（黄冈职业技术学院，湖北 黄冈 438002）
摘 要：The limitation of traditional English teaching is that it often confined to English language skills, ignoring the English language culture backgrounds. However, acquisition of English culture background can not only stimulate learners’ interests, but also help them master the language more comprehensively. As reading teaching is an important part of language teaching, culture backgrounds must be integrated into foreign language teaching.
关键词：culture background；influence；reading comprehension
中图分类号：G633 文献标识码：A 文章编号：
Ⅰ.Importance of Culture Teaching
Language is the carrier of culture, and also is an important part of culture, they are closely linked. Gödel’s(1985) in his Cultural Anthropology and Linguistics said: A society’s language is one aspect of its culture, the relationship between language and culture is part and whole,
the particularity of language is that it is the main tool to study foreign language, learners get the whole culture through the process of language learning and using. To really master a language, you must understand the particular social cultural background, otherwise, we can not really master the language. Language, to a certain extent, reflects the nation’s way of thinking and thinking habits. Article reading comprehension as a written form of language reflected the habits , the customs and the beliefs of the target language. Therefore, in the process of learning English, if you don’t understand British and American culture, it is impossible to understand the article. The more you understand the target language country's history, culture, traditions and customs, the more you understand correctly about the target language and the reading materials.
Ⅱ.Relationship Between Culture and Reading Comprehension
When reading an article, we absorb three layers of meaning, that is lexical meaning, grammatical meaning and social cultural meaning. Vocabulary, grammar, to a certain extent, reflects a nation's customs and way of thinking. Although we can grasp the meaning through a dictionary or a grammar book, but the meaning is abstract concept, rather than specific, imaginary one. Reading comprehension is not a simple decoding work, it is nor enough to understand the surface meaning only, we have to grasp the social values, beliefs, moral values and ethics included in the articles.
It is unthinkable for a learner to understand an article without the corresponding knowledge of culture background of the target language. American linguists Johnson compared reading comprehension vividly to a bridge between the known and the unknown. Reading is a positive communicative activity; the prior knowledge(已知信息) in reading process plays an important role in reading comprehension, and the prior knowledge is also belong to culture background to an extent. If the reader of a reading material don’t have a spark of relevant cultural background knowledge, experiencing the article contain is impossible. Many experts abroad have proved the degree of learner’s familiarity with the reading materials is depend on proportionally the learner’s familiarity with understanding. Because learners with board knowledge have the ability to link the new information with their prior knowledge，so they can read and understand effectively. Johnson (1982) had made a test about the influence of culture background on reading comprehension. Before the test, let the experimenters participated in Halloween’s typical activities, then let them read an article about Halloween and answer the questions. The discourse in test includes not only the knowledge that the experimenters had experienced, but also the information they were not familiar with. Analysis data showed that the experience of the cultural background before the test helps the reader understand the content. Thus, to realize the reading comprehension, learners must have sufficient knowledge of cultural background; the more the learners have of the culture background, the more likely they are to produce high quality reading effects.
Ⅲ.Culture Background Integrated in Reading Comprehension
In reading comprehension teaching, teachers can’t confine to explaining language points and lexical meaning, they should integrated culture background that related to reading into teaching. The teachers should first make clear what kind of culture background the student lack, and then choose appropriate method to interpret, inspiring the students to apply culture background to reading comprehension. Culture background introduce should be start from the following two aspects:
1.cultural-loaded words
Word is a part of language, it carries plenty of cultural information and reflects people’s communicative cultural life. The idioms, allusions, proverbs, etc in vocabulary are closely related to a nation’s customs and values, the development of the society and technology are always reflected in vocabulary directly. Vocabulary is the foundation of language; discourse understanding can not be reached without comprehension of vocabulary. So the interpretation of cultural-loaded words is an essential part of reading teaching. Because of cultural differences in two languages, it is difficult to find a completely equivalent word, some words may be literally familiar, but their connotation may be completely different, or they evoke different associative meaning. For example, when analysis Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, teachers must explain the British geographical environment, otherwise, the students won’t be able to understand the beauty of summer. Britain
is located in the North Temperate Zone, belonged to maritime climate, the summer there is mild and pleasant, through explanation, the student will be able to understand the famous sentence: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art lovely and more temperate.” Britain’s mild summer and the hot summer in China has opposite meaning, so it’s nor enough for the student to understand the meaning of the word “summer” through a dictionary, they should master the cultural background behind the word.
2.discourse background
Every article the student read has a theme, the theme is an epitome of British and American national culture, and every article has its specific historical and social cultural background which can stimulate students’ interests and help them understand the article better. For example, when explain Christmas to students, teachers should explain culture of important holidays in western countries as well as culture of Christmas. Teaching materials should show the student foreign culture systematically, providing real language environment to students, so the students not only learn language knowledge, but also broaden their cultural horizon.
Ⅳ.Epilogue
With the development of technology, teachers can take advantage of multimedia to show their students some western films and TV programs. Meanwhile, teachers can guide students to organize several activities about western culture, such as English speaking contest, English knowledge competition, lectures of western culture and so on, through students’ own participation to deepen their understanding of the differences between western culture and Chinese traditional culture.
Different nations have different culture, and language is the carrier of culture, hidden behind any language is the nation’s culture setting down through long-term historical evolution. Only if understanding the connotation of culture behind a language, can we know the soul of a language, and then we can feel a living language.
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