The Investigation Of English Majors' Chinese Cultural Deficiency

With Chinese becoming more and more important in the world, the people of English speaking countries show great interest in Chinese and Chinese culture. In recent years, many scholars and English teachers have realized the great effect of Chinese culture in foreign language teaching. In the last century, teaching target language has been extended from language skills to communicative competence, and then to intercultural communication. Because intercultural communication is a two-way activity, English teaching should not only include target culture but also native culture. Therefore, we should take actions to strengthen students'Chinese cultural competence. However, most of Chinese scholars and researches concentrated on the cognition and acquisition of foreign language, and paid very little attention to native culture, which seems to be dispensable in Chinese people's language learning. This leads to students'poor performance in expressing themselves when the topics are about Chinese culture.The aim of the present study is to undertaken comprehensive investigation to an overall situation of English Majors'ability to present Chinese culture in English and to put forward some suggestions for the current culture teaching of both Chinese and Western cultures in foreign language education. It seeks to discuss the teachers'and students'perceptions on Chinese cultural competence.From the investigation, it is found that the present culture teaching of EFL in college focuses more on western culture rather than Chinese culture and communication between Chinese culture and Western culture. The study also shows that teachers and students have a positive attitude toward expressiveness of Chinese culture in English and transmission of Chinese culture. The ultimate purpose of research is to cultivate students'two-way intercultural communicative competence, especially the competence to express themselves about Chinese cultures in English, by designing culture teaching syllabus, compiling textbooks and improving college English teachers'communicative competence.