Culture influence on language aquisition.doc

culture influence on language aquisitiontopic:it is well known that lots of elments can prevent people from learning a second language well. in this paper i want to say that culture influence can be regarded as a very important one.the effect of language study not only are directly influenced by psychological oppression, but also determined by culture distance.(crystal 1996) culture is a very important element to affect language learning. environment , social status and different culture leading a different effect in language learning.articles:1english is completely different from chinese. students should not only study the language but learn the different culture as well. bea wehrly quotes christensens view (1995: 115) to emphasize that cross-cultural awareness “is rooted in knowledge and understanding gained through meaningful, personal experience with culturally dissimilar persons.” cross-cultural study demands students master more knowledge about western countries and their people. when students have the first class of english, they approach it with a combination feeling of excitement and anxiety. but chinese students are often shocked after they greet foreigner first time with this sentence: “did you have lunch?” and then they are frightened to open their mouth. the invisible culture oppression makes students lose their confidence, and become passive.from this article ,the writer demostrated the barrier in languague study caused by culture, culture shock makes the students feel afraid of speak before native speakers.article 2. “the students would be able to generalize from school experience to life experience.” jefferson said hundreds years ago. (steven e tzer, 1993:34) students study english as a foreign language, and it is hard for them to understand the meaning of english words and its culture. because of their racial identity, they also fear for talking about their experience. having the same opinion with helmks (1984:117), bea writes in his book: “racial identity development is the consequence of the persons experience in his or her social culture environment.” that means knowledge comes from life and experience. students usually know a word, but they may not know the exact meaning of the word. although the experience is so important for a language learner, it is a pity that students every day stay at the classroom, and their experiences are not different from others.although studying english in a same country, different students whose backgrounds are different from this dominant culture have a different time adjusting to the classroom culture. “culture influences both behavior and psychological processes.”(pamela cooper, 1995: 279) students go to the classroom with their dialect accent and they cannot cooperate with correct english pronunciation. usually students are shameful for their background, and shameful to express their experiences, and thoughts. they think that it will lose their face when they speak with dialect accent. from this article we know culture influences both behavior and psychologicla processes.different culture backgrounds people expressed differently to adjust the classroom culture.article 3the distance of accepted power between teacher and student within asian societies is a much wider than it is in the west. confucius said that “teacher” is the most respected profession in society. for asian communities, based on his model, teaching is viewed as a teacher-controlled and directed process (richards and lockhart: 1996: 107). the chinese attitude facilitates the expectation that the learner will, at an appropriate time, be able to reproduce the knowledge in the same form as it was presented to him by his teacher (brick in richards and lockhart: 1996: 107). in regards to japan, the traditional special aura about learning and the teachers role lingersand teachers remain for the most part proud and dedicated participants in this heritage (reischauer: 1977: 171). on the other hand, western education focuses more on individual learner creativity and encourages the teacher to facilitate learning and encourage independent learning (richards and lockhart: 1996: 107). socrates once said from this article we can conclude that because the distance, the different culture gives different influence on their students education, ex individual attitude.possible conclusion: language learning is also culture learning.there is no language without culture. thanks to the efforts of byram and kramsch as mentioned previously, we firmly believe that culture can not be seperated with language learning.we should raise the awareness of the importance of culture in language teaching and studying.culture shock becomes an apparent barrier in language learning which always makes the students feel unease or unconfident in different or strange situations.in coping with this , a language learner should try to master the target culture and the language use in different conditions. for students of elt, studying english culture is not an arbitrary but a necessary activity.the findings of the study suggest that a culture class is significantly beneficial in terms of language skills, raising cultural awareness, changing attitudes towards native and target societies, and contribution to the teaching profession. contribution of a culture class they received.this study has implications for a culture class in the curriculum of language studying a culture class would prove to be a vital component of language learning and teaching, since as this study illustrated . it has a great deal to offer to the development of communicative competence as well as other skills in the instruction of any language.referencesadorno, t. (1993). the culture industry: selected essay on mass culture. routledge.alptekin, c. (2002). towards intercultural communicative competence in elt. elt journal56 (1), 57-64.bada, e. (2000). culture in elt. cukurova university journal of social sciences (6), 100-110.byram m. (1997b). “cultural studies and foreign language teaching”. in bassnet