Necessity of Teaching Culture in Chinese Classroom

Yu Xin Jinan University China

Abstract: Cultural teaching is one important part of language

teaching. This paper illustrates the influences of cultural
knowledge on Chinese teaching ,and proposes suggestions on
culture teaching .
Key words: Culture teaching; Error; Suggestion

1. Introduction
In recent years, Chinese Teaching has gotten more attention
than ever before. Chinese Teaching ,which includes not only the
ability of the right use of a language but also students′sensitivity
to and tolerance of the cultural differences, as well as their
ability to deal with these cultural differences.
But for a long time in the Chinese teaching field, teachers
over-emphasize the language phenomenon but neglect the
cultural knowledge, focus on helping the students to solve
language problems which they meet in the learning of the
language but overlook language’s function as the carrier of its
culture. The students , due to lack of such a cultural awareness
can easily result in regrettable misunderstanding in cross-
cultural communication. For instance ,“Have you had your meal
yet?”which is more of a friendly greeting than of a question of
concern, but foreigners, not familiar with such a form of
greeting, tend to find it rather awkward. In the contrary, the
student also can make the Chinese felt embarrassed, if they use
it in the first meeting. Because this form just using between the
acquaintances. So it is no exaggeration to say that only when our
students get fully acquainted with Chinese culture, can they be
expected to have a satisfactory command of Chinese.
This paper illustrates the influence of cultural knowledge in
language learning ,and gives suggestions on culture teaching in
CLT(Chinese language teaching).

2. Influences of Culture on Chinese language

2.1 Relationship between Language and Culture
Many experts have talked much about relationship between
language and culture. Chinese professor Hu Zhanglin has
presented “It has long been recognized that language is an
essential and important part of a given culture and the impact of
culture upon a given language is something intrinsic and
indispensable.”1 When a person has mastered certain foreign

1
Hu Zhangln. Language,Culture,and Society. In Hu Zhanglin Linguistics. A Course Book[M].2nd ed . Beijing.
Peking University Press, 2001; 223
language, that is, has certain listening and speaking abilities，he
may also make mistakes in the actual use of the language as he
can not understand certain social and cultural background from
which some part of the language originate.
2.2 Error Analysis
To further illustrate this, I will list and analyze some
familiar “culture mistakes” in the following：
A、Greeting
As we said just now, Greeting in china is very different from
other countries . Two Chinese meet, it is normal for one to ask
the other where he/she is going, except for“Have you had your
meal yet?”.But for the Westerners, it is not proper to do so as
they think it is their privacy, because they do not understand that
the Chinese did not care about what do you do, the question is
just a form of the greeting. Like this, if you met a Chinese friend
on the way to the theater, the Chinese might said politely and
pleasantly, “Are you going to watch the movie?”Such a greeting
struck the learner as odd, since he ensured that the people
obviously knew where he was going.
B、expressing modesty
Too many Chinese learners observed the same phenomenon,
“When Chinese were complimented by the other people, they
would respond with humility and try to deny the compliment
,they usually say ,‘No, not at all’,because that is how they would
respond according to their cultural values.”In china custom,
even if conditions are reasonably good ,the host had to
apologize for the crowed state of dwellings ,to deprecate them
out of courtesy.
C、privacy
The concept of “privacy” is one which is hard for Chinese to
grasp because what is regarded as “privacy” in the West is often
not looked upon as such in china, especially between friends.
Questions about a person’age, salary , marital status or the price
of an item are perfectly acceptable in Chinese culture. Inquiring
into the privacy of other people is a form to show friendship and
intimacy, while foreigners tend to frown upon it.
All these“cultural mistakes”above , we see that culture exerts
numerous influences on CLT . Therefore, what the learners
should be taught is much more than language components and
skills, cultures should be included.

3. Suggestions on Culture Teaching in CLT

Culture teaching is not an independent course, but an
integral component of language teaching. Hence, developing
cultural competence is essential in Chinese language teaching.
This part is to propose some suggestions on helping students
acquire culture knowledge as follows.
3.1 Raise Awareness of Culture Learning
Comprehensive Chinese , as a basic course for the Chinese
majors in school , aims at the development of the
students’listening , speaking , reading and writing abilities. In
this course,
teachers should pay more attention to the introduction of
cultures while they are conducting the language teaching, and
thus will make the students have a better understanding of what
they have learned.
At the primary of language teaching and learning , students are
quite interested in the differences between Chinese culture and
their own culture, teachers should introduce surface-level
culture contained in certain vocabulary. Comparative study of
words at this stage is very important, through comparison, we
can not only know the original meaning of words , but also the
different connotative meanings of the same words in different
cultures. For example, “dog” represents a ferocious and tedious
image in china, it is a derogatory term, and Chinese idioms have
seen many cases: e.g. “gou zhang ren shi”, “gou tou jun shi”,
and so on. However, most of countries, the word of “dog” has
positive meanings, e.g. “a lucky dog ”, “love me , love my dog”,
and so on . It is vocabulary that can directly reflect the culture of
a language community.
At the intermediate level stage of language teaching,
teaching and learning should pay more attention on linguistic
phenomenon, customs, behavior, etc. For example, in china,
people usually ask “Did you have a meal?”, the learner should
know how to use this form of greeting , including it is used
around dinnertime , just between acquaintances.
At the upper-level stage, teachers’main task is to encourage
students to read widely : history, geography, Chinese classic
culture, etc , deepening their understanding of the society of
china.
3.2 Group Discussion about Cultural Phenomenon
Discussion is one of the best ways to help students acquire
cultural knowledge. When processing the intensive reading and
extensive reading texts, teachers should spend as much time as
possible on the ideas , ethics , values and customs. Making
comparisons and contrasts between Chinese culture and local
culture is the common way to fulfill this task.
3.3 Creation of Intercultural Communication Surroundings
 The most direct way to acquire culture of the target
language is to communicate with the native speakers. However,
the great majorities of learners have few opportunities to study,
work or live in china and to communicate with Chinese
directly , they can learn the target culture only in classroom , or
from books , or through mass media , so to create an
intercultural communication surroundings is an effective way to
language learners. For example, the Chinese corner, was held for
the students can easily get access to speak in Chinese.
3.4 Utilization of media
TV and movies in Chinese are easily available, so the
utilization of media has become increasingly important for
studying. Most of movies are rich in linguistic contents and
cultural backgrounds as well. Characters in Chinese program
also provide an unrivalled variety of authentic speech. it can
serve as good introduction about the various cultural
characteristics in china.
3.5 Encourage Students to surf the internet and Do Duty-report
Activity
Prior to each class, the teacher give students one or two topics
related to cultural knowledge and encourage them to surf the
Internet for some relative information. Then when they attend
the class, ask students to deliver their speeches and answer
question according to the information of their peers. In this
way , teachers can cultivate students’awareness of learning
culture via the internet on their own.

4. Ending
Language and culture are closely related. Only if culture
were integrated in language teaching, the whole teaching
process would be complete. Actually, there is no fixed way to
make students more sensitive to cultural differences and then
learn to use the language naturally. What we should remember is
to add a more culturally sensitive, student-focused flavor to our
teaching.