After the promulgation of English Curriculum Standard for Senior High School (20 17 edition), the core literacy of English subjects has attracted much attention, and English teaching has transformed into English education. As a national course, English course must be educational. English courses and English teaching should be transformed and upgraded to English education, whether at the national social level or at the personal level.
Nowadays, the theory of English uselessness is rampant, and there are more calls for English subjects to quit their main subjects, which is a practical problem of English subjects. However, learning English should not be limited to discussing "usefulness or uselessness". English education is no longer English teaching. This is not a change of concept, but a change of value, especially the change of core values. The core value of English education lies in educating people.
The biggest problem for children in China to learn English is not that their English pronunciation is inaccurate, but that they dare not speak it. For a long time, most children in China have avoided communicating with foreigners. Obviously, this is a sign of lack of confidence, especially personality confidence. Therefore, the most important mission of English education is not to teach children pronunciation, but to cultivate students' cultural self-confidence and personality self-confidence while learning English.
With the development of artificial intelligence, English teachers will gradually lose their advantages in language teaching, but artificial intelligence will not surpass people in educating people for a long time to come. Teaching and educating people, teaching is the means and educating people is the purpose, which is the real value of English education.
Second, the advantages of English education: cross-cultural education
Every discipline should educate people, but each discipline has its own unique tasks and advantages. The advantage of English education lies in cross-cultural education, which is irreplaceable by other disciplines.
For example, the English word "party" has two meanings when translated into Chinese: "party, party". When most children first came into contact with the word "Party", they only knew a definition of "Party". How to make students remember that it also means "Party"? This highlights the cross-cultural advantages of English, and teachers can link the semantics of these two meanings to teach children. Generally speaking, people who get together are friends, and there is also the word cronies in Chinese. The party actually refers to like-minded people. Guiding children to think about the meaning of "party" from this aspect will make it easier for students to understand its connotation.
The advantage of English subject is cross-cultural education, so how to find and master the cross-cultural advantage? Cross-cultural literacy education of English subjects is based on English language literacy and aims at cross-cultural cognitive ability, cross-cultural communicative ability and cross-cultural emotional attitudes and values. Therefore, English educators need to work hard from these three aspects.
First, cross-cultural cognitive ability. Cross-cultural cognition includes foreign culture and China culture. For example, China has been circulating the story of "Pangu Begins the Creation". Foreigners always associate the story of Pangu with the story of genesis in the Bible, and think that Pangu's story is the story of creating the world. However, there are essential differences between the two. When Pangu woke up, he had an axe. Axes are man-made objects, representing culture. So Pangu created heaven and earth, not heaven and earth. The story of Genesis is to create the world from zero to one, and Pangu sorts everything in the world from one to nine to establish order. These are two different concepts. Based on this, cross-cultural cognition is formed.
Second, cross-cultural communication ability. Intercultural communicative competence refers to the ability of foreigners to explain their cultural reasons. For example, in the story of Pangu's creation, the axe existed from the beginning. After Pangu's death, it became mountains, rivers and trees, but it did not become animals, at least in the earliest words. Therefore, it is necessary to explain this clearly to foreigners and convince them that China's Pangu story created heaven and earth, not heaven and earth. This is so-called cross-cultural communication. In the process of cross-cultural communication, we should reasonably convince others, rather than force others to accept their own views.
Third, cross-cultural emotional attitude. To cultivate cross-cultural emotional attitudes, we must first understand the similarities and differences between cultures, and learn from each other, understand each other and learn from each other on the basis of respecting cultural similarities and differences, thus forming a better cultural understanding. In the process of cross-cultural education, we will first encounter a realistic problem-cultural differences. Humans live in groups, and the boundaries between different groups are not biological, but cultural. Therefore, the cultural differences between different groups are either one or the other, big or small, and differences are the boundary signs of different groups. However, cultures also have commonalities. For example, both Chinese and western children like or fear ghost stories, which is common. Generally speaking, the current education problem is that it pays too much attention to "difference" and too little attention to "similarity". Therefore, we need to guide children to understand the similarities and differences between cultures.
Contribution of English Education: Promoting Cross-cultural Cognition
As an English teacher, have you ever thought about the contribution of English education to society? Some people say that English education has promoted the development of foreign trade. But in the end, in the direct income, the role of English may only be 1%, and 99% comes from products. Therefore, strictly speaking, the development of foreign trade industry can not be regarded as the contribution of English. The real contribution of English education lies in cultivating the international vision of foreign trade professionals, helping them avoid policy risks and establishing risk awareness.
China today is capable of making greater contributions to the world. The Belt and Road Initiative, the community of human destiny, and telling the story of China well ... are all inseparable from English, the main working language in today's world. English can promote China's cross-cultural cognition of the world, China and China.
Cognition refers to the knowledge and understanding of everything. Many people pay more attention to knowledge, but we should pay more attention to knowledge. "How to know" is always more important than "what to know", because knowledge is endless, and knowledge can be exhausted in human cognition at present.
Cross-cultural cognition, as a kind of value existence of English education, promotes English education to return to the ancient essence-liberal arts and humanities education. In the AI era, the advantage of English education as a language education is becoming more and more limited, and it can no longer be compared with machines, but our advantage lies in humanities. Paying attention to cross-cultural education may be a far-reaching social and personal value of English education.
From the perspective of cognitive education, English education can be carried out from the cognitive dimension, including fact cognition, method cognition, value cognition and emotion cognition.
The first is cross-cultural factual cognition. For example, the concept of the Great Wall actually comes from the western world. At present, the earliest and oldest Great Wall is the Sumerian Amorite Great Wall, followed by the Great Wall of Athens, the Great Wall of Gorgon, the Great Wall of Hadrian in England, the Great Wall of China and the wall of Constantinople in Turkey, all of which have defensive functions.
At present, China's concept of the Great Wall can be traced back to the book About Introducing China published by Spanish missionary juan gonsales de mendoza 1585. This expression originated from the existing concept of the Great Wall in the West, and was not specially designed for the Great Wall in China. Therefore, the Great Wall in China is not an English translation of the Great Wall, but an English expression of the Great Wall. So the Great Wall in China is not "long", just like the Chinese translation of the White House has no "palace".
Secondly, cross-cultural method cognition. There is an important principle about intercultural approach-Jin Fenghua principle, which means "just right".
Jin Fenghua principle comes from the story of Goldilocks: Jin Fenghua went to bear's house to drink porridge. The first bowl was too hot, the second bowl was too cold, and the third bowl was just right, so he drank the third bowl. The core principle of the story is "just right", which westerners apply to various fields. Therefore, just right becomes the methodology of cross-cultural cognition.
Third, cross-cultural value cognition. There was once a story that a father gave a child a toy. The child didn't start playing at once, but thanked his parents first. This scene makes people think about what a grateful culture is. In Charlotte's online reading practice, it was found that none of the 32 students and teachers at the scene would take the initiative to thank their parents when they got the gift they were eager for. Therefore, on the level of cross-cultural value, it is worth thinking about, knowing how to be grateful to parents, grateful to the country, and putting it into action.
Finally, cross-cultural emotional cognition. Here is a shocking little story. China's English concept "China" actually comes from the West. Someone has investigated more than a dozen foreign children on this issue. They say that China is porcelain, which is easily broken, and so are things from China. Although they learned more about China later, the concept of "China is fragile" has formed an inherent impression in their minds. This requires us to patiently explain to them, so that they can gradually reverse their emotional attitude towards China-this is cross-cultural emotional cognition.
To sum up, English education, as a kind of value existence, can develop students' factual cognition, method cognition, value cognition and emotional cognition as well as cross-cultural cognition through simple language ontology education.
Classroom application: a method of English cross-cultural education
Developing students' positive cross-cultural emotional attitudes and values is the ultimate goal of cross-cultural education. Positive cross-cultural respect should be the basis of all cross-cultural behaviors, especially in cross-cultural cognition and judgment, respect is an indispensable prerequisite. Active cross-cultural learning is the purpose of cross-cultural actors. Even the so-called "most backward" culture has something to learn from the so-called "most advanced" culture.
Specific implementation to classroom application can be divided into two situations.
When the learning content has clear cross-cultural education content and activities, analyze the advantages of cross-cultural education and find out the clear content of cross-cultural facts, methods, values and emotional education. According to students' known knowledge, students' recent knowledge, students' interests and students' needs, determine the recent development area of cross-cultural education, and then clearly carry out the explicit teaching activities of cross-cultural facts, methods, values and emotional education. For example, the story of Pangu's creation mentioned above is a very explicit cross-cultural education content.
When the learning content contains hidden contents and activities of cross-cultural education, according to students' interests, needs, knowledge and insights, we can determine the recent development areas of cross-cultural education, analyze its advantages, find out the hidden contents of cross-cultural facts, methods, values and emotions (any English learning content contains some hidden contents of cross-cultural education for China students), and then clearly carry out cross-cultural facts, methods and emotions. For example, many students in China think it is very clumsy for English children to wear suits and bow ties to attend parties. But there is an important cultural connotation behind this phenomenon, that is, the British attach importance to rules and gentlemanly manners. Therefore, students should at least understand and respect others and pay attention to dress.
The key to cross-cultural communication: perspective and method
In the process of cooperating with Oxford University Press to create "Talking about China with Oxford China-A New Era English Course", there is a perspective of cross-cultural communication that is very worthy of our English educators' reference. Why do so many people tell stories about China, but few people really tell stories about China? The key point is that most people just spread China culture from the perspective of China.
For example, an old woman in China explained the changes in her past and present life on TV. This way of telling the story of China is desirable. British authors say that they are more likely to believe the expressions of the elderly. If it is a young person, the British will be suspicious, because they think that young people may not tell the truth and even lie for a living. This is the importance of communication perspective and method choice, and we should know how to choose a way that is easier to impress each other.
There are many perspectives and methods of cross-cultural communication. At this level, we must attach importance to content dissemination. For example, through the story of Pangu's creation, we need to spread China's view of order. China society attaches great importance to order, and Pangu's epoch-making process is the process of sorting the world from 1 to 9.
For another example, many countries in the world celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival now, because boating is a national activity. But the core significance of China Dragon Boat Festival is to commemorate Qu Yuan and carry forward the spirit of patriotism. In other countries, the celebration of Dragon Boat Festival is more limited to family gatherings.
So the content of cross-cultural communication is very important. From this, the teaching suggestions of "Talking about China with Oxford" can be extended.
Talking about China in China with Oxford English-A New Era English Course.
Talking about China with Oxford should start with understanding the content, methods and language of spreading China culture, pay attention to the cultivation of cross-cultural ability and aim at cross-cultural communication practice.
First of all, it is necessary to analyze the content, reasons, vocabulary and sentences used in the communication process; Secondly, the classroom guides students to learn to spread the current China cultural content with relevant words and sentences; Finally, put it into practice and use the words and sentences learned here to spread this or other China cultural content.
Teaching and educating people, teaching is the means and educating people is the purpose. In educating people, English should give full play to its academic advantages, attach importance to cross-cultural education, promote the cognition of cross-cultural facts, methods, values and emotions, and cultivate positive cross-cultural emotional attitudes and values.
On the one hand, on the basis of the content of explicit cross-cultural education, explicit cross-cultural education is carried out; On the other hand, when students' needs for development in the near future are obvious, we should explore the possibility of cross-cultural education implied in any English learning content and conduct explicit cross-cultural education.
With English education, teachers can help students build up their personality and self-confidence, and let children stand bravely on the world stage to tell the story of China, and become the messengers of China's cultural communication.