Cultural Absence in China’s Tertiary EFL Teaching

Abstract

Effective intercultural communication involves the students’ awareness of not only the culture of the target language, but also of their own culture, on the basis of which their sensitivity to cultural differences, an important part of communicative competence, can be built up. However, while Chinese students are concentrating on learning the culture of Anglo-American English in the EFL classroom, the education of students’ own culture is neglected. The absence of Chinese traditional culture in the EFL classroom has become a serious problem in China’s tertiary English teaching. This paper assumes that the serious phenomenon might be accounted for from three aspects. In the first place, the present English textbooks seldom include materials introducing Chinese culture. Secondly, Chinese universities pay less attention to providing forum for students to exchange opinions on traditional culture and history; and thirdly, the learning resources about Chinese culture are poorly accessible. The paper also comes up with some solutions to this phenomenon in the ways of revising textbooks, giving optional courses related to cultural comparison, and making use of web resources.