knowledge which is supposed to be acquired by English majors.4. There are many reasons accounting for the present situation: students' limited ways and materials to contact target culture, limited techniques and instructions, limited cultural meaning of vocabulary in the textbooks, few courses about target culture, teachers' little introduction in class, as well as no requirement in the exam. Thus, students' performance in the vocabulary test is very poor.Based on the above findings, the present study points out that both teachers and students should make more effort in the cultural meaning instruction and acquisition and some reform should be advanced in the textbooks, courses and the evaluating system to facilitate the culture acquisition process. Some related suggestions were presented in the end.The present study is far from perfect due to too small sample, limited time and resources, which should be improved in the follow-up study.