In all fields, when it comes to papers, everyone is certainly familiar with them. There are many types of papers, including academic papers, graduation papers, dissertations, scientific papers, achievement papers and so on. So how to write a good paper? The following is my paper on the necessity of cultural differences in English education for your reference, hoping to help friends in need.

The necessity of cultural differences in English education.

Language is the product of culture, and it is also the medium for the formation and spread of culture. Language is not only a part of culture, but also a carrier of culture, with rich cultural connotations. The process of learning English is the process of understanding and mastering English cultural background knowledge. To learn a foreign language, we must know the culture closely related to the foreign language, and being familiar with the relevant cultural knowledge will help to ensure the integrity of foreign language learning. Therefore, from the perspective of cultural differences between China and the West, this paper discusses the necessity of understanding the communication differences between China and the West in English education.

key word

English education, cultural differences between China and the West, necessity

Language is the carrier of culture and an important part of culture, which plays an important role in the accumulation, enrichment and development of culture. It is restricted and influenced by social customs, lifestyles, behaviors, values, ways of thinking, religious beliefs and national psychological character. English teaching is a language teaching, and of course it is inseparable from cultural education. English teaching should not only master pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and idioms, but also instruct students how to look at things and observe the world, and understand how westerners reflect their social thoughts, habits and behaviors in language.

First, the main differences between Chinese and Western cultures

Culture refers to the sum of material wealth and spiritual wealth created by human beings in the process of social and historical development, including material culture, institutional culture and psychological culture. So different regions, different nationalities, different history and different social development make cultures different. First, the differences in values. Among many cultural factors, value is one of the core contents, and values are manifested as some beliefs that are consistent with social culture, lasting and stable, and accepted by social members. Personality, freedom, equality, democracy, action, pragmatism, attention to time and informality are synonymous with western culture, while moderation, loyalty and filial piety, tolerance, modesty, etiquette, prudence, conservatism and harmony are the core concepts of China culture. Secondly, the difference of thinking mode. China people are good at thinking in images, regard things as an organic whole, look at problems from a systematic perspective, and pay attention to balance, harmony and human relations when solving problems.

Westerners, on the other hand, are good at logical thinking and deal with highly targeted objects. They prefer to decompose the object of analysis into different stages or components and analyze it in detail, which is also the performance of western culture characterized by rational thinking. Third, the cultural connotations of words are different. The cultural connotation of vocabulary generally refers to emotional color, style meaning and figurative meaning. If you simply attach words literally to your mother tongue without realizing the true meaning of words in the context, communicating in English will cause ambiguity and often fail to convey the meaning.

Finally, the differences of social customs. For example, in the concept of China people, it is normal for the elders or superiors to ask the younger generation or subordinates about their age, marriage, family and other issues, which is a sign of concern; However, in the western concept, such questions are purely personal privacy. It is impolite for both elders and bosses to ask such questions, which is the communication etiquette and common psychology in English-speaking society.

Second, the necessity of learning the cultural differences between China and the West.

Culture is the cornerstone of language, and culture relies on language to spread. You can't learn a foreign language well if you only pay attention to the form of the language and don't pay attention to its connotation. English teaching requires students to master not only the language knowledge structure itself, but also the cultural connotation carried by the language. Therefore, it is of great significance to introduce Chinese and western cultural knowledge into English teaching for cultivating cross-cultural communication talents.

First, paying attention to the cultural differences between China and the West plays an important role in improving students' interest in learning. In English teaching, there are often such phenomena: teachers feel that text teaching is boring and lack better teaching methods; Students' participation in teaching is less, their enthusiasm is not high, and the classroom atmosphere is rather dull. Students' usual learning methods are nothing more than taking notes, memorizing notes and even reciting compositions. This boring learning content and method make students not interested in learning English. Infiltrating cultural connotation in teaching can change this state to a great extent. For example, introducing relevant background knowledge, such as history, geography, humanities and customs, values, etc., can help students better understand the teaching content, thus stimulating students' interest and enthusiasm in learning English. Second, attaching importance to the cultural differences between China and the West plays an important role in cultivating students' good thinking habits.

Thinking mode is an important aspect of learning a language. Only by understanding English from the differences between culture and western culture and improving the way of thinking in learning English can we really learn English well. The cultivation of this way of thinking must rely on the teaching of cultural differences between China and the West. Cultural differences make a detailed analysis and explanation of the differences between Chinese and western cultures. Through the teaching of cultural differences between China and the West, it plays an important role in breaking students' Chinese thinking mode, avoiding Chinglish and cultivating students' English thinking ability. Thirdly, paying attention to the cultural differences between China and the West is of great significance for cultivating students' communicative competence. Language is a communication tool, and cultivating communicative competence is an important goal of English teaching.

However, having language ability does not mean having communicative ability. More and more people think that communicative competence should include five aspects: listening, speaking, reading, writing and social skills. However, in English teaching, teachers often pay more attention to the external form and grammatical structure of language and train students to make sentences that conform to grammatical rules, while ignoring the social environment of language, especially the cultural differences of language, thus ignoring students' communicative competence.

Fourthly, it is of great significance to pay attention to the cultural differences between China and the West to improve students' English level. Integrating knowledge about cultural differences between China and the West into English teaching will not only help students to better master vocabulary and grammar, but also help students to better understand the context and ways of language use, broaden their horizons, broaden their thinking, and integrate the essence of Chinese and Western cultures, which plays an important role in improving students' English level, thus improving their comprehensive quality and cultural literacy.

Third, the conclusion

There are many differences between Chinese and western cultures, so it is necessary to pay attention to them in English education. In order to achieve the goal of cross-cultural communication in English teaching, we must deal with the relationship between language teaching and cultural teaching, so that students can learn Chinese and western cultural knowledge while mastering English. Therefore, in English teaching, we should not only teach students language knowledge such as vocabulary and grammar, but also cultivate students' cultural awareness, enhance their sensitivity to cultural differences, understand the cultural differences between China and the West, and become a compound talent with both professional knowledge and intercultural communication ability.

References:

[1] Feng Wenjiao. Education of Cultural Differences between China and the West in English Teaching [J]. Journal of Yanbian Institute of Education, 20 1 1(06).

This paper analyzes the different characteristics of English and Chinese cultures, briefly expounds the relationship between the two cultures and college English translation teaching, and further points out how to combine cultural differences with translation teaching and how to introduce cultural introduction into translation teaching, so as to deeply understand the importance of cultural differences between the East and the West in translation.

Keywords: cultural differences; Translation; Language; teaching

1 overview

Translation is an important aspect of English learning and a difficult point in teaching. Although there are different opinions on the definition of translation, the real meaning is the same: to use one language instead of another to convey the same information. In the process of translation, the translator must face two different languages, which belong to two different cultural systems. Therefore, translators are faced with two cultures. When discussing translation, we must explore the relationship between language and culture and study the differences between different cultures. A common problem in English learning is that many learners will feel overwhelmed when they reach a higher learning stage. One of the important reasons is caused by cultural barriers, because learners do not put the language into a complete cultural system to learn. It can be seen that introducing cultural differences between English and Chinese in college English translation teaching plays a very important role in solving translation difficulties and improving students' practical application ability.

Two translation positions are vacant

Absolutely accurate language communication is impossible, even in the same language. There is linguistic inequality between any two different languages. English and Chinese belong to two different language families, especially between them. In English-Chinese translation, there is often no corresponding word or semantic difference, which is what we call' vacancy' in translation.

2. 1 vocabulary vacancy

Although there are commonalities between languages, different languages have their own characteristics after all. Its characteristics are manifested in vocabulary, which will lead to inconsistency in concept expression. It is related to the translator's natural environment, geographical location, lifestyle and scientific and technological development level.

Language is a continuous activity, with the development of history, new words are constantly produced. 1957 10 10 On October 4th, when the Soviet Union launched the first artificial earth satellite, the word sputnik appeared lexical gaps in thousands of languages in the world. On July 2 1 967, American astronaut Armstrong landed on the moon, and words such as lunar spaceship, lunar bounce, lunar dust and lunar soil appeared in English. This kind of vocabulary vacancy is caused by different levels of scientific and technological development. There are also Eskimos living in Alaska. They have more than a dozen words to express "snow": flying snow in the air, falling snow on the ground, ice-like snow, semi-melted snow and so on. But in English, there is only one word, snow.

Sapir, an American linguist, said: "The existence of language can not be separated from culture, and can not be separated from various customs and beliefs passed down by society." After thousands of years of feudal society, China has formed a unique and strict feudal patriarchal clan system, with different sexes, orderly ages and distinct blood ties. In contrast, the patriarchal clan system in Britain and America is far less strict than that in China, and the family structure is loose. Brothers are different in Chinese, and there is no difference in using brothers in English; In Chinese, uncle, uncle and other appellations have different identities and clear relationships, while in English, all men representing the older generation use uncle. Compared with Chinese, there are lexical gaps in the expression of kinship terms in English.

In English teaching, we should pay enough attention to the differences of patriarchal clan system, think carefully about the grammatical conflicts caused by vocabulary vacancy, and resolve the contradictions by changing the angle.

2.2 semantic vacancy

Color is a common cultural phenomenon, which has the same meaning in many cases, but some of the same colors are given different meanings in Chinese and English cultures. For example, the word "green" in English is consistent with its Chinese counterpart "green" in expressing semantics such as youth, immaturity and vitality. But the word "green" contains the meaning of "jealousy", which is a vacancy in the Chinese word "green". Similarly, "black and blue" in English is "black and blue", not "black and blue"; Black sheep are black sheep, not black sheep. Therefore, in the teaching process, the first choice to bridge the semantic gap is to seek deep semantic correspondence, rather than surface correspondence between words.

Another major aspect of semantic vacancy is the non-coincidence of semantic radiation surfaces. The same word may have different meanings in different people, different speech occasions or different language environments. For example, "flower" in English and its Chinese counterpart "flower" have the same basic semantics, but they are quite different in actual language communication. English "flower" as a verb can mean "blossom" and "prosperity", but Chinese "flower" has no such meaning; However, when "Hua" is used as a verb, the semantics obtained by "Hua Qian" and "Hua" are also blank for "Hua". Therefore, both of them have semantic gaps when they are verbs. In translation, students should understand that the key to bridge this semantic gap is to grasp the actual contextual meaning of words in language communication.

2.3 Pragmatic meaning

Pragmatic meaning refers to the national cultural meaning contained in vocabulary. With different cultural origins, the cultural meanings carried by language are bound to be different. Translation is a cross-cultural language activity. Once some words are translated, the cultural environment to which the source words are attached changes. For example, "John can be trusted. He doesn't eat fish and plays games." "John is reliable. He doesn't eat fish and plays games. " Literally, the translated sentence is close to the original meaning, but due to the lack of cultural background knowledge, the translator only translated the superficial meaning of the sentence. It turns out that the struggle between the old and new religious factions in British history is very fierce. According to the old religion, only fish can be eaten during Lent. After Protestantism overthrew the old religion, Protestants refused to eat fish on Lent to show their conversion to Protestantism and loyalty to the New Deal. So "not eating fish" means "loyalty", while "playing games" originally means "playing by the rules", which means "aboveboard" and "upright". Therefore, the correct translation of this sentence should be: "John is reliable, he is loyal and upright."

From this series of discussions, we can see that language and culture are inseparable, which requires that foreign language teaching should not only emphasize the language form itself, but also attach importance to the cultural attributes of language. As teachers, we should consider the cultural background of the language in our translation teaching, and we should not lose the original cultural environment, otherwise we will misunderstand the English culture.

Translation is a consulting tool for cultural exchange. Cultural development is the basis of the development of translation studies, and translation studies are also restricted by culture. Understanding the cultural differences between English and Chinese and strengthening our sensitivity to them are of great benefit to our effective college English translation teaching, which is also a subject that we need to constantly study and explore in translation teaching practice.

References:

[1] Zhou Fangzhu's Translation Pluralism China Foreign Translation Publishing Company 2004.

[2] Wang Dawei's Modern Chinese-English Translation Skills, Shanghai World Book Publishing Company 1999.

[3] Wang Qiang' English Education Theory and Practice' Anhui Education Press, 2003.

;