Cultural influence on teaching foreign language

Аннотация

Cultural Influence on Foreign Language Teaching to understand the importance of culture we need toknow to what extent cultural background knowledge influences language learning and teaching, and how can we take advantage of that influence. To account for the roles culture plays in language learning and teaching, it is necessary to demonstrate the functions it may perform in the components of language learning and teaching, such as listening, speaking, reading, and translating. Cultural influence on vocabulary Language is the carrier of cultureand vocabulary is thebasicingredient oflanguage. Key words: Culture, cultural influence, cultural factors, experience, context, speaking, listening, reading, writing, weak grammar, background knowledge, listening ability, pronunciation. The cultural difference will inevitably exhibited on the vocabulary, and the explanation of vocabulary will also reflect the national or cultural difference. Take colour as an example. In Chinese, white, denoting a colour, often associates with “pure, noble and moral goodness”, and the bride is dressed in white during the wedding in most western countries. In China the bride must wear red in the traditional wedding, definitely not white. Because Red means “happiness, good luck, flourishing and prosperous” in the future and people only wear white in funerals when one’s family member or relative is dead. White in China, is associated with “pale, weak and without vitality”. Thus, learning a language implies not only the knowledge of its grammar rules and the denotative meanings of words but it involves much more, such as the culture phenomena, the way of life, habits and customs, history and everything that is contained of culture. In a word, culture is a comprehensive composite with abundant implication, and each factor in it may be exhibited on words. Learning vocabulary, while paying attention to cultural factors, is vital and crucial. Cultural influence on listening In foreign language learning particularly in training their listening ability to understand better, learners often complain that although they spend lots of time in learning and practicing their ability of listening comprehension, their progress is not satisfactory. To achieve this end, they do everything what they can. Some, for example, buy tape recorders to facilitate their learning process in an attempt to improve their listening ability, and spend several hours in it every day. But when they meet new listening materials, they still can’t understand them. The reason for this may be various, but some of them have been identified. Among them are their small vocabulary, weak grammar, and vague pronunciation. But a relatively more important reason is that they lack the necessary cultural background knowledge of the language they have learned. Listening is closely related to the culture, politics and economy of the target language. In judging one’s listening ability, we are in fact considering his comprehensive ability, including the English level, intellectual range, analytical and imaginative ability, etc. We may have this kind of experience: when we are listening to something where the events involved are familiar to us, no matter what they are, e.g., news, reports, stories, lectures; or art, science, sports or economy, it is relatively easier for us to understand. Even if there are some new words in it, we can guess the meaning in the light of the context. On the contrary, it will be difficult for us to understand, if the materials we are listening to are closely related to the cultural background knowledge we are not familiar with. Sometimes the materials may be easy and we can get the pronunciation of each word from the tape, but the lack of necessary cultural background knowledge may hinder our thorough understanding. If, for example, a student comes across a sentence like: Edward Kennedy went downhill since Chappaquiddick. He won’t find it difficult to understand the structure of the sentence. But if he doesn’t know that “Chappaquiddick” is the name of a place in America, and is used in this sentence to refer to the Samarkand State Institute of Foreign Languages 418 ILMIYVAPROFESSIONALTA’LIMJARAYONIDAMULOQOT,FANVAMADANIYATLAR INTEGRATSIYASI traffic accident E. Kennedy suffered, they cannot understand the real meaning. From the above explanation we can see how important the role that culture plays in our listening ability: Culture is one of its unalienable attachments. It can hinder our progress of listening, and it can also help it.So weshouldnoticethe existence ofcultureand try to takeadvantage of it.