高中英语教学中的文化意识培养

1.Introduction
Every country has its own peculiar culture. Because of cultural differences, misunderstandings may arise. A harmless statement may cause displeasure or anger; a serious question may cause amusement. Therefore, for language learners and teachers, it is of great importance to be aware of differences between home culture and target culture. Cultural awareness is helpful to achieve effectiveness in language teaching and learning. In fact, “learning a language is inseparable from learning its culture.” [1]
There is close relationship between language and culture. “Language is the carrier of culture and culture is the content of language. There is no language without culture content.”[2] “As a mirror of culture, language is strongly influenced and shaped by culture”[3] They evolved together and have been mutually dependent through their history. Understanding one requires understanding the other. In the broadest sense, language is the symbolic representation of a people, and it comprises their historical and cultural backgrounds as well as their approach to life and their ways of living and thinking. Following the definitions of sociologists and anthropologists, the term culture “refers to the total pattern of beliefs, customs, institutions, objects, and techniques that characterize the life of a human community.”[4] Language is the most important of culture and it reflects culture. And at the same time, it is influenced and shaped by culture. Cultures differ from one another, so languages diverse. With differences in cultures and in languages, it is natural that cross-cultural communication is not always easy.
Therefore, teaching English well means more than merely teaching students the vocabulary, structures, and grammars. It also means teaching them how to slip into the English culture. Learners should be informed of how native speakers of English see the world and how the English language reflects the ideas, customs, and behavior of their society. In other words, to have a good command of grammatical rules of a language contributes to correctness of sentence structures while familiarity with as much cultural knowledge of that language as possible guarantees appropriateness of discourse.

2.Present condition of cultural education in senior English teaching
From the perspective of NEEC (National Entrance Examination for Colleges), English is considered to be important to all senior school students. For most students, the motivation of learning English is just a means to pass the exams and get high scores in English proficiency tests. And the teachers of English are just the facilitators of realizing this goal. Teachers’ greatest concern is given to the mastery of linguistic knowledge and skills. Students spend most of the time on learning vocabulary, structures and grammar through lots of drills, practice and consolidation so as to memorize those linguistic elements and reproduce them. Cultural knowledge is ignored. In this case, culture is often separated from its carrier--language. Both teachers and students’ cultural awareness are poor. The lack of cultural knowledge leads to the failure in communication. Thus cultural education in senior English becomes absolutely necessary.

3.The contents of cultural introduction in senior English teaching
     A language is inseparable from its culture. Hence, the process of learning a language is a process of learning its culture. Traditional foreign language teaching in China attaches great importance to language teaching but ignores cultural teaching, which, as a result, has caused some barriers in intercultural communication. Therefore, English teachers should try to improve students’ cultural awareness. The following are some suggestions for senior English students:
3.1Greetings and addresses
One of the mistakes Chinese students often make is to greet native speakers of English by saying “How old are you?  Where are you going? What’s your income?” In China, such questions indicate friendliness and concern of one person for another. So Chinese students think that the foreigners will have the same reactions to these questions. But in fact, in America, questions like these interfere into people’s private life.
 Traditionally, Chinese family is a big family. Children, parents, grandparents live together. Family members could hardly keep anything secret. It is considered quite normal that neighbors interrupt a quarrelling couple. Yet for Americans they would prefer to call the police instead of breaking into the door of their neighbors, because they wouldn’t run the risk of being accused of interfering into other’s privacy.
Here is another example. After winter vocation, some students go to visit their foreign teacher. At the first sight of the English teacher, a student greets him, “Congratulations! You look whiter and fatter after this vocation!” Hearing this, the teacher’s face turns pale with fright, “Oh, no!” In Chinese traditional culture, the adults prefer to describe healthy kids as “white and fat”. But in Britain and America, especially for the white man, “white and fat” means unhealthy because of lack of sunshine and exercises. So western people are very fond of sunbath and various sports to keep healthy. This Chinese student neglects the cultural differences and causes the English teacher’s misunderstanding.
Cultural differences can also be found in the way people address their relatives. There are no English equivalents to the different forms of Chinese address like “堂弟”, “表姐”, “伯父”, “舅舅”. But only “cousin” and “uncle” in English are used to address. The difference of relative address reflects the different customs in the two cultures. For Chinese people, the paternal relatives are closer than the maternal ones, thus it is greatly important to distinguish who is who. However, in American culture, it does not matter much whether a person is a relative from the father’s family or from the mother’s family. “Uncle” stands for all the males of the same generation of father and “aunt” for all the females of the same generation of mother.
Some students may ask their English teacher a question, “Why should the pronoun ‘I’ always be capitalized in English?” Because in China, when a person mentions himself in formal situations, particularly in the writings of old style, he would use “鄙人”, “在下” and words like that to degrade himself. Students should be told that Chinese culture is family-centered. Usually, several generations of a family live together. In a large family, the young should obey what the old commanded. Under such circumstances, it’s quite common and natural for a person to degrade himself. In contrast, American put great emphasis on individualism. According to Chinese tradition and customs, people believe in collectivism. Different countries have different system of values. The always capitalized pronoun “I” and the fact that Chinese students feel puzzled about it shows the conflicting values of the two nations.
In China, elderly people like to be called “老李”, “老王”, from which they feel they are much respected and therefore greatly satisfied. China is a country in which old people are respected. The older a person is, the more respected he is. Students are told to avoid such words as “old” and “elderly” when communicating with English native speakers. In this situation, they are also puzzled. Because Chinese students may not quite know that Americans hate to be called “the old”. In America, they say “senior citizen” instead of “old people”, “adults’ home” instead of “old people’s home”.
3.2Gratitudes and compliments
It is noted that a striking difference resulted from the two cultures is the different responses to gratitude and compliments. “People in the west tend to verbalize their gratitude and compliments more than Chinese speakers and that the westerners tend to accept gratitude and compliments more directly and frankly than we Chinese do. ”[5] When a native speaker of English expresses his gratitude, we Chinese people feel embarrassed and sometimes say “No, it’s nothing.” to turn down his thanks. However, English speakers in a similar situation would say “I am glad that, I can help you” or “ it’s my pleasure” to accept thanks.
Similarly, many Chinese people will feel embarrassed when they hear compliments like “You look nice on this dress!” or “You speak fluent English!” To show that they are modest and do not deserve such a compliment, they would say “No, not at all”. But for English speaking people, they think it almost dishonest to deny an expression of sentiment they agree with. So unlike the Chinese people, the English natives will accept compliments by giving a positive answer like “Thank you”.
3.3Color words
Cultural differences are also evident in different implications associated with the same color. The color “red” in Chinese indicates happy events, joyous occasions and delightful things. For example, in a traditional Chinese wedding ceremony the bride wears red dress from head to toe, her head particularly covered with a piece of red cloth to express good wishes of her new life. Besides that, in Spring Festival one of the decorations Chinese people make to welcome the new year is to put red couplet out on each side of their door. What’s more, “red” is frequently associated with success and victories and words like “开门红”, “满堂红” are good examples in this case.
But the color “red” in English implies things of terror, fight and blood, and is frequently connected with anger and crimes, hence the phrases “a red battle”(a fierce, cruel struggle), “red rag”(something that excites great anger), and “red light”(signal of danger or warning).
Take “white” for another example, “white” in Chinese is connected with sorrow, misfortune and death. Folks taking part in a funeral dress in white, with white flower on the breast to mourn for the dead. What is different in English is that white indicates nobility, justice and purity. In an American wedding bride purposely dresses in white, symbolizing purity and perpetual loyalty and love between husband and wife. In English, there are phrases like “white man”, “white lie”, “white war” which respectively mean a just man, a lie without evil intention and a war during which no man bleeds.
In English study, Chinese students may be extremely confused about some sentences like “I’m feeling rather blue”(I’m feeling depressed.) and “He was born to the purple (He was born in a noble and wealthy family.)” [6] Students know the meaning of each word, but they have much difficulty in putting the whole sentence into Chinese, for the familiar words “blue” and “purple” here indicate more than their literal meaning. At the moment, teachers are expected to explain cultural factors hidden behind the words, otherwise, students will make mistakes when they communicate with foreigners.
3.4Animals and their different connotations
Animals and their different associations are another aspect of cultural differences. For example, “Dragon is a totem in Chinese culture. In feudal society, dragon stands for the emperor.”[7]  Dragon “being always considered a deity with inconceivable power in China, bringing people good luck. People born in the year of Dragon feel very proud. But in western culture, dragon is a crocodile-like monster which can gush smoke and fire from its mouth.”[8] Therefore, if a Chinese student who does not have this cultural knowledge in mind translates the Chinese idiom “望子成龙” into “to hope that one’s son will become a dragon”, the English man will be wondering what kind of person parents expect their child to be.
Chinese students will be somewhat annoyed if they hear “You’re really a lucky dog”. They clearly know that in China, “the implied meaning of a dog is usually pejorative, as in “狗仗人势 “(be a bully under the protection of a powerful person), “狗头军师”(a person who offers bad advice)”[9] But what they don’t know is that in western culture small animals like cats and dogs are considered as man’s pets, companions and loyal friends. In English, it has commendatory sense. “lucky dog” means “lucky person”, “a jolly dog” means “a happy man”.
The above cultural knowledge reflected in languages should be introduced to senior school students, for many misunderstandings between people of different cultures are caused by the shortage of cultural knowledge. Thus English teachers should make great efforts to cultivate students’ cultural awareness.