Abstract:

College English teaching in China has been experiencing many changes since the reform and opening-up policy. In order to meet the need of Chinese social development and international exchange, the aim of College English teaching has been developed from the solely linguistic skill teaching to the cultivation of integrative language competence, especially the intercultural communication skills. Intercultural English teaching focuses on the development of students’ culture awareness while providing the language knowledge in class. Currently, many universities in China offer courses of English cultures to assist the English language course; however, though introduction of English culture would definitely help students in their English study by providing background knowledge for the language, the positive influence of Chinese native culture could not be neglected.

Chinese native culture helps shaping students’ values and hence influences their interest and motivation in study. China English, as one of the important variation of English language, reflects unique Chinese culture and mentality. The introduction of China English in college English classroom would improve the effectiveness of English teaching by automatically leading students to voluntary comparison between Chinese and English cultures and language systems so as to clarify the roots of their recurrent mistakes derived from their own cultural stereotypes and language form. From the perspectives of the dissimilar cultural heritages and different ways of language expressions, students could make the most of positive language transfer to acquire deep awareness and understanding of English. The present paper demonstrates the positive influence of Chinese native culture in teaching English as a foreign langauge and discusses the possible ways of inserting Chinese culture in English classroom.

Keywords:

Chinese culture, English teaching, China English, Intercultural communication.