Cultural Factors in English Teaching and Learning 英语专业(毕业论文).docVIP

PAGE PAGE 14 Cultural Factors in English Teaching and Learning I. Introduction Nowadays, culture plays a very important role in the foreign language classroom. Because cultural differences may give rise to misunderstanding that exists in intercultural communication. So the teaching of culture in the English classroom has been becoming a heated topic and people pay more and more attention to the cultural studies and intercultural communication in recent years. Therefore, culture teaching is feasible in the foreign language classroom. It can help English learners raise the cultural awareness and develop the communicative competence. Many researchers and educators worldwide wrote articles to present their views on the importance of culture teaching and the principles and methods to carry out culture teaching. Most of English teachers have already recognized the impossibility of an English acquisition without the relevant cultural understanding. Both scholars and practitioners have reached a consensus that the inclusion of cultural teaching in English classroom should be a must. D. hymes, the well-known American sociolinguist, held that communicative competence should include not only linguistic competence, but also the full understanding and a good command of the sociocultural elements closely related to the language use. In the current understanding of the place of culture in second and foreign language pedagogy, the work of Michael Byram has played a prominent role. In the late 1980s, Byram observed that culture represents “hidden” curriculum in second and foreign language teaching .He indicated that language teaching can rarely take place without implicitly teaching the culture of its speakers because language invariably refers to their knowledge and perceptions of the world, the concepts of culture and culture learning. Byram also pointed out that communicative competence involves “appropriate language use which, in part at least, is culture specific” (Byram 61