The Teaching Of Cultural Factors In Reading And Writing Class

The inseparable relationship between language and culture determines that teaching Chinese as a second language must be combined with cultural factors.At present,in terms of cultural factors in language teaching,academic community have reached a basic consensus on macro teaching principles and the fundamental goal,i.e.the teaching of cultural factors should serve language teaching,which aims to develop and improve learners’intercultural communicative competence.At the same time,scholars have also put forward a lot of inspiring teaching methods and suggestions.However,the current research on cultural factors in language classes mainly focuses on oral,listening and reading classes,so the research results of reading and writing class are very limited.Therefore,the study on this aspect has strong theoretical and practical significance.First of all,the thesis summarizes the research achievements of the predecessors from the theoretical basis of the teaching of Chinese as a second language and the cultural teaching of reading and writing class.The author first summarizes the definition,classification,teaching principles and methods of cultural factors by different scholars in the theoretical basis,and defines the cultural factors in this study,i.e.cultural factors in the language and cultural knowledge related to intercultural communication,then sums up the research status quo of the culture teaching in English and Chinese classes.Secondly,the thesis analyzes the cultural factors in the textbook"Elementary Chinese Reading and Writing Course Ⅰ",which is used in The Chinese Language Training Center of School of Chinese Language and Literature of Beijing Foreign Studies University.The classification of cultural factors is based on the viewpoints of Zhang Ying and Lu Wei.Specifically,according to the five levels(general class,subclass,cultural factors,specific contents and source),the cultural factors in "Elementary Chinese Reading and Writing Course Ⅰ" can be classified into 10 categories and 27 sub-categories,100 cultural factors altogether.The 10 categories are social communication,language,life style,customs,social structure,education,health,time,geospatial and values.Then,the thesis specifies the advantages and disadvantages of the cultural factors based on the results.The advantages are as follows:the cultural factors are very intensive and mainly based on the contemporary culture,balancing with the traditional culture;the cultural factors are interesting because of cultural contrast.The disadvantage is that reading exercises are not related to cultural factors,especially the deep cultural concept of the subject,so the learner’s understanding of the text only stay in the text surface.Thirdly,the author explains the nature of the reading and writing class and the characteristics of the teaching objects and how to carry out the teaching in the class with the author’s teaching practice.At the same time,the author analyzes the teaching effect with the students’ composition.According to the teaching practice,the author makes her own suggestions,hoping for contributing to future research.The main points are as follows:the cultural factors are supposed to be taught throughout the three stages of reading.In pre-reading stage,the teacher should seize the key words of the text and introduce cultural knowledge to students by means of vivid tools,such as objects,pictures or video.In while-reading stage,the teacher needs to reveal the cultural connotations of the vocabulary in terms of semantics and pragmatics,and set up heuristic questions about the cultural ideas embodied in the reading text,then guide the students to analyze the text structure according to the connected words.In post-reading stage,the teacher should carry out further activities to promote the interaction among different culture.In the writing stage,the teacher should give full play to the role of the reading text,so that students can grasp Chinese punctuation and expressions correctly.In addition,the teacher can also design some culture-themed writing practice to cultivate students’ cross-cultural awareness,or use Chinese to express their own culture to stimulate interest in writing.Lastly,on the basis of teaching practice,the author puts forward four teaching suggestions on cultural factors for intermediate Chinese proficiency learners,namely,emphasizing on inspiration and the combination of language and culture input;combing reading and writing to promote language and cultural output;strengthening the contrast to enhance the sensitivity of cultural factors;strengthening interaction to cultivate intercultural communicative competence.In the reflection part,the author points out the importance of developing teachers’ own bicultural awareness.