跨文化教学

Cross-culture Teaching in Chinese CollegeLiterature Review1. The History of the Study of International CommunicationIntercultural Communication has existed as long as people from different cultures have been encountering one another, but as a formalized and defined area of study it has a comparatively short history. In China, it began as a serious discipline for study in the early 1980s with the nation’s reform initiatives and opening up endeavors.Intercultural communication refers to the communication between people from different cultures. It takes place when a message is produced by a member of one culture for understanding and response by a member of another culture (Samovar, 1991). The following part discusses how intercultural communication evolved in the United States of America.The study of intercultural communication in the United States can be traced to post-World War II, when business and government were expanding and rebuilding globally. Government and business personnel working overseas often found that they were ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of working among people of different cultures. The language training they received, for example, did little to prepare them for the complex challenges of working abroad.In response to this situation, the U.S. government passed the Foreign Service Act in 1946 and established the Foreign Service Institute. The Institute hired Edward T. Hall and other prominent anthropologists and linguists (including Ray Birdwhistell and George Trager) to develop “predeparture”courses for overseas workers. Intercultural training materials were scarce, so they developed their own. In so doing, the Institute theorists formed new ways of looking at culture and communication. Thus, the field of intercultural communication was born.2. Development of Cross-culture Teaching in Foreign Language EducationNowadays more and more scholars and linguists have realized the importance of culture teaching in foreign language education, they have done many researches and made much progress in this field both abroad and at home.2.1 Cultural Teaching in Western CountriesThe intercultural research began in the USA between 1940s and 1950s to meet the need of training people who were going abroad. However, the first intercultural research only included the analysis of the specific culture and it was not formed as a systematic subject. The Silent Language written by E. T. Hall in 1959 was generally considered as the mark of the beginning of this new study. He pointed out the importance of culture in social life. Then in 1960s, some works about intercultural communication came out, such as R. T. Oliver’s Culture and Communication, I. Parry’s The Psychology of Human Communication and so on. In 1970, International Communication Association admitted that intercultural communication was a branch of media studies which made it acquire a position in the academic domain.From then on, the courses of intercultural communication were set up in many colleges. By the middle 1970s, more than 200 colleges had had intercultural communication courses including the following teaching contents:●cultural differences and their effects on communication;●similarities and differences among different cultures;●bilingual education and translation;●particular cultural mode and its effect on intercultural communication;●non-verbal communication;●cultural shock and cultural adaption;●theory of combination; ect.(Hu Wenzhong, 2005: 10-12)What intercultural communication should include can be learned from some works of linguistics. Richard Porter and Samovar listed three aspects: (1) views (including values, view of the world and social organization); (2) verbal process (including language and thinking mode); (3) non-verbal process (including non-verbal behavior, view of time and place). Argyle, the psychologist thought that the main problems in cross-cultural communication included: (1) language; (2) non-verbal communication; (3) social standard of conduct; (4) interpersonal relationship; (5) initiative of doing things; (6) ideas and views.In 1975, the first textbook on intercultural communication An Introduction to Intercultural Communication by Conden and Yousef was published, and then subsequent books followed it. The research on intercultural communication has developed quickly, and has exerted incredible influence on language and culture teaching (Hu Wenzhong, 2005: 12-13).In this decade, there are four trends of foreign language teaching:(1)teaching goal: simple language skill practice has been changed tounderstanding culture and raising cultural awareness;(2)teaching contents: understanding culture in a broader sense has beenemphasized;(3)teaching methods: teaching process rather than the result, has been focusedon;(4)interact of the mother-tongue culture and target culture had been focusedon.With the changing of politics and economy of the world and the frequent intercultural exchanging, more and more attention had been drawn to intercultural research in 1980s. Many experts from different cultures founded intercultural research institutes. In this period, the foundation of intercultural theory had been consolidated and extended. But the research at that time lacked evidence of different cultures. Then in 1990s, much attention had been drawn to specific, objective, descriptive way of research. Hall’s micro intercultural research, ie. emic and culture-specific research became popular. From then on, works and monographs about different cultures had been coming out.2.2 Culture Teaching in ChinaBesides American countries and European countries, these and monographs also cover cultures from Latin America, Africa, Asia and Middle East. And there are more and more researches about Chinese culture in recent years, which shows China is playing a more and more important role in the world. These researches have provided the first-handed materials for intercultural research and enriched the subject (Zhang Hongling, 2007: 20-23).The first Chinese International Seminar of Intercultural Communication was held in Harbin, China, which marked the foundation of CAFIC (China Association for Intercultural Communication). In China, intercultural research is mainly proposed by foreign language teachers or those who take up foreign language research. Many experts in subjects like dissemination, economy, and international relations have been joining in it in recent years. However, in China, intercultural research is mostly introduced from foreign countries. We still lack our own deep and extensive research (Zhang Hongling, 2007: 23-24).In the early 1980s, cross-communication, pragmatics and linguistic culturology were introduced to English teaching field. Since 1990s, there have been further researches about language and culture. The researches have been moved from description of language phenomena to exploration of theory and methodology. Linguists have pointed out that communicative ability includes non-verbal communicative ability, and divided culture into common culture and particular culture. Meanwhile they have begun to discuss evaluation of cultural differences and have made systematic comparison of cultures. There has been also discussion of Chinglish in ELT. Moreover, Chinese linguists have begun to lay concern on the interaction of multi-culture and that of multi-subjects.In the decades, intercultural research has made great achievements. It has been playing an important role in individual intercultural communication, business trade culture exchanging and so between countries. Intercultural research does help and will be always helping us greatly in economic globalization education integration and cultural fusion.In the USA and some European countries, foreign language teaching is not only for the learners to acquire language ability but also for them to cultivate their intercultural awareness and competence. Their governments have been always supporting intercultural teaching. In comparison, in China, cultural teaching hasn’t been paid enough attention to by the government. And cross-culture teaching has only been carried on by some researchers, so there hasn’t been great effect on foreign teaching.。