An Investigation Of Chinese Culture Aphasia Of English Majors

Culture is multidimensional and the world’s culture is diverse and different.Language is the carrier of culture and education is an important way to pass culturefrom one generation to the next. Since the21st century, English, as an internationallanguage, is undergoing an unprecedented spread and development, which willinevitably affect global English teaching, especially the English teaching in China.Under the background of globalization and modernization, people try tounderstand each other better during the intercultural communication. It becomes themission of cultural education to cultivate the students’ interpersonal skills to adapt tothe multicultural society. With the intensive study of communication theory and itsapplication in English teaching, more and more teachers realize that the role of culturein language learning can not be underestimated. However, most culture teaching forEnglish majors in China concentrates more on Western culture rather than our ownculture. The result of it is that students are more familiar with the norm, value,religion and worldview of Western culture instead of our home culture and they areweak in expressing Chinese culture in English. This phenomenon is called ChineseCulture Aphasia, first put forward by Professor Cong Cong (2000) in GuangmingDaily, which refers to the students’ inability to express Chinese culture in English inintercultural communication. It goes against successful cultural exchanges andimprovement of students’ communication competence since communication is atwo-way activity and both sides should bear some responsibility. Chinese culture isplaying a more and more important role in English teaching. English majors shouldknow both Western culture and Chinese culture very well, and be responsible forspreading our culture to the world.In consideration of previous situation, this thesis, consisting of six parts, makes astudy of English majors’ Chinese Culture Aphasia. Introduction gives a briefbackground of the research, and introduces the significance of the study and thelayout of the thesis. Based on literature review and theoretical background, by usingtest paper and questionnaires, the author conducts an investigation on the present situation of English majors’ mastery of Chinese culture and its English expression aswell as the attitudes students and teachers hold towards Chinese Culture Aphasiaexisting in English majors.The results demonstrate that the English majors do not master the Chineseculture well, and have lots of difficulties in expressing them in English. Englishteachers also have difficulties in expressing certain parts of Chinese culture in English.The phenomenon of Chinese Culture Aphasia does exist and it is mainly due to thelack of Chinese culture in university English teaching. On the basis of analyzing theresults of the investigation, the author proposes to integrate Chinese culture intouniversity English teaching by adhering to certain principles and choosing properChinese culture. Some feasible suggestions for Chinese culture teaching are putforward, such as preparing reasonable syllabus, improving teachers’ comprehensivequality, cultivating students’ correct cultural values, arranging appropriate teachingmaterials, adopting effective teaching approaches, and designing the targeted tests.The author also advises the students to take an active part in classroom teaching andcooperate with teachers actively, learn autonomously, cultivate their own awareness ofChinese culture and interests in learning it, use proper learning methods, and take partin various activities to practise what they have learned.The author hopes that this thesis will attract numerous educators’ attention toEnglish majors’ Chinese Culture Aphasia, and the feasible suggestions can make alittle contribution to overcoming this phenomenon in English majors’ education so asto improve students’ comprehensive ability and cultivate their interculturalcommunication competence, and spread our splendid culture to the world.