並列摘要
A cultural mode of expression is utilized in the language we speak. Different languages present different ways of organizing thought (Shen, 2003). Native speakers learn cultural aspects of their mother tongue implicitly. They learn through reinforcement from family members or members of their communities. However, foreign language learners need their language teachers to help them to acquire cultural information explicitly. This author intends to argue and advocate that we need to incorporate our teaching materials with cultural features as well as linguistic materials in order to have a wholesome and effective learning experience and learning outcome.This paper starts with why we need to teach culture. Learning culture, in addition to learning language, has become a ”must” step, not a choice. Merely having possession of the linguistic ability is not sufficient to conduct a successful intercultural communication; cultural elements must be included in order to make sense of the language behaviors of the native speakers. Language teachers need to identify what ”culture” is and what it means in ”teaching culture”. The definition of culture has always been quite blurred; however, the shared belief is that culture with a small ”c” which is the one regarding our daily lives and the perceptions behind them, is the one we should include in our curriculum. We also need to teach both differences and similarities.Difficulties and challenges language teachers are facing in teaching culture, from less time in teaching hours to lacking organized materials and data, are discussed. The very basic difficulty lies in the availability of compiled and organized culture materials which are tied to its relevant linguistic materials. For example, using Dr. E.T. Hall's work on ”time”, language teachers can incorporate the concept of time with the English tenses of verb. Perhaps through this approach, we can open some new perspective for learning English tenses.
延伸閱讀
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