A Study On The Input Of Traditional Chinese Culture In The Teaching Of English Majors

Language and culture are closely interconnected with each other, and language cannot be separated from culture. Culture is the soil of the existence and development of language. Therefore, culture teaching plays an important role in language teaching. Many scholars both at home and abroad have made a lot of researches about culture teaching. Under the background of globalization, foreign language teaching should help students not only form a cultural view of knowing others’culture, but also have a cultural awareness of knowing theirs. Singer (1987) ever said:" if one doesn’t know his own mother culture, it is hard to understand another culture." Shu Dingfang and Zhuang Zhixiang (1996) consider that mother culture has at least two functions in foreign language teaching. First, it is a tool to have a comparative learning of another culture, further revealing some main features of that culture and better understanding one’s own. Second, it cultivates students’positive attitude toward the learning of a foreign language and its culture, stimulates students’learning enthusiasm and increases their learning chances.However, in the process of the present foreign language teaching in China, target culture is overstressed while traditional Chinese culture and its positive effect on the foreign language teaching and learning are neglected. Teachers and students spend a lot of time learning target culture, which cause students to suffer from "Chinese cultural aphasia". The study thinks that English majors should not only understand western culture, but also understand our mother culture and spread it in English.Based on relevant theories of Intercultural Communication and SLA, the thesis carried out a survey of600students and31teachers from three universities in Henan Province, and detailed analysis was made to the data collected with the software of SPSS. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was used in this thesis for the study to explore the problems existing in the input of traditional Chinese culture in the teaching of English majors. Then the thesis further analyzes the reasons for the problems and provides some possible and practical measures for them, which, in the author’s opinion, will help all the participants in the foreign language teaching better know the essence of our mother culture, nurture an equal cultural awareness and actively transmit it, thus greatly improving students’ intercultural communicative competence.The thesis is divided into six parts. The first part is the introduction, which introduces the background, purpose, significance and methods of the study. The second part is the literature review, which expounds the current situation in the teaching of English majors. The third part is the theoretical basis of the thesis, mainly explaining the close relationship between language and culture so as to reflect the importance and necessity of culture teaching. The fourth part reflects the lack of the input of traditional Chinese culture in the teaching of English majors by means of questionnaire survey, then draws some findings and analyzes the reasons for the lack of the input of traditional Chinese culture. The fifth part introduces some countermeasures from four aspects of teachers and students, the compiling of textbooks and cultural teaching environment. The sixth part is the conclusion, which at the same time points out some limitations of the thesis and puts forward some suggestions for the future study.Because of the complexity of empirical study, this study cannot be without limitations. First, the comprehensiveness and systematicness of the questionnaire still have much room for improvement because the participants are only limited to universities in Henan Province, which may not clearly reflect the current situation of the input of traditional Chinese culture in the teaching of English majors in China. In addition, the countermeasures raised need to be specified and perfected. In the future research, a detailed study from the design of questionnaire, the extent of participants and concrete measures for the lack of the input of traditional Chinese culture are greatly expected from all those insightful and enthusiastic researchers.