On culture importing in Foreign Language Teaching

北京城市學(xué)院 劉 莎

1. The background of culture and language teaching

Nowadays, with the further study of language and culture,people increasingly have a newly understanding and recognition in regard to the relationship between those two. However,the complicated relationship between language learning and culture learning has been a thorny question that hard to make certain. In general, the treatment of the relationship between language and culture can be classified into three angles： some claim that language and culture are inseparable in that they are deeply rooted and intertwined. On the contrary,others persist the standpoint that language and culture are not considerable inseparable and can be culturally neutral as culture does not play a significant role in teaching language or can be processed not at the same time. While even there has some people hold the opinion that language and culture can be temporarily separated.As far as I am concerned,teaching language undoubtedly and inevitably involves teaching culture and they can hardly come alone without each other during the process of classroom English teaching. Based on the investigation on the relationship between language and culture from the articles and books, this paper will illustrate variable views from different people towards the question. Afterwards,I will propose the position which I stand for, then further examine the importance of culture teaching in language teaching.Through which way the aim of language can be fully achieved will also be included.

2. Variable views towards the relationship of language and culture in language teaching

2.1 Language and culture cannot be separated.

British anthropologists,Taylor once made an insightful discussion with respect to culture： it is a compound ensemble which includes knowledge, belief,art, morals, law, custom and the other competence as well as habits formed in the society .Virtually, culture covers the whole social phenomena, including language. Thus, as the product of cultural environment, language is the carrier of culture. It is proved that language and culture cannot separate from each other. As cultural carrier, each language possesses its peculiar cultural features and each language records the history of the people and idea, change and development of their own.Therefore, the acquisition of a national language is also the acquisition of its culture. Just as Brown proposes that learning second language is meanwhile learning second culture.

Moreover, as early as the beginning of the 20th century,American anthropologists and linguists, Sapir-Whorf pointed out that language and culture are profoundly interconnected as different language will create different thoughts and limitations, individuals who share the same culture but speak in different languages may possess different views towards the world in that the use of language will affect people on expressing their ideas.Therefore, language is deeply rooted in culture and culture can be shown and delivered by language from generation to generation . Gumperz and Levinson even review the linguistic relativism and convert the theory from language centered to culture centered. In 1972,Hymes proposed that pragmatic knowledge contained the correctly application of language ability in different social contexts.What’s more, Kumaravadivelu and Omaggio claim that linguistic and pragmatic knowledge are inseparable in that “whenever you teach a language, you also teach a complex system of cultural customs, values and ways of thinking and acting”. Thus,it is impossible to lose contact with its culture while learning a foreign language. It is apparently that teaching language does entail teaching culture.Without language, culture will lose its carrier, while without culture, language will became water without source. American anthropologist, Ward H. Good enough expounded the relationship between language and culture in his book cultural anthropology and linguistics, which put forward that a society's language is one aspect of the a society’s culture, to certain extent the relationship between language and culture can even be treated as part and whole .

For the sake of further examine the interconnection between language and culture in classroom teaching, Drewelow makes an experiment and collects the data by using the instruments of questionnaire and interview,resulted in finding that how learners acquired pragmatic knowledge through a French grammar lesson and lexical lesson respectively. In the grammar class, learners were taught by teachers in regard to the using forms of French vous and tu,aiming at mastering the knowledge of when to use and how to use each of them in proper ways.After the observation from the conversation in the pedagogical video, learners recognize and obtain the linguistic feature as formal or informal in the practical way of using French.Thus, through the process of language acquisition, learners ended up with accomplishing the foster of cultural competence.Another French vocabulary lesson draws the conclusion by differentiating the meaning between habiter and vivre. In the interview, the student named Maggie explained that before she learnt these two French words,she has no perception towards how French people describing their life. Yet after the lexical acquisition, she knew that when French people explaining their plan of living, they always prefer to use habiter, while vivre mostly concerning the standard of qualified life. As a result, learner acquires the knowledge that French people attach great significance to the quality of life in French culture after language learning. From this, it can be clearly seen that learning a new language includes the study and acquisition of a new culture . Therefore, the relationship between language and pragmatic knowledge is deeply rooted and inevitably intertwined with each other.

2.2 Language and culture can be culturally neutral

Contrary to the view above,other people propose that the relationship between language and culture are separable. To be specific, it means that while teaching language, it is not necessary to involve pragmatic knowledge. Moreover, language can be culturally neutral in that language and culture can be processed not at the same time. In this opinion, language has been treated as an instrument for communication in any disciplines and anywhere.

According to Alptekin , as for certain language, native speakers and non-native speaker employ a shared context and culture. Take the language of English as an example, with the increasingly use of English in recent years, due to its dominant role all through the world, it is treated as a lingua franca that in the process of English interaction and communication,English functions as a nativeculture-free code. In other words, English as a Lingua Franca has been stressed its role as a value-free method of cultural belonging in interactional interaction. For instance,English is the official language but not the mother tongue in Malaysia, yet Malaysian is prone to shape the role of English as a value-free method of intercultural communication.Therefore, Malaysian acquires the knowledge of English without acquiring pragmatic knowledge in class and then through the shared English culture in that society obtaining the acquisition of cultural knowledge .

Moreover, in favor of the opinion that language can be culturally neutral, it is said that culture can be taught and treated as content. From the standpoint of content, it is explained that culture can be acquired by other means not through learning language, in other words, language skill and pragmatic knowledge can be taught in two separate classes. Taking my learning experience in undergraduate education as an example, the English department arranges different types of compulsory course for us students. Consequently, we obtain the linguistic knowledge including macro-language skills through the course named “the integrated skills of English”,while the acquisition of pragmatic knowledge is gained from the course of “British literature and culture”and “American literature and culture”. However, the opinion of that language can be culturally neutral has been strongly disapproved by some scholars and researchers as they treat it as a fallacy to some extent and I also oppose to it.

2.3 Language and culture can be temporarily separated

Among the opponents, Risager deems that both of the two positions look tenable. Thus he undertakes to neutralize the stereotyped treatment of languageculture relationship by proposing a new notion languaculture to link those two. It seems that Risager attempt to use this new conception to build a bridge to connect the relationship between linguistic feature and pragmatic knowledge. To be specific, languaculture refers to culture in language extended across pragmatic contexts as well as discourse communities.In his view, language can be integrated with culture from different countries in the world and it is the combination between lingua franca and culture . For example, people from Japanese and Australia make a conversation using language of English, it seems that in the process of interaction in English, their own culture has been unconsciously integrated with language which result in a new culture on the basis of the fusion of Japanese culture and Australian culture.

What’s more, Risager regards culture as context in language learning, for instance, nonnative speakers of Germany learn German in professional language school from the introductory level, studying on the vocabulary, grammar without the knowledge of German culture.After school’s teaching,learners may be involved in the social environment in which the lingua franca there is German,later learners can effectively foster their pragmatic competence while communicating with the surroundings and obtaining a further understanding of German culture. From this,the acquisition of language and pragmatic knowledge are temporarily separated.

3. My views towards the relationship between language and culture in language teaching

Concerning the variable views towards the relationship between language and culture as mentioned, I agree with the first one that language learning involves learning culture. From my point of view, the relationship between language and culture is interconnected and intertwined.As a communication tool,language is learnt and used for communicating with other people,indeed interaction is the final objective. Therefore, in order to better understand and use the language, it is pivotal to grasp the pragmatic knowledge of the target language and facilitate learners to fully obtain the interactive competence. As without the knowledge of the related cultural background knowledge, it will easily result in obstacles in communication and cause misunderstanding. Therefore,it is of great significance to integrate cultural knowledge into the process of language learning.

Take one sentence from an English class of junior high middle school as an example,“It’s raining cats and dogs.”.If the teacher does not entail the involved cultural knowledge to provide students with the related guidance in class,though students recognize the meaning of each word in the sentence, they still can hardly understand the hidden meaning of the sentence. Therefore,teachers should combine the cultural knowledge and language skills together to explain the background information which in European fairy tale that cat can affect the weather and the monitor of rain is accompanied with dog, thus the occurrence of cat and dog can bring the heavy rain. Through the integrated teaching, learners will fully understand the sentence and leave a deep impression on it. Another example is from a story book of primary school students which talking about the figurative meaning of color . The text is shown as follow. “Mr. Brown is a very white man. He was looking rather green the other day. He has been feeling blue lately.When I saw him, he was in brown study. I hope he will soon be in the pink again.” Students may feel strongly confused about the given text without the related cultural background and knowledge and fail to comprehend the following texts. Hence, it is required to seepage the analogy of which these color-words stand for in western countries to make students better understand the words. As in this text, the metaphor meaning of “white”refers to reliable, while green stands for the uncomfortable condition of body, blue can be translated into tightness and a bad mood, whereas pink means a high spirits. On the basis of the related knowledge of color in western countries, the language learning in class will not exist any obstacles or obstructions towards the understanding of the text. Thus, it is of great significance to integrate cultural knowledge into language leaning.

T o b e s p e c i f i c, t h e implication of cultural learning in language learning should be emphasized as follow. To begin with, teachers should pay more attention to cultivate learners’cultural awareness. Moreover, on the basis of fostering cultural awareness, it is needed to distinguish the diversities exist among different cultural background and information. Above all,instructors should foster a clear understanding of the significance that penetrating cultural knowledge into learning language. Only when the teaching process involves the penetration of culture, can the purpose of teaching be fully and efficiently achieved.

4. Conclusion

As a whole, language is closely bound up with culture in communicative contexts. And while the process of learning language, it is indeed needed to pay attention to culture learning at the same time. To facilitate students well-grasping a foreign language, instructors should not merely emphasis on the macroskills (listening, reading,writing and speaking) and micro-sills but also penetrate its cultural knowledge at the same. It is fairly essential to interconnect teaching culture with teaching language and apply the cultural teaching throughout learning English. Only when learners fully understand the foreign countries’ culture,can you better interact with foreigners and grasp the application of language.