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Therefore, we have to admit that a severe imbalance of culture input really exists in the current culture teaching for English majors.
2.2 The Ubiquity of Chinese Culture Aphasia among English Majors
As mentioned above, there’s a severe culture imbalance in the existing English language teaching for English majors. More importantly, the insufficiency of Chinese culture input will lead to the failure in intercultural communication. Professor Cong Cong puts forward the concept of “Chinese Culture Aphasia”. She points out the fact that many English language learners can’t express Chinese culture fluently in English even though they have mastered English grammar and acquired a large vocabulary. Therefore, this phenomenon is not only due to the average or poor basic knowledge of English, but primarily due to the inadequate input of Chinese culture. Because the first step to display Chinese culture fluently and accurately in intercultural communication is to really understand the essence of Chinese culture.
In fact, some scholars and researchers have realized this problem. In addition, many of them have also conducted a series of empirical studies on this topic in recent years. For example, Lan Jun conducted a proficiency test in Shanxi Normal University with 71 students who major in English on their language ability in expressing Chinese culture in English. The test result reveals that their ability to present the native culture in English, with the accuracy rating of 25.6% only, is very weak. In addition, 97.2% of the subjects admit that they are incompetent to introduce the unique culture with Chinese features clearly and fluently when communicating with foreigners due to the deficient input of Chinese culture. Shang Xuming chose 200 English majors in Xinyu University as the subjects of the investigation. The test consists of three sections: the translation of Chinese culture-loaded words into English, the question test of Chinese culture(answer questions in Chinese) and the English essay writing about any one ,源Z自+优尔=文)论(文]网[www.youerw.com of the Chinese traditional festivals. In the first part, the average score is 27 and the passing rate is 8.5%. All of the 200 subjects make some mistakes in translation. The correct rate of some profound Chinese culture-loaded words’ translations is 0%, such as the Book of Changes(易经), the Four Treasures of Study(文房四宝), Weddings and Funerals(红白喜事). Students perform worse in the second part than in the first part. The student who earns the highest scores on these 12 basic questions about Chinese culture only answers seven correctly. Among the 12 questions, there are 5 questions that no one can answer. In the last part, many students optionally invent the historical origins of Chinese traditional festivals. The result indicates that English majors’ common knowledge about Chinese culture are extremely scarce. In addition, 100% of them think that they are incompetent to introduce Chinese culture in English expertly. No wonder, then, that English majors who have poor mastery of the knowledge of Chinese culture will be incapable of expressing Chinese culture in English when they deal with foreigners.