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皖西学院2011届本科毕业论文（设计）Chapter IntroductionFrom the point of cross-cultural communication, every nation has his own habits and customs, way of thinking, language psychology, behavior criterion, value concept and cultural tradition. English and Chinese culture are extremely rich, so their total cultural equivalence is rare. But on men-women relation discrimination to the female and the unequal status between men and women are the same. Thousands of years, men control the hegemony and they are always lawmakers, the narrators. In comparison, women are only forced to obey. There is a famous saying by Heidegger: “the language is the home of existence.” But this “home” is an old house, which its bricks, flowers and woods are filled with ancestors ghost. All the words belongs to the former dynasties opinions. Now, women want to protest to the discriminated fate, but they are tongue-tied. Lakoff said if women want to change their image, they should start from language, because you are what you say. Its helpless that women have no choice but use the bricks which are engraved by men hegemony to build their fortress. Gender discrimination is an ancient historical topic. People who seek fairness and justice ever have extremely unfair concept and consciousness. This makes women are in the oppressed status in a fairly long period. This kind of residual thoughts are still existed in today language and culture. As a mirror of the society, language not only reflects social value concept, but also promotes the forming of social ideology. A close look at the phenomenon of sexism must be taken. The article discusses the different cultural phenomenon and compares English culture with Chinese culture from concept, salutation, words, history, religion and the strategy to get over the sexism. This dissertation includes the following six aspects.Chapter II Linguistic sexism widely exists in English and ChineseAs we all know, every problem has its own cause and background. Gender discrimination has connection with classic culture and custom. Now lets analyze sexism existed in two classic culture. 2.1 Background of sexism From matriarchal society to patriarchal, the status of male and females roles change in the redistribution. “male masters outside and female inside.” Subsequently women lose their leading roles. Men in the society, polity, economy and culture absolutely stand the top in the world, while women are narrowed to the small family. We know that language is a kind of special social phenomenon and it is created by labor, which has close relations with production activity. Therefore, when the society forms the situation dominated by men, language have outstanding reflection.2.2 Definition to sexism Sexism, in the Oxford Advanced Learners English-Chinese dictionary, it means that disapproving action based on the ideas or belief that the members of one sex are less intelligent, able, and skillful, etc, than the members of the other sex, especially that women are less able than men and those particular jobs and actions are suitable for women and others are suitable for men. Sexism in English refers to English expresses sexist assumptions about differences between men and women as in the prejudicial use of female or male words. Sexist language expresses unfair assumptions and differences, and it can be either explicit, as in the prejudicial use of male or female pronouns, or implicit. Using universal evidence, the thesis here reveals how often English expresses sexist assumptions about differences between men and women.Just as a proverb goes in England: “If you see an old man, sit down and take a lesson; if you see an old woman, throw a stone.” What expresses English version of the sexism prescribed for women, is particularly confining. Chapter III Gender discrimination in English and Chinese appellation termsIn human society appellation terms mean identifying word or words by which someone is called and classified or distinguished from others. This kind of salutation reflects certain social culture or the relationships between people among particular language environment. People form a kind of relationship and everyone occupies a special position. A common appellation terms can generate rich social connotation in specific communicative activities and with the difference of time and place change their content.3.1 Gender discrimination on nameThe name or surname is a kind of symbolic, it is the sign which people distinguish with each other and it includes the first and last name two parts. As a unique thing in human civilization, it has closely relation with peoples behavior, social psychology and cultural traditions. Although name sequences in Chinese and English is different (in Chinese surname first and giving name second; in English is opposite), the people consciously or unconsciously put their own desire and social attitude into the name when they choose surname. In English speaking countries, the childrens family name is the same with their fathers family name. The naming to women usually shows beauty, virtuous, pure and lovely and so on, such as Lily (a kind of flower), Susan (means grace), Diana (means elegant, beautiful and noble); however, naming to men embodies strong and brave, pursuit of freedom and dream. Richard (means sturdy and forceful), Lewis (means protecting people), Andrew (means brave and ingenuous) are the examples. Chinese character “xing（姓）” consists of “nv（女）” and “sheng（生）”. In the matriarchal society of China ancient times, people use mothers name as surname. But in the later patriarchal society, status of women goes down and men dominate the whole society. Their name is deprived of and even if they have their own name, people seldom call it. Unmarried women is often called “yatou（丫头）” or ”niu（妞）”. In modern Chinese, though the above situation has been improved, gender discrimination doesnt change. And the meaning is different too. Womens name emphasizes beauty of femininity and name often contains “hua”, “ya”, “xiu”, “mei” and so on. 3.2 Gender discrimination on marriageWith the development from matriarchal to patriarchal society, male and female roles change in the redistribution. Subsequently women lose their dominance. In male-centered English social customs, married men can work outside and earn money. But if women turn into wife, their world is narrowed to family. They can only stay in the narrow space in ministering husband and taking care of children. They are the ornament to husband. Men in the home is considered to be strong, dominating the business and supporting wife and children, whereas women is dependent. Before marriage, men are called as “Mr.” and after marriage is the same. But after marriage women will lose their names and be changed to “Mrs. XX”. For example, if Mary Brown gets married with Jim Smith, the name of Mary will change to Mrs. Smith. So Mary not only loses her surname, but also her giving name. Even if John dies, she is still his widow, called “Johns widow”. In ancient China, because of womens subordinate status, they use lowly appellation call themselves, such as “nu（奴）”, “nujia（奴家）”, “qie（妾）”, “jianqie（贱妾）” etc, but they must use honorable salutation to call their husband. In the past, Chinas married women are called as “XXshi（XX氏）” and surname will change into husbands family name. At present, this kind of salutation is still popular in rural place. Now Chinese women have no need to be renamed as husbands surname. Men in the formal occasion call his wife for “airen（爱人）”, “furen（夫人）” and so on. But in some informal situation, “haizitama（孩子他妈）” and “wulitou（屋里头）” are still very popular. Chapter IV Gender discrimination in vocabularyVocabulary is like fossil, which embodies peoples thinking and understanding at that society and reflects the whole society.4.1 The umbrella name phenomenon in vocabularyThe most obvious example which reflects the sexism is the word “man”. It means not only mankind but also man. But “woman” only means woman. For example, growing old is something a man as to accept. In addition, in English there are a lot of words, whatever people is male or female and they are all called “XXman”. For example, chairman, salesman, postman, policeman and so on. English has many neutral words expressing the profession and they are adapt to men and women, such as doctor, lawyer, professor etc. The application of methodology is always closely connected with times. In times of economic globalization, people with different languages in different countries communicate with each other more and more frequently. And what emerges at the times require is the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT).The Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is, on the one hand, the product of the development of sociolinguistics, etc.; on the other hand, it is the results of the prosperity of Western Europe. Just as China at the turn of the century, Western Europe also needs a linguistic terrace to achieve the goal of communication. Thus the upsurge of the CLT has its deep-rooted background. But what we can not ignore is.Chinese foreign language teachers tend to complete their training at home. Its no hard to imagine their authentic mastery of a foreign language. In addition, due to the continual rigid examination system in China, the “jug-mug” teaching model has been deep-rooted in this land. The rigid examination system drives teachers and students.Since CLT was introduced by Chinese scholars from western countries and applied in Chinese context, its effect has been being a hot topic. So through expounding the background and characteristics of CLT and analyzing the survey of CLT used in China, the author discusses the limitations and feasibilities of its use in Chinese context, which is expected to help Chinese teachers of English make best use of the teaching approach in China.Chapter Literature ReviewThrough tracing back the origin and the development of CLT and presenting its proponents various definitions, the author can see it is common to all that communicative approaching in language teaching starts from a theory of communication and has the aim to develop procedures for the teaching of the four language skills that acknowledge the independence of language and communication. The paper firstly makes a general study of CLT, including the background, the definition and the characteristics of CLT.2.1 Background of CLTThe origins of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) are to be found in the changes in the British language teaching tradition dating from the late 1960s. At that time, the major British approach to teaching English as a foreign language was Situational Language Teaching, in which language was taught by practicing basic structures in meaningful situation-based activities. Some British linguists began to .With the increased interdependence of European common market, the council of Europe found it urgent to develop alternative methods for developing courses, which focused on the needs of European learners. Wilkins proposes a functional or communicative definition of language that could serve as a basis for developing communicative syllabi for language teaching (Wilkins, 1978: 165). His communicative analysis was .2.2 Definitions of CLTRecently there is not a standard definition of CLT. For the definition of CLT, its proponents are active to stack the cards in their favor. Richards and Rodgers pointes out that CLT starts with a theory of language as communication, and its goal is to develop learners communicative competence (Richards & Rodgers, 2001: 139). And Ellis sees CLT as an approach that aims to develop procedures for the teaching of the four language skills that acknowledge the independence of language and communication (1985: 155). Howatt distinguishes between “strong” and “weak” version of CLT, he states: There is, in a sense, a “strong” version of the communicative approach and a “weak” version. The weak version stresses the importance of providing learners with opportunities to use their English for communicative purposes. The “strong” version of communicative teaching, on the other hand, advances the claim that language is acquired through communication. If the former could be described as “learning to use” English, the later entails “using English to learn it”. (1984: 277)From this statement, it can be seen that CLT is a general term to describe the methodology which teaches language learners how to communicate efficiently and which, on the whole, pays systematic attention to language functions as well as language structures.2.3 Characteristics of CLTAs for as the characteristics of CLT concerned, there are many different expressions. According to Larsen and Freeman, they think that there are three the most obvious characteristics of CLT. They think that almost everything that is done with a communicative intent, that is, students use the language a great deal through communicative activities like games, role-plays and problem-solving tasks and using authentic materials and its learner-centered and experienced-based view of second language teaching are required Larsen and Freeman (Larsen &Freeman, 1986: 156). Besides, Richards and Rodgers pointes out the characteristics as fellows:a. Relating the language they teach to the way in which English is used.b. Activities in which students have the opportunities to determine what they want to say independently of the teacher.c. Exposing students to examples of natural language rather than material which has been written for language teaching purposes. (Richards and Rodgers, 2001: 135)Thus, the author thinks CLT has the following five features: (1) It stresses the need to allow students opportunities for authentic and creative use of the language; (2) It focuses on meaning rather than form; (3) It suggests that learning should be relevant to the needs of students; (4) It advances task-based language teaching. Students should be given tasks to perform or problems to solve in the classroom; (5) It emphasizes a functional approach to language leaning. Also, to be competent in the target language, learners should acquire not only linguistic knowledge, but also the culture of that language.Chapter MethodologyThe author adopted Willings (1988) questionnaire format with some modifications, because the Willing s questionnaire is more objective and less intention-loaded, with few preconceptions and no specific predictions lying behind the choice of individual questions.As the authors aim was to collect, in an unprejudiced way, a large amount of questions about CLT used in the middle school by English teachers was designed in the believe that the subjects answers could reflect their actual teaching styles. The whole questionnaire has 19 multi-choices. The questions 1 to 4 are to know the background of subjects; questions 5 to 9 are designed to investigate the subjects knowledge of CLT; questions 10 to 19 are related to the use of CLT in their English class. All the question items are simple questions, phrased in the second person as concisely and simply as possible so as to avoid any misunderstanding.The author chose 5 English teachers from middle school of Luan city to do the pilot study to find out the shortcoming of questionnaire and further to redesign it according to their feedback.The participants involved in this questionnaire are 40 English teachers whom are chosen from middle schools of Luan City randomly, ranging in age from 25 to 50. And the questionnaires edited in Chinese are delivered to every participant to make them do it at their free time. After being finished, the questionnaires are collected back from the participants as soon as possible so as to avoid being lost. The author hands out 50 questionnaires and 45 of them are collected and 40 are valid. In the next chapter, the author will analyze the results.Chapter Results and AnalysisThe data collected from this questionnaire (see Table1 and 2) reveals that in Chinese context, the use of CLT in middle school has some limitations and feasibilities and we can have many ways to make best use of it, so that it can be made for English language teaching in China.From the Table1 below, we can see. According to Table 2, there are some beneficial factors to use CLT in English class, but many Chinese specific conditions limit the application of CLT. 95% of the subjects express that they are familiar with CLT and 96% of the subjects use CLT in English-open class, which indicates that most of the English teachers have tried to use CLT consciously in English class. Besides, some good external factors are very useful to the adaptation of CLT in English class in Chinese context. From Table2, we can find that 85% of the subjects say that the New English Curriculum Standard in middle school makes them to use CLT in English class and some of them join the training about CLT.ItemsQuestionNumberYESNOQuestion595%5%Question613%87%Question788%12%Question874%26%Question946%54%Question1081%19%Question1189%11%Question1298%25Question1385%25%Question1410%90%Question1594%6%Question1676%24%Question1713%87%Question1895%5%Question1917%83%Table 2. The results of the questionnaire on the use of CLT in middle schoolHowever, 87% and 88% of the subjects involved in the questionnaire have express they do not often use CLT but the Chinese traditional teaching methodology respectively, which demonstrates that.Chapter DiscussionAccording to the results of the questionnaires, the author finds that the CLT used in Chinese context has some limitations and feasibilities. Therefore, the author is to discuss those two aspects respectively and carefully and then propose some suggestions about how to make best use of CLT in Chinese context in accordance with the results and analysis of the questionnaire. 5.1 Limitations on the Use of CLT in Chinese ContextBased on the analysis of the results of the questionnaire, we can find some specific situations or features of English language teaching in China to limit the use of CLT. 5.1.1 Teaching Physical Conditions In CLT, it would be ideal if the number of students in a class is no more than 16 (Munby, 1988: 34). The students should sit in a circle with chairs and desks moveable and the classroom comfortable. Some audio-visual aids like objects, tapes and slides are effective means of arousing the students interest and of creating some social contexts to let them practice their communicative skills. However, in China, as the questionnaire showed, 89% of the subjects think that .5.1.2 New English Curriculum StandardsIn CLT, the syllabus is normally notional and situational (Munby, 1978: 145). It emphasizes on social contexts rather than linguistic forms. It is learner-based and the functional features answer the questions of where and when the learner will need the target language, in which sentence are always presented in association with actions, time etc. The materials adopted in the textbooks are mainly based on predictions of the real situations in which the learner is likely to.5.1.3 Roles of the Teachers and StudentsIn CLT, the most important role of a teacher is to act as a facilitator of his students learning, setting up such activities as information gap exercises for them to work out or by suggesting some tasks for students to undertake (John, 1989: 263). A teacher may also play .5.1.4 Accuracy and Fluency in Engl
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