中西文化差異對英語學習的啟示

1、中西文化差異對英語學習的啟示implications of cultural differences between china and the west on english teachingabstracts: language is one underlying part of culture which reflects the characteristics of a certain ethnic group. no languages can survive without attaching to its culture in that a certain language is

2、 a combination of its ethnic history and cultural background, embodying the worldview, personal concept, lifestyle, and modes of thinking. the correct use of a foreign language is largely depended on awareness of the foreign language that is being learnt. this article is dedicated to clarify the dif

3、ferences that exist between chinese culture and the western culture in view of hofstede index and philosophical diversity and what influence those differences impose on the acquisition of foreign languages in terms of lexicon, reading comprehension and translation, and calls for a larger proportion

4、of culture being taught in english class. key words: cultural differences, chinese culture and western culture, foreign language teaching摘 要：語言是文化非常重要的一部分。它反映了一個特定族群的特點。沒有了文化，語言就無法存活。原因在于語言是這個特定族群的歷史與文化的綜合體，是該民族的世界觀，生活方式和思維方式的綜合體現(xiàn)。外語使用的正確性很大程度上取決于對所學外語的文化認識。本文將在霍夫斯得文化指數(shù)和哲學分歧等方面闡述中西方文化的差異及諸差異在英語詞匯、閱讀

5、理解和翻譯等方面對外語學習的影響并呼吁加強文化在英語教學中的比重。關鍵詞：文化差異，中西文化，外語教學contentsi. introduction.1 a. the definition of culture.1b. the necessity of culture being taught in foreign language class.1. the cultural difference between chinese and the west.2a. hofstedes model of cultural differences.2b. inspections on philoso

6、phical views.41. differences on worldviews.42. differences on modes of thinking. 5 . impact of cultural differences on foreign language learning.8a. impact of cultural differences on lexicon.8b. impact of cultural difference on reading comprehension.9c. impact of cultural difference on translation.1

7、1. conclusion.12works cited.12implications of cultural differences between china and the west on english teaching. introductiona. the definition of culturewhat is culture? professor xiaoping cheng of washington university defined it as “substantial and spiritual properties that are created by human

8、and had deposited through the test of time.” professor nancy j. adler of mcggrill university, montreal, canada, in her international dimensions of organizational behavior (fourth edition), gives us an another definition: “an attribute, possessed by all or at least most of members in a certain commun

9、ity, and passed on from generation to generation, that influences people in a certain group in terms of ethics, morality and customs and so on and shapes the worldview and ways of behavior in that certain group.” because of cultural difference, people in different culture may respond to the same thi

10、ng in a totally converse way; because of cultural differences, misunderstanding may arise, although the language used in communication may be faultless; because of cultural differences, a serious problem may cause displeasure or anger. because of cultural difference, jokes by a foreign speaker may b

11、e received with blank faces and stony silence. yet the same stories in the speakers own country would leave audiences holding their sides with laughter (鄧炎昌 3). as the result of the cultural differences which causes misunderstandings or even irritations, weight should be put on the cultural differen

12、ces when foreign language is taught.b. the necessity of culture being taught in foreign language classlanguages and ideas are inseparable. the aristotelian definition of manthat man is the animal that logos, as h.g. gadamer argues, though traditionally understood as animal rationale or a rational be

13、ing, should first and foremost be understood as “the living being that has language”. the greek word logos and, by an uncanny coincidence, the chinese word dao all have the dual meanings of speech and that of which is spoken, ortio and ratio, language and thinking (孫有中 185). the separate language fr

14、om culture substance is therefore as wrong as pedagogically as to teach students the notes and musical scale without teaching them a song. the result is predictable: they know how to sing, but they do not know what to sing; they know how to speak, but they have nothing to say. the purpose of our for

15、eign language teaching is to expose student as much information as possible and enable them to be the bridge that minimize the cultural and linguistic gaps between china and the west. without foreign culture being taught in school and college, students learning foreign language are no better than th

16、e students learning music, only being taught with notes, but never a real song, who will end up knowing how to sing but having nothing to sing. similarly, a foreign language learner without proper culture awareness would end up in, as chinese put it, “dumb english”, knowing all the grammatical notes

17、, but never correct when he is speaking. additionally, language is one underlying part of culture that reflects the characteristics of a certain ethnic group, no languages can survive without attaching to its culture in that a certain language is a combined body of its ethnic history and cultural ba

18、ckground and embodied with the worldview, personal concept, lifestyle, and modes of thinking. being bereaved from the culture that it attaches to, a language is but a dead one (goodenough 134). it is unique and distinctive for every language. neither can students absorb the genuine pith of english n

19、or can they properly use english learnt in classroom if the cultural differences between china and the west were ignore.yet before we go down to what influences of the sino-western cultural differences on the languages and what mistake a student may probably make when speaking a foreign language it

20、is necessary and significant as well to investigate into what kinds of differences exist between chinese and the western culture, for only if the differences are clearly stated, it is possible to find a solution to those problems.the cultural difference between chinese and the westa. hofstedes model

21、 of cultural differencesas the most famous and convincible model related to cultural differences, it would be unwise not to refer to it when cultural differences become the topic. being quite practical, the hofstede index has become very popular among people who, most of the time, may turn to the in

22、dex for aid when they confront culture collision and try to find out the main sources that lead to those culture collision (hofstede 50-55). hofstede geert was an employee in ibm between the year of 1967 and 1973. during those years as a consultant he launched a research on the employees of ibms sub

23、sidiaries in forty different countries, collecting data of over one hundred thousand workers. with those data he began to study how cultural differences influence on peoples behavior and value system in a certain group of members. after long and painstaking analysis he brought up the first model of

24、cultural differences in the world, in which five standards, which are power distance index (pdi), individualism (idv), masculinity (mas), uncertainty avoidance index (uat) and long-term orientation (lto), were introduced to distinct cultural differences. we may find an indexing variation between chi

25、nese cultural and the western one according to the hofstede index. the chart below distinctly illustrates how the culture of chinese and that of the west vary from each other. from those three charts, we can clearly see the staggering differences between china and the west, which are mainly in terms

26、 of power distance index (pdi), individualism (idv) and long-term orientation (lto). hofstede gives a definition about pdi: the degree of recognition in any group or organization towards the unequal distribution of power (hofstede 12), china, for instance, is the country of obviously high pdi for su

27、re. the higher the pdi is, the more possible that people in a certain group accept the distance of power distribution naturally, as a result of which the hierarchical system may stricter than others who enjoy a lower pdi. china, for example, holds a much higher pdi than the western countries. chines

28、e hierarchical system can be traced back to xia dynasty or even earlier when slavery system was established and people gave up the relatively equal primitive commune. when china headed into feudalism, the hierarchical system picked up speed and became stronger and insuperable. even now after chinas

29、open-up and modernization, most people, if not all, still hold the idea that men are born unequal. conversely, western countries, especially america whose history is as short as three hundred years, hold a much lower pdi compared to china, which means people in their community are theoretically equa

30、l even when they are in the different classes, they still regard themselves as equal as others who may be in a higher-classed community.another index of the individualism (idv) illustrates a conversely staggering feature compared to pdi. western countries individualism is higher than that of china.

31、people in most of the western countries, if not all, have less tight relationship between each other and care more about self and self-independence whereas chinas idv is much lower than that of the west, which mostly engenders from confucianism that have influenced chinese culture and chinese people

32、s mind for thousands of years, and the collectivism espoused by chinese communist party. in socialism countries of collectivism like china people stress more on the relationship between each other and put the loyalty to the collectivity in the first place, in another words, they need to “l(fā)eave behin

33、d the small selves (individuals) to realize the big selves (collectivity)”. having a basic knowledge of hofstede index, we can have a distinct picture of what may happen in the english classroom of china and provides solutions to that matter (陳曉萍 5).b. inspections on philosophical views in addition

34、to what we have discussed above about the hofstede index, which influences the way how students learn english as well as how the teacher teach in the classroom, and also provides us a channel to speculate what may happen in a english classroom in china and what we can do about the problem that arise

35、s, there are some philosophical differences that need to be concerned, in that they have considerable influences on the language itself.1. differences on worldviews in traditional chinese concept, human and nature are integrally and harmoniously united. zhang zhai, a chinese philosopher in song dyna

36、sty put it this way: human, being objective, and the nature, being objective, together unite as one.he applied eight characters to present this concept:qian kun fu mu,ming bao wu yu.which means: heaven and earth, being parents of everything, gave birth to human being. and he continued: parents here

37、i am talking about is just a figure of speech. people are all my fellowmen and every creature is all my companions and friends. he suggested that fathered and mothered by nature, human being coexist with all creatures such as plants and animals, which should be loved by human being. traditional west

38、ern concept towards nature, on the contrary, emphasizes on conquering and defeating nature with knowledge obtained. influenced by darwins evolutionism, westerns tend to hold the idea that human, being on the top of the pyramid of the food chain and the most beloved descendents of god should be the k

39、ing of the world, taking control of everything that god had made. this concept has made a remarkable contribution to the scientific, technological and economic booming in europe since francis bacon, who, being the representative and pusher of this concept, put forward the famous remark: knowledge is

40、 power. despite the contribution the concept has made, it is also responsible for the environmental issues which have brought up considerable concerns recently, mostly caused by human behaviors (王菊泉 129).2. difference on modes of thinkingthinking as a mental product, is the process that subject refl

41、ects on object. different thinking embraces different modes that co-relate with it, for instance, logical thinking is generally based on concept, judging and deducting; non-logical thinking on intuition, inspiration and imagination.it is hard to claim that either the modes of thinking are one part o

42、f culture or culture is one part of the modes of thinking. but what is certain is that there must be some strong connection between them. modes of thinking have been shown in every segment of culture, including value system, spirit, and communication, not to mention philosophy, economy, language, sc

43、ience, politics, military and daily life. the diverged modes of thinking are the underlying causes of gaps between different cultures when intercultural communication happens (張恩宏 30). and on the differences of modes of thinking between china and the west, we may see two totally different modes. chi

44、nese took one way while the western took another. on the subject of the differences of the modes of thinking, an american professor of philosophy ph. bahm once drew a set of pictures to illustrate how the chinese modes of thinking differs from the western ones. here below goes the pictures drawn by

45、ph. bahm. china the west (inter-complementary) (be a, can not be -a) (be a, can not be a)just like what has been shown in the second picture, in the western ways of thinking, if a is affirmed, a is denied; if a is affirmed, a is denied. a and a can not be co-existed. contrarily, in the chinese ways

46、of thinking, shown in the first picture, it is just like a traditional chinese taiji chart, inter-complementary on the two ends, and there are no distinct lines between two objects (王菊泉 467). the overall characteristic of western ways of thinking is that dialetic plays a very important role. from an

47、cient greek to contemporary period, analysis was popular. one overall feature of dialetic is precise, which greatly influences western language. as a result, western modes of thinking pay attention to science, rationalism and emphasizes on analysis and evidence. with the help of logic, during the pr

48、ocess of proving and deducting, the western have gotten to know the essence and rules that keep the world running. ancient greek philosopher aristotle put forward the three elements of proving: concept, judging and deducting and two ways of thinking: induction and deductive method. those several the

49、ories shaped the features of western thinking, which include rationalism, analysis, demonstration, and precision. on the contrary, chinese traditional modes of thinking pay much attention on intuition and experience, that is to say intuitive thinking obtains the rules and essences through a generall

50、y vague and direct cognition toward the target cognitive subject. it is an innermost intuitive method beyond geist and sense. savvy which shall be realized through sense, experience, appreciation, meditation, and speculation, is the core of intuitive thinking. chinese traditional thinking has some d

51、efects. it is concise but lack of deduction, based on inspiration not proving, intuitive but not logical, linguistically vivid but lack of precise structure and consecutive proving, opinions usually being expressed by ana, comments, or sketches, which are generally speaking improvisational.as to wha

52、t impacts the modes of thinking have on language, the studies put forward by some philosopher and linguists provide something we can refer to. in ancient greek plato said that when heart was thinking, it was no more than talking to itself, interrogating or replying so thinking was talking and judgin

53、g or the discourse that was made(roberson 29). a little extreme though, it still shows the undeniable connection between language and thinking. some linguists argue that thinking is the inner core of a language, which in return, provides the jacket of thinking (顧佳祖 20). the existence of a language i

54、s based on thinking while language is a tool of thinking (陳原 63). more over, according to b.l. whorfs linguistic relativity, the structures of human concept, modes of thinking and even thinking itself are acquired through the process of mother tongue acquisition as well as its culture, and in return

55、 influence the language.a little comparison between the languages can help clear up a little ground for this matter.western languages, such as english, french, russia and german, are something like a prosperous tree attached with numerous branches. layers and layers of modifiers can be added upon it

56、 and balanced together. chinese, on the contrary, is no less than an undulate river. fowler describes it precisely as: “a highly rhymed language or wordage pushing forward like waves, circles around circles, seemingly together, resembling to each other, but all various from one to another; there see

57、ms to be some rules but it is too complicated to be perceived, analyzed, or described; those rules regulate the connections between waves, waves and seas, phrases, phrases and passages” (fowler 60).western languages as well as value system and the rest of its culture are more like a perfect line, ex

58、tending from both sides to infinity, accurate, well-balanced, and keeping on moving, while compared to western cultures linear property, chinese culture is no less than circles, rounds after rounds, circling around one certain point, and rolling incessantly (鄧炎昌45). impact of cultural differences on foreign languag