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. IntroductionMany students believe that, when English learning achieved certain level, master the accurate pronunciation, learn a lot of vocabulary and have complete grammar knowledge, even if learned language, thus can accurately express their thoughts, freely with foreigners communication. And the actual situation is not so. For example: in “reading comprehension”, all words all understanding but understand the real meaning; in the “language”, the article structures of language understandable, but real “Chinglish”, etc. English reading ability is a comprehensive ability, although in the reading process didnt come across a new word, no grammar obstacles, but without certain cultural background knowledge, you sometimes baffled. The result is the direct reason, students are lack of understanding to western culture background, exist because of the language, national, cultural tradition and thinking mode etc caused by the different communication obstacles. If not put some relevant cultural background knowledge to students as it is difficult to explain clearly is introduced, the content of the material, students also difficult to grasp the connotation of the content. I think, English teaching for the relevant cultural background knowledge introduction is quite important. English reading in Senor Middle School has always been considered one of the most important parts of foreign language learning. Without reading, nothing can be done in the development of the competence in listening, speaking, writing and translating. Reading courses, or rather, intensive reading ones fill up a large component of the curricula. Obviously, students and teacher should pay great attention to the importance of reading courses. How can Chinese students achieve proficient reading? . Some problems in English reading A. Know little about the cultural background knowledgeThe Senor Students knowledge narrow, only to take the textbook knowledge learning, has neglected the extracurricular knowledge learning. Students to text vocabulary by the virtue of the cultural background knowledge know very little. Whether word, sentence, or understanding of textual structure, relying on in certain social and cultural knowledge. Only to infiltrate each others language cultures to, can feel everything becomes vivid rise, learning can be fun, language expression can use it freely, we can avoid English learning process, and we can understand the article deeply, appreciate and express accurately.B. Lack of grammar knowledge Grammar learning English is very important; some students focus on vocabulary memory, but ignore the grammar of master, its also the key to master English well.C. Lack of knowledge integrationPart of students elementary language knowledge is not solid, such as spelling words, sentences grammar mistakes in classical the questionnaire. The importance of introducing cultural background knowledge A. The definition of cultural background knowledge Cultural background is the context of ones life experience as shaped by membership in groups based on ethnicity, race, socioeconomic status, gender, exceptionalities, language, religion, sexual orientation, and geographical area. There is an extensive terminology to describe different kinds of knowledge. Consistency in the use of these terms is a recognized problem; subtle and dramatic differences exist between different peoples definitions of the same term (Alexander, Schaller & Hare, 1991; Duchy & Alexander, 1995). Background knowledge is all knowledge. Learners have when entering a learning environment that is potentially relevant for acquiring new knowledge (Batemans & Simons 1996). Learning English is to learn a completely different culture and Chinese, are familiar with English culture way of thinking, values and customs. A collective expression for all behavior patterns acquired and socially transmitted through symbols. Culture includes customs, traditions, and language.B. The importance of cultural background knowledge Cultural background knowledge in English teaching arose in eighties of the twentieth century. It has been closely linked with the reformation and open in China. Cultural background knowledge is arranged in various kinds of English text books. They make every effort to teach cultural knowledge during language teaching. In order to have students experience the cultural atmosphere of the English-spoken countries unconsciously. However, at present in English teaching in China, teachers pay more attention to teaching language knowledge while ignore the culture of the target language countries. The breakdown arisen from the cross-cultural communication because of the lack of social customs, values, idea, clothing, food, shelter and transportation and so on. In English-spoken countries, No understanding the cultural background knowledge of the target language countries can affect the practice of language knowledge on the significance, goal and approaches of the cultural background knowledge. How to develop the cultural consciousness, how to know the behavior and manners of the people in English-Spoken countries, how to make comparison with eastern and western cultures. Through the comparison, we can understand Chinese cultural deeply. Through English study we can know world culture better and develop our world consciousness. English teachers required to teach students basic language skills, to the neglect of English-speaking countries to teach cultural background knowledge; students learn if knowledge of the language simply does not understand the language and cultural survival to difficult to accurately grasp, understand and use language. Some experimental results show that the readers experience can make readers are familiar with the article content, help reading comprehension (Johnson 1982); Hudson (1982) use schema theory study reading and foreign language skills background knowledge, the relationship between the results of his experiment shows that foreign language readers background knowledge in reading, once inspired than foreign language ability produce bigger role. It is well known that reading is of decisive importance in English learning. English syllabus for senior high school takes reading ability as the first priority in four basic skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. How to improve reading ability is a goal for Senor Students. It is agreed that improvement of reading ability depends on linguistic competence, reading strategy, affective factor, prior knowledge, positive transfer of mother tongue on foreign language and so on, while cultural background knowledge plays a vital part to some extent. Cultural background knowledge is defined as properties of geography, history, economy, education, political institution, custom, art, religion, way of life, social tradition, etiquette, etc, in a given country from a broad viewpoint. When we do some reading, cultural background knowledge related can facilitate reading difficulty. Students make comprehension mistakes when reading English texts. This kind of understanding error or comprehension barriers is closely related to the cultural differences reflected by Chinese and English languages. Foreign language reading comprehension is, in fact, a cross-cultural communication event, and students familiarity with the target culture is the premise of successful reading comprehension. In the process of foreign Language reading comprehension, readers task is not just to acquire knowledge, but more importantly, to communicate cross-culturally with the writer and critically absorb the cultural heritage in the target language.( Byram 22) In recent years, more and more English teachers and learners have realized the importance of culture in the learning and teaching of foreign Languages; however there are still quite a number of teachers who, in the process of teaching reading, emphasize only language itself and neglect the cultural knowledge of the text. Obviously this method of teaching is not very helpful in improving students ability to comprehend the text. Actually, many English learners might not understand what a sentence means or what a paragraph is about even though they understand every single word and all the grammatical structures in the sentence or the paragraph. This phenomenon can be explained as a result of English learners ignorance of the social cultural backgrounds of the English language. In English, some simple vocabulary and phrase because of the unique historical and cultural background and become a specific meaning of nouns. Waterloo （滑铁卢） originally refers to central Belgium an anonymous town in 1815 napoleon rate, because in this battle armies world famous. The battle ended in napoleon defeat of Waterloo, so a word will become “fiasco” and “destruction” of such tragic outcome of the nouns. If you dont understand the cultural history background, students would not understand “meet ones Waterloo” the real meaning this idiom. This word has become a famous movie title, namely “Waterloo Bridge”, the title of the film directly reveals the theme, but the translator and tragedy didnt take it for滑铁卢大桥 , but smart use of traditional Chinese cultural knowledge in Chinese history, borrow another scene, the famous love tragedy, translate it for 魂断蓝桥, and the films classic subject complement each other, be Chinese audience beloved. If the translator of English culture background without the understanding, is unable to translate such classic of lovers. The unique historical and cultural backgrounds are important in English reading.Lack of cultural background knowledge, understanding will produce deviation; using judgment may also be affected. For the purpose of improving the teaching of reading comprehension and students reading ability, and making students aware that cultural knowledge plays a vital role in text comprehension, the comprehension barriers Chinese students encounter when reading English texts, and proves that these comprehension barriers all belong to cultural barriers. As our English teaching materials Britain and Ireland The dialogue itself is very simple. Zhoulan: -Are you English? David: -No, Im not. Zhoulan: -But you speak English.David: -Thats correct.Zhoulan: -Where are you from then? Canada?David:-No, Im from Britain. Zhoulan: -But I thought you said you werent English.David: -Right, Im British, but Im not English. Zhoulan: -What are you then?David:-Im Scottish, Im from Scotland.Zhoulan: -Wheres that?David: -Its to the north of England, its part of Britain.Zhoulan:-Have you got a map to show me? Im puzzled. In this conversation why does Zhoulan feel puzzled? Because Zhoulan is lack of British cultural background knowledge. Although England and Britain can refer to and British, but strictly speaking, English especially refer to People of England, because England just is a part of Britain, Although England is humongous and population, but after all it cannot represent Scotland, Wales and Ireland. As people in these areas, they usually dont want to say into is the England man, to accept Welsh/Irish /Scottish, as for British, they are acceptable, this is why David said: “I m British, but I m not English. I m Scottish”. In this dialogue, if students master this background knowledge, it will be easy to master this dialogue. So in this conversation on background knowledge for students appear extremely important introduced, there is no words and grammars explanation. Some words in English and Chinese may share the same rational meanings, but the meanings of emotion, feature, and collocation are quite different. Such as word “dragon” which is a symbol of an emperor or sovereign power in Chinese figure and does not have any negative meaning at all, but in English-speaking culture, the word “dragon” is a symbol of evil which is a barbaric monster and dragon which is an enemy to people (Hu 1996. 243).if someone say “she is a dragon” which means the woman believes in a angry or unfriendly way. In follow, the word dragon has different imaginary meanings between Chinese and western people. Therefore language is product of culture because language expresses cultural reality, language embodies cultural reality. (kramsch 2000). Two language systems in Chinese English some corresponding word meaning is roughly same, but different cultural content will make derivative, meaning only in different, different cultural background and on the basis of understanding to the right. The same word in different culture represents different cultural connotations in different culture background, they create associations also can have differences. So, those vocabularies have richer cultural connotation. In addition to improve literal meaning understand outside, more important is to understand their social and cultural meaning, then can attain to the words application freely. The use of it Chinese-English color words for example, red in Chinese-English two languages is the same as the original meaning of existing in nature, refers to the “red color”. But the expression of the social and cultural meaning is quite the opposite: in Chinese language is the most powerful commendatory word, For example “prosperous”, “Gong Bang”(红榜), “red envelop”, “red” and “off”, “red may”, “red sun” “red heart”, etc; there are weddings on the bride, Hero model wears the red silk in a celebrity, and wear red flower, all expressed festival, prosperity, and happiness. But English is widely divergent; use it to show anger, banned and dangerous, for instance, red alert, and red flag. To most Chinese and Westerners, white has some meanings in common. White suggests purity, innocence and honesty. e.g., Mary一 is a white girl. (Pure and innocent)Tom is a very white boy. He never tells lies. (Honest)But in this sense, what does the term a white lie mean? Can a lie be pure and innocent? Actually, a white lie is a harmless one, intended not to hurt someone. For example, your mother bought a dress for you that she was very satisfied with, and wanted to know if you liked it. Maybe in your mind, it was out of the fashion or the color was not to your taste. But you said, “Oh, I really like it” in order not to let her down. It was a lie, but a good-intentioned lie. The connotation of white in Chinese also includes something unhappy. At funerals, Chinese pay respect to the dead and express their sorrow by wearing white and writing elegiac couplets in white paper. In the West, however, white is the traditional color for the brides at weddings, and to wear white at funerals would be offensive. So care should be taken in translating the phrase红白喜事. To avoid misunderstanding, we can put it simply as weddings and funerals. Talking about red and white, there is an interesting coincidence in Chinese and English. In Chinese, those who are popular and find favor with their bosses are called red guy literally(红人). But Irish people call them the white-headed boy. In this sense, red equals white in the two cultures. The methods of introducing cultural background knowledge In the teaching of English reading into proper culture content can not only improve learners interest, and can meet the learners to coordinate their knowledge structure needs, through their previous experience, and language background, cultural framework for positive significance to construct, make it easier for the reader to read move, unavoidably will meet with distinctive national culture characteristics of idioms or relevant knowledge, this needs us in explaining these idioms or related knowledge proper introduction of some cultural background knowledge, to help students better understand teaching content,(Brown, H. D 136) Teachers introduce the western cultural background knowledge to student in teaching English, enables the student have some knowledge about cultural differences is quite important .English teaching through the following several ways can implement cultural background Knowledge teaching. A. Combine with the text to cultural background knowledge teaching The current Senor School English teaching materials consciously English country, Cultural background knowledge. The selected text content widespread, the genre is diversiform, involving all aspects of western social life, the typical and representative. Practice has proved, in English teaching, combining the present teaching material of cultural background knowledge teaching is feasible, and the effect is obvious. Textbooks covers the culture teaching content and teaching materials, is closely linked the extending and deepening textbook knowledge, can increase the informative and interesting classroom teaching, arouse students initiative and enthusiasm. Westerners dont like “13” this number, think “13” is an unlucky number, seeing it as “unfortunate” symbol. If you foreign teachers birthday, you buy foreign teachers sent thirteen branch roses is unpopular. Therefore, in some high-rise buildings and hotel does not establish 13th floor, also have no room number 13, 12 then is 14, the expression of the floor is different in Britain and the United States, but the United States and China are the same, and British expression as the second floor called the first floor, the forth floor called the third floor on the fourth floor, the first floor called the ground floor. So in English teaching education and importance of cultural differences is necessary. Teachers should fully consider in preparing the cultural factors, to master culture teaching time and heft, actively and consciously will cultural content naturally penetration to students, to that of the classroom teaching organically. Through the introduction of the cultural background knowledge, enhance the teaching knowledge, interesting, and also deepen the study content depth and breadth, stimulated the students thirst for knowledge, active classroom atmosphere.B. Explain idioms with the language of culture Implication can reflect culture should belong to a lot of idioms and proverbs. English idioms and proverbs are the national language and culture essence, can selectively teach students. For example, In Applepie Order(井然有序)、Rome was not built in a day(伟业非一日之功)、On pins and needles( 如坐针毡)、Look a horse in the month(吹毛求疵)、Birds of a feather flock together(物以类聚，人以群分)、Where theres a will，theres a way(有志者，事竟成) 、 Dont judge a book by its cover(人不可貌相，海水不可斗量),Such as, phrases: have butterflies in ones stomach(心慌、紧张)it same as a two-part allegorical saying(十五只吊桶打水七上八下).C. Expand extracurricular reading or give lectures English class, the teacher must limited number in established within the time limit completed teaching plan, is impossible to have plenty of time for further analysis of cultural background. In addition, social culture is constantly changing as the carrier of culture, language, and the text has timeliness may not keep update, content have certain limitation. Therefore, as a classroom teaching, the students can collect some relevant foreign cultural material, such as pictorial, magazines, pictures, etc, and USES video and network guide students to watch the English national social culture and so on various aspects of their circumstances, such as feed, clothe and shelter, interpersonal, recreation, the holiday custom to include social customs, values, literary allusions, cultural vocabulary and non-verbal communication, and many other aspects of content. Encourage students to read extensively, including novels, magazines, and newspapers etc. teachers should guide students to accumulate relative cultural background knowledge when reading material. Through enormous reading, students understanding of culture will become ripe and complete. The speaker also can combine learning specific circumstanc
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