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1、1returnA Study on Cross-cultural Barriers in Reading of EnglishProfessor Wang Lin English Department of Foshan UniversityFoshan, Guangdong, ChinaI. IntroductionDecoding and comprehension are the two main tasks for reading: I进综喇帖轧厦恫展颈奇怪裙寝漫陀峨萍影邹戎叼蘑及桅耻剃葵藐间茶叔姑瑶畜魂哼渠扰藏杖悠元忻抠犀押瑞郧犬犊锦辖茎盖精替陷液挟磐堑嘲铡卞巢削磊楚融烷二灌廓命踪翘
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4、o main tasks for reading: In English learning, the elements, which influence the reading are linguistic knowledge, cultural background knowledge, language skills, and intelligent elements (the abilities of thought such as motivation, purpose, emotion and control). Mastering linguistic knowledge of p
5、honetics, vocabulary and grammar is helpful to decode the word symbols. However, in the process of reading, many Chinese students already possess the above knowledge, but they still cannot comprehend the texts completely, so understanding the cultural content of what one reads is a crucial factor in
6、 reading comprehension. Because language is the carrier of culture, peoples words and deeds reflect certain cultural connotation consciously or unconsciously. Every social communication possesses its own certain thought pattern, value, custom, and way of life. For “The influence of background to com
7、prehension is larger than language knowledge.” (Ma, 1995). Many studies indicate that without sufficient background knowledge of social culture, the readers cannot comprehend the deep meaning of texts. This paper will examine the cross-cultural difficulties in the process of English reading in three
8、 aspects: what the main difficulties are in reading, why these difficulties exist and how to reduce and eliminate them to achieve the exact comprehension.The paper, from the perspective of cross-cultural communication, tries to analyze the role of cultural knowledge in reading comprehension, general
9、izes the comprehension barriers Chinese students meet in the comprehension process of English reading and explains the relationship between the barriers and language. The paper then analyzes the internal causes of the barriers. And lastly, it brings forth approaches and methods for eliminating the b
10、arriers.I. The Role of Cultural Knowledge in Reading ComprehensionAlong with the development of Applied Linguistics and Psycholinguistics, the American scholar, Goodman (1982) negated the traditional reading theory and posed a “psycholinguistic reading model”, which considers that reading is not the
11、 process of passive decoding and reading literally any more. Rather it is the process of active “guessing confirming” and interaction between the readers and the reading contents. Reading comprehension is a complex process of the interaction between the writers language and the readers prior backgro
12、und knowledge or memory schemata. “Every stage of comprehension involves readers background knowledge of culture (Anderson, 1997, 14:369).” Phillips (1984) pointed out: “a successful reading of any passage, depends upon a combination of linguistic knowledge, cognitive skill and general experience an
13、d knowledge of the world, whether acquired by experience or by learning, influence greatly the reading comprehension process, for the more the reader brings to the text, the more is taken away”. Indeed, in the reading comprehension process, readers linguistic element is very important, but sometimes
14、 we cannot read behind the lines except by the help of background knowledge of culture, because the meanings of words are acquired in a certain circumstance of culture. Therefore, if a Chinese student does not know about the English culture, such as histories, values, mode of thinking, customs, reli
15、gion and life style, he may fail to understand the exact meaning of the texts.III. The Cultural Background Knowledge of and the Reading Comprehension of English.For a long time, in China, English teaching has just focused on the language forms (such as phonetics, vocabulary and grammar) and ignored
16、the effect of background knowledge of culture. As the carrier of culture, the cultural background of language is rather extensive. Lacking of the necessary cultural background may hinder people from comprehending language. For instance, when the President Reagan took up his post, an American told a
17、Chinese teacher: “the United States has gone from peanuts to popcorn.” The syntax of this sentence is very simple. However, the Chinese teacher did not understand the sentence at that time until her friend explained to her that former president Jimmy Carter owned a big peanut farm while the present
18、president Reagan is an actor and people eat popcorn while they watch TV. She suddenly realized the real humorous meaning of this sentence. From this case, we can see that to comprehend the language, not only depends on the comprehension of vocabulary and grammatical structures, but also depends on t
19、he comprehension of relevant background knowledge of culture. The differences of cross-cultural background in reading comprehension of English can be classified as the following aspects.3.1 Historical Culture Historical culture refers to the culture that is formed by the developing process of certai
20、n history and social heritage which varies between nations at often times. In the process of cross-cultural reading, we often meet the comprehension barriers that are caused by such differences of historical cultures. For example: At a science museum you can feel your hair stand on end as harmless e
21、lectricity passes through your body. The phrase ones hair stands on end is an idiom, from a criminals expression. In 1825, an Englishman named Probert was sentenced to death by hanging for stealing horses. While waiting for his execution at the gallows, Probert was extremely scared, the result of wh
22、ich made his hair stand straight up. Therefore, in English, ones hair stands on end means fear. The writer uses this idiom to emphasize that the museum is very weird and strange. However, if Chinese students do not know this idiom, they may fail to understand its idiomatic meaning over and above the
23、 direct meaning.3.2 Regional Culture Regional culture, here, refers to the culture that can be shaped by natural conditions and geographical environment of an area. These effects on culture may lend themselves to creating comprehension barriers to Chinese students of English reading. For example, (1
24、) Shall I compare thee to a summers day? Thou art lovelier and more temperate. This poem is a part of Shakespeares sonnet 18. He compared the lover to a summers day, which is difficult for Chinese students to understand. Only knowing some relevant geographical knowledge, can they get real understand
25、ing of this sonnet. As Britain is a high latitude country, the average summer temperature is about 20 degrees and the daytime is very long, from about 4 oclock in the morning to about 10 oclock at night. Therefore, the summer in Britain is pleasantly cool and delightful. It is obviously different fr
26、om the hot summer of most regions in China, especially, in south China, where the hot summer is very hard to endure and causes people to feel unhappy. (2) British poet Shelleys poem “Ode to the West Wind” compares the west wind to the warm and delightful wind that brings forth spring. However, to Ch
27、inese people, the west wind not only means cold but also means declining and depressed.3.3 Social CultureLanguage is an important component of culture, the existence and development of language are influenced by society, and the social phenomenon and vocabulary of a certain historical periods reflec
28、t the objective history of society. Such vocabulary may confuse foreign readers. For instance, when American President Nixon was in his second term of office, Watergate became a well-established and common term. It stands for a political scandal in the Nixon era associated with burglarizing an offic
29、e of the Democrat Party located at the Watergate Hotel. in Washington. Elements within the Nixon administration created a large number of euphemisms to hide the scandal. For example, intelligence gathering replaces eavesdropping, plumber for eavesdropper. Chinese students may have difficulty in unde
30、rstanding these words.3.4 Religious CultureReligious culture is an important component in the lives of many human beings. It refers to the culture that is formed by religious belief of nation and can be embodied in the cultural differences of taboo of different nations. Confucianism, Taoism and Budd
31、hism are three main religions of China, which deeply influence Chinese people. On the contrary, many people living in European based and/or founded cultures believe in Christianity or have been seriously influenced by Christian values. They believe that a single God created and organized the world.
32、Because of differences of religious culture, Chinese students can misunderstand English reading., at times. For example, a sentence in the article “Why Measure Life in Heartbeats” is that I believe, because of my religious faith, that I shall “return to father” in an after life that is beyond descri
33、ption. Many Chinese readers comprehend an after life in the sentences as the next life. The reason of this misunderstanding is the differences of the two religious cultures. The next life is the term of oriental Buddhism, which refers to the samsara. On the contrary, Christianity does not have this
34、concept, considering that after the death of human being, his soul will stay in Heaven or Hell and will not disappear. Therefore, they do not have the saying of the next life. So according to its religious background, an after life refers to the time after peoples death.Again, there is a need to emp
35、hasize cultural differences as being potentially extensive and complex. In the process of English reading, at times, we should focus on the understanding of cultural background to get a deeper understanding of the whole textIV. Cultural Barriers in Relation to the language In English reading, cultur
36、al barriers and language cannot be separated. Language is a carrier, which not only carries the information of language, but also carries the information of culture. Every kind of language is created and developed in a certain historical circumstance of society. Therefore, “Language reflects the fea
37、ture of nation. It contains not only the historical cultural background of this nation, but also the view of life, the way of life and the way of thought of this nation (Xiao, 1997:159)”. The result of the reflection can be seen in different aspects of a language system: vocabulary, sentences (inclu
38、ding proverb and slang) and texts (including style and rhetoric).4.1 VocabularyAs the basic element of language, vocabulary is the backbone of the whole language system. It certainly reflects the differences of culture most obviously and extensively. On the one hand, some English words can have thei
39、r equivalents in Chinese, so during the process of reading, readers from different cultures may not experience culturally related comprehension barriers. However, there may be many words in one culture, for which the equivalents can not be found in other cultures; in other words, “vocabulary vacancy
40、”. On the other hand, although we can find the equivalent word, the meaning extent of a word and the connotation of culture are not complete equivalent between different cultures. The differences of culture in vocabulary can be reflected in the following: For example, (1) In English, privacy means s
41、tate of being away from others, alone and undisturbed while it usually refers to personal secrets and the secrets and unusual behaviors of personal life in Chinese. (2) Exploitation means using or developing fully so as to get profit in English while in Chinese, it usually means use selfishly and un
42、fairly for ones own advantage or profit.Secondly, many English words can find the equivalents in Chinese while the cultural connotations of them are different. Three aspects will be concerned: the quantity of the equivalents, the meaning extent of the equivalents and the cultural association of the
43、equivalents.(1) The numbers of equivalents of English and Chinese are not always the same. For example, the word cousin in Chinese can have a different meaning. A compete translation of Biaome could be a sister younger than me and on my mothers side.(2) There is one equivalent word in Chinese to an
44、English word, but the meaning extent of two words are not exactly the same. One reason may be is that the meaning extent of English vocabulary is larger than that of Chinese vocabulary. For instance, morning in English refers to time section from midnight (zero hour) to twelve oclock in twenty-four
45、hours system, but in Chinese, morning refers to the time section from dawn to noon. Another situation is that the meaning extent of English vocabulary is smaller than that of Chinese vocabulary. For instance, in English culture, family usually refers to the family of two generations including parent
46、s and children, even refers to the family of a couple, which does not want children. However, in Chinese, the family refers to the family of three generations including grandparents, parents and children; sometimes it even refers to the family of four generations.(3) English words can find the equiv
47、alent in Chinese but these two kinds of cultures give each word different cultural association within society. For example, the red color, in English culture, red stands for danger, but in Chinese, red for happiness, fortune and authority. In English culture, 13 is an unlucky number. On the contrary
48、, in Chinese, 13 is a lucky number, while 4 is an unlucky number, for 4 has the same pronunciation of Chinese Si (means death).4.2 SentencesCross-cultural barriers not only exist in the abundant vocabulary, but also exist in the aspect of sentences (including proverb and slang). Although the word an
49、d its meaning are almost the same, the sentence that is composed of the vocabulary expresses different meaning. This is very hard for Chinese students to understand. For example,He is a professional.She is a professional.From the angle of language, the two sentences above describe a person who is engaged in a kind of specific profession. Actually, from the perspectives of region, sex, profession and society, the first sentence means that he is a
