An Investigation On Non-English Majors’ Expressivenesss Of Chinese Culture In English

Since the importance of culture teaching in foreign language study was approvedin the1980s, culture teaching has been drawing foreign language educators’ attentionfor a long time. Great achievements have been made concerning about it. However itstill exists some problems. On college English teaching class, culture teachingover-emphasizes the target culture, leaving little attention to or even ignoring homeculture.This incomplete culture teaching which only paid attention to the target culturelead to college students’ inability of expressing Chinese culture in English. learning,when they talk with foreigners about their home culture, they can not talk freely.Intercultural communication is a reciprocal activity which requires the two-wayexchanges of culture. Only when Chinese English learners are able to transmit homeculture to the west can we realize the true intercultural communication but not one waycommunication. Culture teaching without home culture is not beneficial to theimprovement of students’ intercultural communicative competence. Culture teachingwhich focuses on the target culture and home culture at the same time can strengthenstudents’ intercultural communication awareness and intercultural communicativecompetence.Since arts students and science students have different cultural backgroundknowledge and different features of learning English, an investigation is conducted inthis thesis among non-English majors in Jilin University and Changchun NormalUniversity, which plans to affirm the existence of college students’ incompetent inexpressing in expressing Chinese culture in English and seek if there is distinctive differences between arts students and science students. Meanwhile, it is aimed to findthe current situation of college English teaching and the ways to improve collegestudents’ ability of expressing Chinese culture in English.The results of this investigation show that the subjects are less capable to expressChinese culture in English. Arts students and science students don’t have obviousdistinction. Although they hold a strong belief that it is necessary to transmit Chineseculture to foreigners in cross-cultural communication and they have strong desires tolearn the expressions of Chinese culture in English, they find it difficult to expressChinese culture in English clearly. There are many reasons explaining the phenomenon.First, students do not have abundant and profound knowledge of Chinese culture, whichhinders them from explaining Chinese culture accurately and freely. Second,information sources of Chinese culture in English are unsystematic. It is difficult forthem to find appropriate and standard English versions of Chinese culture. What’s more,the textbooks contain little information about Chinese culture in English, the curriculumis not so scientific, the testing neglect the check of students’ ability of expressingChinese culture in English, and the syllabus does not state clearly the necessity ofenhancing students’ ability to express Chinese culture in English. Based on the reasons,some solutions are offered, including the reforms in textbooks, testing and syllabus andso on.