On the Infiltration of Intercultural Communication in ESP Teaching

Liaoning Police College,Dalian,China Email:1437122351@qq.com

[Abstract]Culture is the unique customs,beliefs,goals and systems of a society.Any language contains rich cultural connotations.It is impossible to learn a language well without understanding cultural norms.Therefore,language teaching and learning cannot be carried out in a vacuum.Language and culture are closely related.The purpose of this paper is to promote the development of students'cultural vision in ESP teaching,to cultivate students’cross-cultural and foreign cultural ability,so that students can use relevant knowledge to solve practical problems in cross-cultural communication,and promote students to become the main body of learning.

[Keywords]intercultural awareness;Situational communication;reform in education

Introduction

What is intercultural communication? Among numerous definitions of intercultural communication,there is one proposed by Samovar,Porter and Stefani(2000)and often quoted by others,“intercultural communication is communication between people whose cultural perceptions and symbol systems are distinct enough to alter the communication event.”(Liu&Liu,2018,p.12).According to Wenzhong Hu,“in specific communication situations,communicators with different cultural backgrounds use the same language(mother tongue or target language)for oral communication.”(Hu,2013,p.1)This definition includes the following four points:The two sides of communication must come from different cultural backgrounds;the two sides must use the same language for communication;the two sides of communication carry out real-time oral communication;the two sides of communication are engaged in direct verbal communication.

Language and culture are closely related.Because of the birth of language,human culture can be inherited.Therefore,language is the carrier of culture.At the same time,culture influences the development of language all the time,which makes the language constantly improve itself and become more accurate in order to adapt to the trend of culture.Therefore,culture influences language.Among the many factors of language learning,vocabulary can best reflect the cultural connotation of a nation.In addition,there are great differences in pragmatic rules and discourse structure between different languages,which are closely related to national cultural traditions.Language is like a mirror.It can clearly reflect the cultural connotation of a language.The two depend on each other.To understand a language,we must first understand culture,and learning culture must master language.

The Necessity of Integrating Intercultural Communication Knowledge into ESP Course

The integration of intercultural communication knowledge is the teaching requirement of College English and ESP.

According to the requirements of College English course teaching,College English is a compulsory basic course for college students.It is a teaching system guided by foreign language teaching theory,with English language knowledge and application skills,intercultural communication and learning strategies as the main content,and integrates a variety of teaching modes and teaching means.(Ministry of Education,2007)Therefore,in the design of College English curriculum,we should give full consideration to the cultivation of students’cultural quality and the teaching of international cultural knowledge.We should try our best to use language carrier to let students understand science and technology,western social culture and other knowledge.The teaching goal of ESP is to gradually cultivate and improve the students’oral communication ability in English,and to cultivate the students’ability to choose the correct discourse content for a certain discipline or a certain language category in specific situations.In 2012,the Ministry of Education issued the“Thematic planning of Higher Education”,in which special emphasis was placed on cultivating students’international vision and broad mind of respecting multiculturalism.(Ministry of Education,2012)Therefore,the Ministry of education is very concerned about the cultivation of intercultural communication ability of undergraduate talents.According to the above requirements,it is an inevitable trend to integrate intercultural knowledge teaching into ESP classroom teaching.

The integration of intercultural knowledge is the demand of China’s social and economic development.

After China’s entry into WTO,all walks of life are in the tide of economic globalization,and cooperation and exchanges with other countries are increasingly frequent.Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,the Central Committee has put forward a grand thinking path and pattern of opening up,which has received warm response in the world.China’milepost is“one belt,one road strategy”.“One belt,one road”reflects China's continuous participation in the formulation of some international rules in the process of opening up the economy.This strategy is not only economically significant,but also has far-reaching significance in history,culture and international exchanges.The strategy of“one belt,one road”will not only exert far-reaching influence on the development of the country in the next stage.It can also form a new channel and a new pattern in the world,which is of great significance.Under the background of economic globalization,the exchanges and cooperation between China and the international community are increasing day by day,which requires the practitioners of various industries not only to have profound professional skills,but also to have certain English ability and intercultural communication ability.Therefore,the intercultural communication ability is an indispensable quality for the talents trained in undergraduate education;no matter they are proficient in any professional knowledge,if they want to have international competitiveness.

The integration of intercultural knowledge is the practical demand of training international professionals.

The so-called internationalized professionals refer not only to the diplomatic personnel of a country,but also to those who are good at using foreign languages or even ESP when they are proficient in their specialties.In March 2019,the Ministry of organization and the Ministry of Education jointly held a conference on promoting the reform of public foreign language teaching and vigorously cultivating high-quality international professionals.At this conference,the Ministry of education stressed that it is one of the major events of this year to focus on the cultivation of students’comprehensive ability to use major + foreign language,and to train international professionals good at many things and expert in one.The meeting made us feels the urgent need for international professionals.The meeting unified the ideas and enhanced the understanding of the importance of international talent cultivation among various departments.In view of the special needs of China’s international and domestic situation for the future transnational work of international talents,the ESP teaching needs to strengthen academic exchanges with relevant institutions and institutions in developed countries in terms of disciplines and specialties.We should learn from advanced professional talent training concepts and methods in developed countries,explore long-term inter-school cooperation mechanism,expand school running vision and improve talents.At the same time,it is necessary to strengthen the contact and exchange with neighboring countries and export human resources and intelligence.The development of society has put forward higher and clearer requirements for talent training in Colleges and universities.To adapt to the development of society,international top talents should not only have professional skills,but also master the ability of autonomous learning and cross-cultural communication ability.We find that some professionals who are proficient in foreign languages do not understand the specific cultural customs and discourse traditions of some foreign countries,and are not good at using restrictive language.In their work,they will sometimes cause misunderstanding,worry and even fear of communication with foreign counterparts.Therefore,we should promote the teaching mode of ESP,and integrate the cultivation of cross-cultural awareness into the course learning so as to adapt to the comprehensive goal of talent.This is a new challenge for ESP teaching.

Ways to Cultivate Intercultural Communication Awareness and Competence

In the classroom teaching practice,the combination of communicative approach and intercultural communication theory is applied to ESP oral English teaching.The practicability and effectiveness of the communicative teaching method and the situational teaching method are brought into full play,so that the classroom teaching of oral English for special purposes can be realized and socialized,and the students’ability to communicate fluently and accurately in English can be cultivated,Through the experiment,the effective teaching methods in accordance with the characteristics of ESP oral English teaching is explored.According to the framework of cross-cultural competence in foreign language teaching,classroom activities are designed,and students are trained from three aspects of cognition,skills and actual combat.

Educational concept updating,knowledge structure upgrading and the awareness of intercultural communication enhancement

First of all,teachers should abandon backward educational ideas and guide foreign language classroom teaching with advanced ideas.What they should do first is to help students find and analyze the real reasons for their failure in language learning,so that they can find the crux and fully realize that the biggest obstacle to English language understanding is largely caused by cultural differences.Students’intercultural awareness is weak.They equate Chinese culture with western one and think that there is no essential difference between them.They have been learning English with Chinese thinking mode for a long time.In addition,due to the lack of contact opportunities with foreign cultures,they stubbornly believe that the basic connotation of the two cultures is the same,ignoring the cultural differences.Therefore,in order to improve students’intercultural communicative competence,we must pay attention to the cultivation of intercultural awareness.With the improvement of their awareness and the renewal of ideas,students have changed their inherent concepts in ESP learning.They have realized that English learning is not simply a pile up of words,grammar and questions,but the learning and understanding of foreign cultures.Only when culture comes first and self-cultivation is in place,can they really learn professional English and serve the society.Secondly,in view of the lack of intercultural knowledge of students,an elective course“comparison of Chinese and Western cultures”is provided to introduce Chinese and Western cultural traditions,customs and habits.On the one hand,it aims to expand students' cultural vision and etiquette literacy,strengthen their sensitivity to foreign culture,and then enhance their intercultural awareness,on the other hand,it aims to cultivate their ability of self-reliance of foreign culture so that they can quickly adapt to the differences of foreign culture,accurately understand each other and express themselves appropriately and generously in their future work.

Improvement of the quality of classroom teaching by infiltration of intercultural knowledge and professional English

According to the different characteristics of different professions,teachers adjust their teaching objectives in classroom teaching.They make good use of situational teaching method and case method to combine the contents of cross-cultural knowledge and professional English so that students can passively accept and actively participate in the class.This not only trains their language proficiency,but also improves their ability to analyze and solve problems.In the situational teaching class,according to the teaching content,the teacher introduces the cultural background appropriately to provide the context for professional English learning and create specific scenes so that the students can reproduce the situation described in the text through role play.Students are in the scene and try their best to play their role.When there are real people or real scenes in language learning,language will have life,and language will become full,which will stimulate students’initiative in learning language.This will not only improve their ability to use language knowledge,but also gain a sense of achievement,which will increase their interest and participation in learning professional English.American linguist Sapir once said:there is something behind language.It can’t exist without culture,and cannot be separated from the tradition and belief of social inheritance.(Sapir,1921,p.129)

Promotion in intercultural knowledge learning by integrating theory with practice

The most effective way of intercultural learning is to have the real practice of contact with different cultures.However,this kind of multicultural environment is extremely lacking in many domestic colleges and universities in the past.In recent years,with the increasing of China’s comprehensive national strength,the pace of China's integration into the world is speeding up.The students have been arranged to participate in one Belt one Road International Summit Forum held in Beijing in May 2017 and the annual Summer Davos meeting held in Dalian.The internship opportunity has made students’comprehensive ability gets all kinds of exercises,especially in intercultural communication,and has been fully promoted from ideological recognition to actual combat ability.In the actual combat,students encounter a variety of problems and embarrassment in the process of intercultural communication,some of which can be solved,and some problems can be brought back to the classroom for discussion and analysis by teachers and students.The knowledge learning process from practice to theory enables students to solve many questions that they were ignorant of in the past.Let the students reproduce the situations in the classroom on many phenomena of cultural conflicts between China and the west,such as refusing to be rewarded for helping others,complaining about hotel greetings,and differences between Chinese and foreign politeness concepts.Then teachers organize students to conduct cultural phenomenon analysis and thematic debate in groups,so as to cultivate students’critical thinking and critical thinking ability in dealing with cultural conflicts,and improve students’comprehensive humanities quality.

Conclusion

People from different cultures often make communication mistakes or fail to achieve the purpose in intercultural communication.The main reason lies in the lack of differences in cultural background,value orientation,psychological factors,social norms and so on lack of understanding.These differences are reflected through the social language rules.The so-called sociolinguistic rules refer to the rules shared by a cultural group that restrict or dominate the way of speaking.The embarrassment that students encounter in intercultural communication is due to the fact that they take the norms of their own culture or social norms as the criteria for interpreting and evaluating the behavior of others in the process of communication,which will inevitably lead to the phenomenon of“pragmatic transfer”,which will inevitably lead to the failure of communication and produce a large psychological or social distance.Therefore,from the perspective of cultural relativity,cultural differences are universal,and the standards,attitudes,norms and beliefs of a particular culture can only be understood in its own culture according to its specific conditions,that is to say,the social language rules of different cultures cannot be used to describe the speech acts of a particular culture.In intercultural communication,we should put social language rules in the first place.Therefore,the real intercultural communication takes place outside the classroom and in the real social environment.It is not enough to cultivate students’intercultural communication ability only by classroom teaching.Only close to the“actual combat”can we avoid the occurrence of communication failure.