Cultural Background Knowledge and English Teaching(7)

主要讲文化背景对英语学习的影响,值得我们学习这一方面的知识

with care, they can have the opposite effect—quickly kill interest and produce boredom.

Chinese and English-speaking people seem to look differently on the use of set phrases and expressions. Good English writing discourages what are called ―clichés‖ or ―trite expressions‖. Chinese writing, on the other hand, gives its approval to well-chosen ―four-character expressions.‖ To a native English-speaker, the following sentence would be frowned on as an example of poor writing: He slept like a log and woke up at the crack of dawn, fresh as a daisy.

Trite expressions and clichés originally caught people‘s attention precisely because they were and are so colorful and express an idea so well. But overuse caused them to lose their charm and freshness.

In persuasive writing such as social or political essays and editorials, English-speaking writers tend to be less militant in tone and language than most Chinese. The idea is to let the facts speak for themselves. In other words, the facts themselves should be able to convince the reader. Thus in such types of writing, one finds rather sparing use of such phrases as we must, we should not, it is wrong to, it is absurd, cannot be denied, resolutely demand. The tone is usually restrained; the language id generally moderate. In present-day Chinese social and political writings, facts are of primary importance, of course, but considerable stress is also laid on militancy, on making one‘s stand clear. This difference in attitudes is an important one. Experience has shown that a hard-hitting essay or editorial in Chinese does not always have the effect intended when translated into English. Instead of convincing people, the blunt tone and language often antagonize people or arouse suspicion that the writer does not have a strong case and must resort to fiery language, rather than rely on facts and reasoning.

Besides the three points of differences mentioned above, there are others. If we couldn‘t be acquainted with these differences, we would not write a standard English composition.

From what had been said, it is clear that cultural background knowledge is necessary in language teaching. Teachers should help students to solve the difficulties in language as well as in culture. Thus, further improve our quality of teaching.

It is not easy to teach cultural background knowledge. Firstly, teachers must be acquainted with the differences between the two linguistic cultures. Teachers can provide cultural information, as well as make students express themselves correctly in different occasions, and the latter is more important.

Firstly teaching material is important. A proportion of foreign material and authentic material should be used, especially dialogues, because it‘s more authentic and reflects cultural behavior followed by speakers. Authentic material refers to material selected from authentic activities concerning social factors. Next, teachers should explain cultural factors involved in the material with purpose. Below is a dialogue between two English persons:

Helen: Hello, Susan.

Susan: Hello. I‘m going to get a magazine and some chocolate. Would you like to go

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