Language learning and cultural learning are actually two sides of the same coin. Children also learn their own culture through their mother tongue. Therefore, foreign language learners should also understand and learn foreign culture in the process of learning a foreign language. However, it was not until the middle of the 20th century that foreign language teaching circles began to realize the importance of cultural teaching. In the 1970s, the United States formed an interdisciplinary comprehensive discipline "cross-culture", and the former Soviet Union formed "Language Ethnic Studies", which provided a new impetus and a direct source of information for cultural teaching. 1983, Stern, 1983) puts forward a teaching model including structure, social language, social culture and experience. Culture teaching plays an important role in foreign language teaching. However, the history of cross-cultural communication in China is very short, and people have been paying attention to this issue since the early 1980s. People gradually realize that it is impossible to learn a foreign language well only by focusing on the form of the language without paying attention to the connotation of the language.
Goodenoungh, a famous American anthropologist, pointed out in Cultural Anthropology and Linguistics: "The language of a society is an aspect of its culture, and the relationship between language and culture is part and whole. As an integral part of culture, language has its particularity: it is the main tool for learning culture, and people acquire the whole culture in the process of learning and using it. " So this is the relationship between culture and language. First of all, the language of a society is an important and quite special part of social culture. It is the carrier of culture and the foundation of the whole culture of society. It is through language that culture can be preserved and passed on to contemporary or future generations, so any form of language has its cultural connotation. Secondly, from the relationship between language and society, language is also a social phenomenon. The essential attribute of language is that as a tool of social communication, the relationship between language and social culture is inseparable. Therefore, to learn any language, we must understand the social culture of the people who use it. Ignoring the unity of language teaching and social and cultural background knowledge teaching will not only affect the understanding and mastery of language, but also often lead to the misuse of language in communication.
As an English teacher, if we don't consider language as the carrier of culture when teaching English, language is an inseparable part of culture. Then, when our students communicate with westerners in their lives, they are likely to have the following situations. For example, when talking to foreigners, I accidentally sneezed. The other party said, "Bless you!" You will look blank and don't know what to say. You sit in a Chinese restaurant in a foreign Chinatown, as if everything you know is part of your local culture. When the waiter brings it to fortune cookie, you may want to put it in your mouth as a kind of food, but you don't know that it is one of the representatives of China catering culture in the United States-signing cakes. The above two examples were not invented by the author, and both happened around me. The hero of the incident can't speak English well, and what he lacks is the interpretation of the culture behind the other language. As the first teacher of children's English learning, we should encourage children to go deep into the culture and see English!
Second, what is culture and its classification?
Culture is a very broad concept, and its definition is varied and controversial. The definition of culture put forward by scholars has concentrated the wisdom of several generations. Among them, the definition put forward by British anthropologist edward tylor in Primitive Culture 187 1 is still one of the most extensive and accurate definitions. His definition has a great influence. His famous definition is: "culture or civilization, in terms of its broad national consciousness, is still a complex whole including knowledge, belief, art, law, morality, customs and the abilities and habits acquired by anyone as a member of society." The definition of culture in China's Ci Hai is: "Culture in a broad sense refers to the sum of material wealth and spiritual wealth created by human society in historical practice. Generally speaking, culture refers to the history, geography, customs, traditional customs, lifestyle, literature and art, code of conduct and values of the country where the target language is located. " What are the classifications of culture? The first is knowledge and culture. We have just discussed the definition of culture, but this definition still tends to be general. In order to distinguish easily, people are used to dividing culture into two categories, and calling social, political, economic, literary, artistic, historical, philosophical and scientific and technological achievements knowledge culture. Second, spread culture. Social customs, living habits, ways of thinking and codes of conduct are called communicative culture or common sense culture. Communicative culture covers a wide range of languages, from daily greetings, compliments, thanks and apologies to understanding and mastering euphemisms, taboos and body language. In other words, as long as we learn a language, we will inevitably come into contact with the communicative culture of the language learning country.
Third, the necessity of cultural awareness infiltration in primary school English teaching (1) is the knowledge of modern foreign language educators.
Many modern foreign language educators have explained why culture teaching should be carried out from different angles. Chastain, 1976) believes that the reason for cultural teaching is that the ability to communicate with foreigners depends not only on the foreign language ability, but also on the understanding of the cultural customs and expectations of the other side; Cross-cultural understanding itself is one of the basic purposes of the interdependent modern international society; Foreign language learners have great interest in language learners. Brembeck, 1977) said humorously and simply: learning a foreign language instead of learning a foreign culture is an excellent way to make a glib fool.
(B) is the "English Curriculum Standards" requirements for English teaching.
The overall goal of English curriculum standards is to cultivate students' comprehensive language use ability, which is based on the all-round development of language skills, language knowledge, emotional attitudes, learning strategies and cultural awareness. Taking cultural awareness as one of the curriculum objectives, it is proposed that letting students know about foreign cultures, especially those of English-speaking countries, will help students improve their ability to correctly understand and use English, constantly expand their cultural horizons, deepen their understanding of their own cultures, and cultivate their world awareness and humanistic awareness.
(C) This is the requirement of English teaching for primary school students.
A few years ago, in the teaching of grade six, I designed such an immature cultural test. (For details, please refer to the related resource "Examination Questions about Cultural Knowledge". These ten questions are very different from the Chinese questions I designed in the past. It seems that there is no knowledge of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar, but it contains some cultural connotations beyond the language appearance. It may not cover a wide range of cultural fields, but it is what students should know in the process of English learning. Disappointingly, basically no student has answered all ten questions, including many students who have passed the PETS Level 1 and Level 2 exams. I gave this topic to some English teachers, and few of them got it right. In addition, some teachers questioned me and knew what impact these had on English teaching. Or is there any substantial help for students' entrance examination?
Indeed, "the separation of language teaching and cultural teaching" is still an urgent problem in our primary school teaching. There is no connection between our students' English knowledge and English culture. In the process of English teaching, some of our primary school English teachers attach great importance to the tangible things of English language, such as pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar, but seldom pay attention to the rich cultural background knowledge hidden behind these language material shells.
Fourth, how to infiltrate cultural awareness in English teaching (1) The infiltration of cultural awareness in classroom teaching
Our teaching target is primary school students. Most students have not formed the habit of reading English in primary schools because of their young age, different family background and different language environment for English learning. Therefore, the author has always believed that the best way of cultural infiltration is in our classroom. Then, how to give consideration to the explanation of language knowledge in a limited time, and how to infiltrate cultural information while explaining language knowledge? The author made a preliminary attempt to use classroom language and body language effectively by designing game activities, innovating evaluation methods.
1. Infiltrate cultural awareness in game activities
Playing games is a child's nature. The famous Italian educator Montessori once said: "Children need activities almost more than food." Then, how to use games as the carrier of language knowledge and cultural infiltration in teaching? How to determine the target culture? At present, there is no ready-made teaching design in our teaching materials, so teachers need to spend some time. For example, the author is teaching third-grade students ... In this class, the traditional activity "Looking for Easter Eggs" of the western festival "Easter" is designed and arranged in the practice session. A classmate in the class dressed as an Easter bunny hid the eggs prepared in advance in a corner of the classroom, and then asked other students, "Where are my Easter eggs?" Let other students guess. Students will ask: Is it in your desk? Is it on the floor? Is it under your chair? Is it in front of the blackboard? Students who guess correctly can get this egg. Students' enthusiasm for participation is very high. In the specific activities of "looking for eggs", they naturally mastered several locative prepositions such as in, on, under, front and behind. After the game of "Looking for Easter Eggs" is finished, the teacher will introduce the Easter in the West through courseware, such as the origin of Easter, the English name of Easter Bunny, the traditional Easter activities in the West, and the largest Easter egg in the world. Students' initial understanding of Easter has been established accordingly.
In addition, teachers can also play different games in combination with different festivals in China and the West. For example, I once imitated "trick or treat" and "bite an apple" in class on Halloween, the most popular festival for children. While learning about Christmas, I designed an activity called "Secret Santa Claus". Let each student prepare a small Christmas present in advance, then write his name on a small piece of paper, and then mix all the pieces of paper with the students' names, so that students can take turns to take them. If the name on the note is who, who will play Santa Claus and give the prepared gift to each other. Students who play Santa Claus should say to each other: Merry Christmas! This is my gift, the mysterious Santa Claus. Students who receive gifts should also respond: thank you! Merry Christmas, Santa Claus! Open the presents. We also imitate western birthday parties in class. Let's play their traditional game "Pin the tail on the donkey". This game is somewhat similar to our "sticky nose". Blindfolded children need to be prompted to stick donkey's tail. I train students to use English as a hint in class, "Go straight! Turn left! Lift your tail! Post it ... "Every time I play this game, the classroom atmosphere is very warm.
2. Use classroom evaluation activities to infiltrate cultural awareness.
In recent years, English education evaluation has been a topic of great concern to English educators. Different researchers have different definitions of "evaluation". Ralph W. Tyler believes that "evaluation is a process" and "basically lies in determining the degree to which courses and teaching plans have reached the established educational goals". In other words, it is necessary to check the degree to which the curriculum design and teaching implementation have reached the set goals we expect, and the evaluation is to judge this degree. As our front-line teachers, no matter what the definition of evaluation is, we should design specific evaluation tools that conform to students' age characteristics and cognitive rules. The "learning growth record bag" widely used in recent years is a good combination of synchronous evaluation and follow-up evaluation.
Our front-line teachers also have very effective evaluation methods popular with students in class. For example, language encouragement, such as giving small stickers to good students, stamping small seals and so on. In addition to the general classroom evaluation terms, I also pay attention to collecting foreign teachers' evaluation terms in my life, understand their real classroom model, and try to use some more interesting and authentic English and American teachers to encourage children's language in their classrooms. For example, give me a high/low five. Please give yourself an encouragement! Give yourself a big round of applause! Please give him/her a thumbs up! Wait a minute. Especially in the middle and lower grades, senior five, an evaluation method accompanied by physical contact, can arouse their * * *.
In the daily teaching process, the author also found that students are very interested in the stickers issued by teachers in each class and always hope to get more. But what about after you get it? Some are casually pasted in pencil boxes, some are sandwiched in books, and some are pasted on students' heads by teachers, and then may disappear. In fact, the number of stickers students get in each class can really reflect the learning status of students in that class. But students don't have a specific place to collect these stickers, so they don't know how much they have gained in this class, this week and this month. In other words, the number of these stickers can reflect the learning situation of students to some extent. If you let it go and lose casually, the sticker will only become an evaluation method for a certain class, and it is impossible to see the students' learning situation for a period of time or even a year. This is a great pity for both students and teachers. In view of the above situation, I designed the following two "reward papers", which are applicable to two different semesters (see Appendices 2 and 3 for details). Each picture is divided into several different parts according to the month of this semester. For example, all the stickers obtained this month in 10 are posted in the column "10". Every month, according to the number of student posts, the five stars of the month will be judged. For example, 10 is called "October Star". At the end of each semester, ten superstars of this semester will be judged by adding up the posts of each month. In addition, I will have pictures of important western festivals next to each month. For example, there will be pictures of Mother's Day next to May and Father's Day next to June. Since the first grade, students have been using this "reward paper" to stick on the back of English books. In this way, in two or three semesters, students will be familiar with the main western festival "Eye", and often add some pictures next to them to supplement other festivals they know.
In addition, I also designed a small card named "Ginger dollar" under my English name to encourage students who have made progress in their studies. Some famous Chinese and Western buildings and holiday foods will be printed on cards, or simply follow the example of "fortune cookie" and write some sentences full of good wishes or philosophies on cards, which are also very popular among students.
3. Use body language to penetrate cultural awareness
When I was studying abroad, I once hitchhiked. At that time, I was thinking hard with my classmates, as if I just couldn't remember what the gesture was to get a ride. The situation is quite embarrassing. Another time, I attended a Christmas open day held by a local people and had an interesting conversation with one of the Canadians about digital gestures. He taught me the gestures of Canadian numbers and I taught him the gestures of Beijing numbers. I learned Canadian numeral gestures once, because they are very simple. And I taught him several times before he learned it, because ours is much more complicated than their gestures. At that time, we all thought it was a very interesting topic.
Indeed, in the process of teaching English, we should make students understand. "Body language" and "gesture" are used to help people convey information, which is a non-verbal communication way. Because it makes it easy for the other person to understand you. Therefore, body language, like language, is a part of culture. Body language has different meanings in different cultures. In class, I try to use some common body language in Britain and America to make students understand the meaning. As shown in the figure,
Unexpectedly, students showed unprecedented enthusiasm for body language, and the sixth grade students collected a lot of information about body language through the Internet and other media after class. Use the five minutes before each class to introduce English knowledge, and introduce the body language of Britain and the United States and other eastern and western countries continuously. I think, through such activities, they will gradually understand that it is very important to know the body language of this country when you learn a foreign language. Respecting their customs will help you communicate with others and get along well with the locals. In this sense, the infiltration of these related cultural information will certainly play a very important role in their future English learning.
(B) the infiltration of cultural awareness outside the classroom teaching
Classroom is the main channel for the infiltration of cultural information, but this does not mean that students should give up their autonomous learning after class. On the contrary, if teachers "keep students' appetite" in class, they will not only have a short-term superficial interest in English learning, but also make students have a lasting interest in English learning and cultural differences between English-speaking countries and their own countries, and are willing to explore in their own extracurricular time, so that English learning can be considered successful. The author tries to make students explore the field of "culture" more deeply by extracurricular activities such as "reading recommendation cards" with the theme of "East meets West".
1. Use "reading recommendation card" to infiltrate cultural awareness.
In recent years, children's reading has been implemented as an important educational strategy in the wave of educational reform around the world. In the United States, former President Clinton pointed out according to relevant research that good reading ability must be possessed before the third grade of primary school, which is the key to successful study in the future. The U.S. Department of Education has successively put forward measures such as "challenging American reading" and "excellent reading plan". In Japan, the government subsidizes NGOs to organize storytelling activities for children and enrich school books. In addition, the Children's Reading Promotion Law was promulgated, and April 23rd of each year was designated as Children's Reading Day. It can be seen that governments all over the world regard cultivating children's reading ability as a strategic task.
Writing is a written language, and it is a symbol to record the cultures of all ethnic groups. Its important relationship with culture is self-evident. However, in primary school, as far as the reading of mother tongue classics is concerned, it has been seriously impacted by fast food culture such as comics and games. How much English do you read? In view of this phenomenon of students, I try to carry out the exhibition of "English reading recommendation card" among the students of grade five and six. Every student uses the summer vacation to read a classic book (such as Oxford bookworm, FLTRP graded books, etc.) that suits his English reading ability. ), and then make a "* * * reading recommendation card" according to the book title, author's name, portrait of the protagonist, my favorite sentence, book type, my reading feeling, happiness index, purchase place and other information (see Appendix 4 for details). And hold exhibitions in schools, and students can also exchange books. This activity was warmly welcomed by the students from the beginning and became an annual reserved activity of the school. In my opinion, reading recommendation activities are not only to make students feel the culture of English-speaking countries imperceptibly in vivid stories, but also to cultivate students' reading habits and lay a solid foundation for their lifelong learning.
2. Use the contrast between Chinese and Western cultures to penetrate cultural awareness.
Pay attention to the cultural connotation of English language and the differences between cultures. In other words, we should have a more accurate and profound understanding of our own culture while understanding each other's culture. When communicating with friends in English-speaking countries, our students always use their own cultural standards to judge and understand each other's language, regardless of their English language ability. For example, we students like to ask each other's age and some privacy. When praised by the other party, he seemed very restrained and at a loss. Therefore, in primary school English teaching, it is necessary to compare the eastern and western cultures and find out their similarities and differences, which is of far-reaching significance to cultivate students' intercultural communication ability.
The author once carried out a poster campaign on the theme of "When the East meets the West" in school. Ask students to collect information through various channels, compare the differences between Chinese and western countries in terms of appellation, diet, clothing, proverbs, important festivals and important national symbols, and match them with words and pictures. For example, in the process of collecting proverbs, some students find that there are proverbs with similar expressions in the West and China. For example, there is a saying in the west that "breakfast is like a king, lunch is like a prince, and diners are like paupers." . Similar to a proverb in China, "Eat well in the morning, eat well at noon and eat less at night". Some students found a very interesting relationship after studying the topic of "color and festivals". Made a "holiday color card".
In a word, it is very important to infiltrate cultural awareness into English teaching in primary schools. As long as our teachers realize the importance of cultivating cultural awareness for language learning and constantly improve their comprehensive quality, they should consider combining the specific needs of students in practice. Then, in the research field of cultural teaching, we will certainly have a bright future.