Teaching Culture in College English Course: An Empirical Study of TCM Major Students

摘要

Based on the theoretical background of culture teaching, this paper firstly emphasizes the necessity and significance of culture introduction on college English teaching. Meanwhile, the importance of TCM knowledge and culture is stressed further, and then a comprehensive investigation is conducted to obtain an overall picture of current satiation in both target culture and native culture teaching for non-English major students in Shaanxi University of Chinese Medicine to discover the problems existing and find out the underlying causes and practical solutions to improve students' intercultural competence and expressiveness on TCM terms and culture. There are two classes including 100 students and 10 college English teachers of Shaanxi University of Chinese Medicine participate in this investigation. The author made a culture test consists of target culture and native culture knowledge and TCM terms expressiveness and case analysis for non-English major students, questionnaires for both students and teachers to investigate both' attitude toward integrating target culture and native culture into college English teaching. And then by an empirical study, the author testified the effectiveness of target and native culture teaching including TCM terms translation in cultivating the students' cultural awareness and develop their TCM culture protection consciousness. According to major findings of the empirical study, the author proposed pedagogical suggestions for both culture teaching in such aspects as approaches and techniques, teachers and students, teaching materials and evaluation. All the findings confirm that integrating both target culture and native culture and expressiveness of TCM terms and so on is not only improve the students' intercultural competence but also broaden their horizon toward the whole world and strengthen their native culture identification. Anyway, Communication is a two-way communication. It is of great significance for the college English teachers and students in Shaanxi University of Chinese Medicine to perform duties and responsibilities for the dissemination of TCM both at home and abroad.