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In recent years, many scholars have realized the great positive effect of Chinese culture input on English language teaching. Both Liu Changjiang and Cui Gang offer a proposal to infiltrate Chinese culture into English language teaching. In fact, there appears a phenomenon called Chinese-culture craze because of the gradual promotion of Chinese status, more and more foreigners are interested in Chinese culture especially the rich and profound Chinese traditional culture. Therefore, it’s inevitably that Chinese culture will be talked about frequently in intercultural communication. In the context of globalization, we have to rethink profoundly that what kind of English language learners we intend to cultivate. We should also consider carefully whether English majors can neglect our native culture and only focus on the learning of western culture.
This paper will analyze the problems resulting from the insufficient Chinese culture input in English language teaching, and then centers on the importance of Chinese culture input for English majors, and finally it will offer some suggestions for adding Chinese culture input for English majors.
II. The Urgency of Chinese Culture Input for English Majors
2.1 The Severe Imbalance of Culture Input for English Majors
There’s no denying that culture input plays an important role in the process of language teaching. Culture in foreign language learning is not a dispensable fifth skill which followed by the four basic skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing and it should be emphasized throughout the whole process of foreign language teaching. As a matter of fact, acquiring a foreign language not only includes the grasp of linguistic competence but also includes communicative competence and social-cultural competence. In other words, culture teaching is very significant for foreign language learners in order to obtain a better learning effect. The good news is that the important role of culture input in language teaching became a hot topic in China from the late 1980s. More and more English scholars and educators in China have recognized that culture input serves a vital function in English language teaching, such as Hu Wenzhong, Gao Yihong, Shu Dingfang and so on.
At present, many universities have offered some culture courses to English language learners, especially to English majors. For example, the course of A Brief Introduction of Major English-speaking Countries, which systematically introduces the history, geography, customs and some other culture information about English-speaking countries, particularly about America and Britain. Literature of the United States is a course for English majors to get some information about excellent American literatures. Similarity, English Literature mainly concerns the introduction of representative works of English writers. In addition to these specialized courses pertaining to western culture, the culture background of English-speaking countries also infiltrate in some basic English courses for English majors. For instance, College English Intensive Reading is an important compulsory course for English majors. Students may benefit from this practical comprehensive course which will increase their vocabulary and improve their grammatical skills and reading comprehension abilities. At the same time, culture information also involved in this course. And the culture information is almost related to western countries on the account of the selected articles are nearly written by English-speaking countries’ writers. In addition, the listening materials in English Visual-Audio-Oral are also almost about western countries. It’s easy to find that enough emphasis is laid on the status and value of western culture input in English language teaching. But in reality, we have to admit that English language teaching in China, especially for the culture teaching, is still far from satisfaction. And the main problem we face in culture teaching is the severe imbalance of culture input. Chinese culture course is just an optional course required by the new teaching syllabus for English majors. In addition, the courses of Chinese culture also have not been offered by English Language Institute in majority of universities.