论文总字数：29451字

摘 要

在传统英语教学，特别是应试教学中，基础知识的学习，单词，语法等被视为英语学习最重要的内容。而文化知识教育往往被忽略。英语和汉语隶属不同文化体系，不了解其文化，很容易导致跨文化交际的失败，违背学习英语的根本目的。英语文化知识的教育可以帮助学习者更容易更快的掌握目标语言，汉语文化知识的教学同样对学习者十分重要。在本文中，第一部分简要分析目前小学英语课堂文化教学的必要性,现状及研究意义。第二部分详细论述了中外学者对语言与文化定义的研究。第三部分结合文化教学的现状，提出了小学英语文化教育的实施原则。第四部提出了具体实施方案。本论文的目的旨在通过提出在小学英语教学中强化中英文化教学的原则和对策，来促进中西文化教育，培养学生的跨文化意识，提高学生跨文化交际能力。

关键词：中英文化教育；策略；小学英语教学

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

2.1The definition of culture 2

2.2The definition of language 3

2.3 The relationship between culture and language 3

3. Principles of Strengthening Culture Education in Primary School 4

3.1 The principle of truth and practicality 4

3.2 The principle of comparison and integration 5

3.3The principle of participation and experience 5

4. Strategies of Strengthening Culture Education in Primary School 6

4.1 Broadening the content of English textbooks 6

4.2 Improving the specialization of teachers’ teaching level 8

4.3 Creating out of class activities 10

5.Conclusion 11

Works Cited 12

1. Introduction

At present, culture education plays an increasingly important role in primary school English class. According to statistics, in the PEP edition of primary school English textbooks, each unit contains cultural teaching contents on different topics. There are eight books in primary school, each of which generally contains six units, of which there are only four units in the second volume of the sixth grade. Therefore, a total of 46 subjects of cultural learning knowledge is included in the English teaching materials of primary school. In the process of statistics, cultural classification is carried out for the theme of each unit from the micro and macro perspectives, and a quantity is marked one at a time for final statistics. Among them, it is found that there are 6 native language cultures, accounting for 13% of the total. And there are 21 target language cultures, accounting for 45.7% of the total. And there are 19 international cultures, accounting for 41.3% of the total. Through the analysis, it can be found that people are more and more focus on cultural education in primary school teaching. Moreover, it is beyond all question to practise cultural education in primary school English classroom. First of all, language and culture can’t be thought as two distinct things. Language and culture promote each other and act on each other. Language is an important carrier of culture, and culture restricts language (Hu 8). Secondly, the purpose of English teaching asks us to fix attention on culture teaching. Finally, it is very important to study multiculturalism (Tu 9). In the records of our history, the policy of seclusion has been implemented because of the exclusion of foreign cultures. This policy has prevented us from absorbing advanced culture, science and technology in a timely manner, and has failed to keep up with the trend of the times. And painful experience and lessons have verified that backwardness can only be beaten. However, cultural learning is faced with many challenges in the English classroom of primary school. It is difficult for teachers to skillfully use and present the cultural knowledge in the textbooks. Meanwhile, in the context of examination-oriented education, school and teachers are not interested in culture education, which has also caused great obstacles to cultural teaching. Therefore, with the research of this subject, teachers will pay more attention to cultural teaching, and integrate culture teaching with language knowledge learning to make them complement each other, thus improving students’ learning efficiency. At the same time, teacher can skillfully make use of the advantages of Chinese and English culture education in primary school to reduce the interference of foreign language learning and cultivate cross-cultural awareness.

1. Literature Review

2.1The definition of culture

What is culture? Simply speaking, culture is the general name of the elements of human life in the region: clothes, crowns, articles, things, food, living, travel and so on. Giving a accurate definition of culture is indeed very hard. The interpretation of the concept of culture has also had no fixed statement.

From ancient times to this day, philosophers, sociologists, historians, linguists and many other scholars at home and abroad have explained culture. According to Brown (1987) “Culture is a collection of beliefs, habits.” Eugene .A .Nida, a famous linguist, translator in the world, defined culture as “the totality of beliefs and practices of a society” (1998), “culture is the evolving way of life of a group of persons, consisting of a shared set of practices associated with a shared set of products, based upon a shared set of perspectives on the world, and set within specific social contexts.” Meanwhile, Yu Qiuyu defines culture as the following: culture is a kind of spiritual value and way of life which becomes a habit, and its ultimate achievement is collective personality.

The concept of culture is very broad, people have different understanding from literature, art, to faith, customs, and so on. As a result, in all areas, culture can have a number of definitions. However, it is generally accepted that there are two definitions of culture: one is broad , that is, the sum of material wealth and spiritual wealth created by human beings in the process of social and historical development; The other is narrow, that is, the value system composed of human cultural values.

In my opinion, culture refers to the unique values and ways of thinking of a certain group in a society, mainly embodied in the aspects of knowledge, behavior, belief, art, customs and habits, etc.

2.2The definition of language

What is language? Language is the voice that conveys information. People regard language as the most significant vehicle of communication and the main way of communication. The essence of human civilization has been kept and passed down by language. One of the significant symbols of a country is language. Language is a complex symbolic system composed of lexical grammar, which includes phonological system, lexical system and grammatical system. Language is a kind of communicative tool that is unique to human beings and develops with the continuation of human race.

In my opinion, language is a symbolic system consisting of phonemes, morphemes, words and phrases, sentences and texts; language is a tool for thinking and communication.

2.3 The relationship between culture and language

Language and culture are inseparable. Language is an integral part of culture. Almost all scholars who discuss language and culture’s intersection favour that language is indispensable to culture. Culture is a whole and language is a part of it. So Language is a special existence, and people use it to learn culture. People continue to practice and use language to pass on culture to their descendants.

Language and culture promote and influence each other. Language is an important carrier of culture, and culture restricts language. Failure to understand the cultural background of a language can produce pragmatic failure. When commenting on the severity of pragmatic errors, Thomas points out that grammatical errors and pragmatic errors can cause communication failures, but grammatical errors can be seen from the surface structure. Once such errors are found, the listener understand that the speaker lacked sufficient knowledge of the language and therefore the speaker could be forgiven. However, in the process of communication, if a person with good competence makes pragmatic errors, people will not think that he lacks enough language knowledge, instead, they think that he is a very impolite person. People don’t consider his mistake as a lack of ability, they just think of it as an expression of his dissatisfaction and hostility.

So, in order to truly master a language, the special society and culture of the language must be learned. Otherwise, it is out of reach to master the language completely..

1. Principles of Strengthening Culture Education in Primary School

3.1 The principle of truth and practicality

The principle of truth and practicality of culture education is mostly embodied in language materials and language teaching environment. Harmer pointed out in “How to Teach English” that real materials (oral or written) are designed for native speakers. It is not a corpus designed for foreign language teaching (Harmer 185). In English teaching, most of the language materials that students encountered are adapted for teaching purposes. These materials have their advantage, such as the unity, large amount of information, accessible classroom operation and so on, but they are not practical in daily life. These materials alone cannot cultivate students language using ability in everyday life. Moreover, the language environment created by teachers should be one with full use of various conditions, supplement of the missing context, and improvement on the authenticity and practicability of students" language practice.

If the cultural teaching content selected by the teacher in the English teaching process and the language teaching environment created are seriously divorced from the reality and not closely connected to the daily life of the students, it is not easy for students to resonate with their own lives and have a strong interest in the new culture. For example, the teacher tells the students in the teaching that China pays attention to friendliness being conducive to business success when doing business, while the West pays attention to the maximization of benefits, which is too beyond the life of primary school students. Even if the content is very detailed, it is still difficult for pupils to realize it deeply in life. And this language teaching environment is also difficult to create.

The principle of truth and practicality of culture education requires teachers to select cultural materials close to students" lives, so that they can feel the practicability of English. And when teachers create a language environment for students, they should use more words and phrases that are usually used in communication rather than the language materials that have been embellished in books for the sake of smoothness.

3.2 The principle of comparison and integration

The principle of comparison and integration of culture education requires teachers not only to compare the similarities and differences between Chinese and Western cultures, but also to integrate the similarities and differences between the two cultures into English teaching. In cultural exchange, cultural integration and cultural conflict almost occur simultaneously for different cultures have their similarities and differences. After cultural comparison, cultural integration and cultural coexistence, cultural fusion can finally get promoted.

In order to go with the trend, we need to know the cultures of other countries. Different cultures continue to interact and integrate. Through cultural comparison, we can absorb the excellent culture of other countries, borrow each other"s strengths and make mutual promotion. Then we can ensure the continuous prosperity and development of our country.

This requires teachers to pay attention to comparing the similarities and differences between Chinese and Western cultures in the teaching process, and not to ignore the study of local culture while teaching western culture. Different cultures do not resist each other but complement each other. In their daily study and life, students should also pay attention to the similarities and differences between Chinese and Western cultures, reduce cultural conflicts and promote cultural integration.

3.3The principle of participation and experience

The principle of participation and experience of culture education means that students are not only audiences, but also performers in class. The classroom should not be just a teacher"s stage. The participation of students is also very important.

As mentioned in “Xunzi"s Confucian effect”, what you hear is not as good as what you see, what you see is not as good as what you know, what you know is not as good as practice, and that learning reaches its extreme when it comes to practice. Just listening to the teacher can’t make the students really learn useful knowledge. Nowadays, with the influence of examination-oriented education, teachers and parents pursue scores too much, and the participation and subject position of middle school students in English classroom are gradually down, which is very easy to undermine students" enthusiasm and interest.

In the process of English teaching, teachers can not teach only with textbooks to make students take notes blindly, but should create a good language environment in which students themselves can participate in cross-cultural communication, experience cultural differences, and form an open, equal and inclusive cross-cultural attitude. Students should also change their own way of learning. They should not only rely on the teachers, but actively participate in the classroom to improve their ability to project themselves.

4. Strategies of Strengthening Culture Education in Primary School

4.1 Broadening the content of English textbooks

English Curriculum standard for Compulsory Education (2017) proposes to help students to understand the diversity of the world, form cross-cultural awareness, promote international understanding, carry forward the spirit of patriotism, form a sense of social responsibility and innovation, and improve humanistic literacy in embodying the similarities and differences between Chinese and foreign cultures. Cross-cultural education can reduce and eliminate some culture shock in communication. After having studied the English textbooks for primary students, we find that culture accounts for a large proportion of them. But school teachers generally pay less attention to it, and the content is usually isolated and boring, so it is difficult for teachers to apply it vividly to English teaching. Hence it is undoubtedly important to expand the culture content of English textbooks (Cao 194).

4.1.1 Permeating cross-cultural awareness through carefully designed class

In English teaching, classes can be carefully designed to permeate cross-cultural awareness and make full use of the principle of comparison and integration of culture education. Through class activities, teacher may highlight the differences and make students understand the Chinese and Western cultures deeply in addition to learning the compulsory knowledge.

For example, in studying A Healthy Diet (Unit 3 in the second volume of Grade Six) students not only need to learn the words, sentence patterns and daily phrases of this unit, but also need to explore the cultural gap between the Chinese and western cultures with teachers’ guidance. First, when talking about story time, the teacher can guide students by giving the following cues: what Mike eats in the morning, what cutlery he uses, what Yang Ling eats, and what tableware she uses. Let the students have a discussion, and then the teacher can extend to the history and customs of both Chinese and Western eating habits. In the west, cattle and mutton are the main food, while bread and vegetables are non-staple food. Cooking is also relatively crude. The knife and fork are very suitable. While China has a long history of a self-sufficient intensive farming country, in which the main crops are small grain gramineous crops such as millet. The staple food is rice, while the non-staple food is mainly vegetable. Even if there is meat, it is often cut into small pieces or crushed into minced meat. So flexible chopsticks beat knives and forks to become the main cutlery of the Chinese people. In this way, the cultural gap may be narrowed little by little and the students will pay more attention to the differences of other dietary cultures in their daily diet, and gradually develop cross-cultural awareness.

4.1.2 Experiencing the English culture in dialogue teaching

The majority of the texts are expressed by dialogues in primary school English textbooks. When teachers explain the textbooks, they tend to spread direct narratives, and do not create appropriate situations for allowing students to have flexible dialogues. The real language teaching environment can actively promote students" intercultural communicative competence, and students can deepen their cultural image through active participation. Although students know the use of some sentences, they hardly can say the culture behind them. It is easy to create communication barriers. Therefore, teachers should attach importance to the dialogue teaching in class, creating a real-like situation, and skillfully introducing some cultural differences which are not sufficient in the textbooks.

For example, when learning the sentence “How old are you”, the teacher can introduce the different customs between Chinese and the west when private questions about age, income, religion etc. are asked (Yu amp; Liu 19). It is proper to ask a person’s age, salary, marriage directly in Chinese in order to show the concern from the elderly relative. However, in English, it is a very impolite behavior. Another example, in textbooks, when people see their friends, they say "Hi" or “Hello” or “Nice to meet you”. These are the ways that English people use to greet each other. Teacher can compare the greetings to Chinese ones. Chinese people believe that food is the stall of life and this cultural background is vividly reflected in the way they greet each other.. When Chinese meet with acquaintances, “Have you eaten?” is very common. In teaching, teachers can emphasize this difference and create different situations of dialogue between China and England.

4.1.3 Permeating word culture by optimizing vocabulary teaching

In the textbooks, words are very important and required to be grasped, which needs more than just spelling and pronouncing them. Without understanding their cultural connotation, it is easy to lead to errors in cross-cultural communication. However, it is almost not reflected in the textbooks, so cultural connotation of words require expanding.

For instance, in learning color words, literal meaning is easy to be obtained. But the interesting domestic foreign cultural difference of these words may be easily ignored. Teachers can make some complement. White stands for sanctity and nobility in some western countries that wedding dress is white while white stands for death in China. Similarly, Chinese people generally like red because it symbolizes festive, but red in English often represents danger. In conjunction with daily customs, teachers can let the students have a deeper understanding of cultural differences by adding the cultural meaning of color words. Another example, Chinese may use “negro” simply to refer to a black person which will surprise Americans. For Chinese, “negro” is just used to describe people with black skin. For black Americans, it is a word stands for discrimination strongly for some historical and cultural reasons. With the cultural information, better teaching effect can be achieved in interesting English class.

4.2 Improving the specialization of teachers’ teaching level

On the one hand, the cultural literacy of teachers in some areas is generally low, and teachers’ understanding of Chinese and Western culture is not thorough enough, either, which leads many teachers tend to avoid talking about or understate it when in teaching. On the other hand, most teaching content is inappropriate for students’ learning. In all these cases, it is an immediate emergency to improve the requirement of specialization in teachers’ teaching level.

4.2.1 Updating professional knowledge

One of the important contents of teachers’ professional development is to master and update their professional knowledge which includes systematic basic knowledge,, such as grammar, vocabulary, phonetics, text and other knowledge, as well as solid language basic skills and better comprehensive language use ability. Therefore, to be qualified for good lessons, teachers should constantly update their professional knowledge and master the basic skills.

4.2.2 Making reflection on teaching

Teaching reflection is a collection of finding problems, analyzing problems and solving problems which is also an indispensable process for the development of teachers" specialization. Through practice and reflection, teachers can know their own deficiencies, and solve the problems in a targeted way. For example, when teachers obviously feel their ignorance of the knowledge about culture after class, they would do more to develop themselves by constantly reading more Chinese and English masterpieces and other helpful ways to increase their knowledge.

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