An Empirical Study Of Indigenization Of Cultural Introduction In English Teaching At Vocational College

With the rapid development of economic globalization and internationalization of education, cross-cultural communication between different languages is to be further deepened and has become an important component of our social life.The need of cultural knowledge and communicating competence in cross-cultural communication requires linguistic instruction be incorporated with cultural teaching. The study in this field can be traced back to more than century. However, the traditional teaching of language still pays attention to skills training; cultural teaching and cross-cultural communicating competence training are always overlooked. As a result, time and energy spent on English are more than other courses but the effect is unsatisfactory. Most English learners have mastered a large amount of vocabulary and grammatical knowledge, had strong abilities of comprehension, writing and even translation, but they couldn't communicate with foreigners effectively. The main reason is the lack of cultural knowledge and cross-cultural competence.This thesis begins with the relationship between language and culture, for the purpose of communication, from the perspective of the theory and practice, employing approaches of questionnaire and case study; demonstrates the importance of cultural introduction in linguistic instruction. The questionnaire indicates that students at vocational colleges can recognize the importance of cultural knowledge to English teaching and learning, and they have got some awareness of cross-cultural communication. However, there is enough emphasis on cultural teaching when they are learning English because of various reasons, which leading to poor cross-cultural communicative competence.Considering the characteristics of students at higher vocational colleges, the writer explored the objectives, principles, contents and methods of English teaching for them, and carried out a teaching practice of cultural introduction in English teaching for a whole semester. This teaching practice mainly includes learning cultural knowledge, comparing the differences between cultures, developing the awareness and competence of cross-cultural communication.A test after their learning shows that cultural introduction plays important role in English teaching. Cultural introduction can enhance the learners'awareness of cross-cultural communication, improve their communicative competence, stimulate their interest in English learning and help them to realize equal dialogue between different cultures.With China's position rising in the world, it is necessary to infuse Chinese culture into linguistic instruction so as to meet a new requirement by local services. Foreign linguistic instruction cannot only serve science and technology. What's more, it must serve external publicity of Chinese culture. This demands that Chinese culture access to English class, to help students know more about our ethic culture, interpret our culture in English so as to promote Chinese culture across cultures of the world.