On the Cross-Cultural Aspect of Foreign Language Teaching

Prof. Zhong Meisun

Vice-President, Beijing Foreign Studies University

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Hello, everyone! First of all, please allow me to extend to you, on behalf of Beijing Foreign Studies University, sincerest greetings, and wish the Beijing Forum of Asian Education great success!

In today’s world with a pluralistic cultural background, foreign languages are not just “useful tools”, but the most direct means of communication between different cultures. Foreign language teaching is, therefore, not a simple process of helping students acquire foreign languages, but rather a kind of cultural education, a process of teaching cross-cultural communication, a communication of thinking and information exchange between people of different cultural backgrounds. The topic of my speech today is “On the Cross-Cultural Aspect of Foreign Language Teaching”, which consists of three parts: 1. Cultural awareness in foreign language teaching; 2. Cross-cultural communication capability training in foreign language teaching; and 3. Cross-cultural exchange and cooperation in foreign language teaching.

1. Cultural awareness in foreign language teaching

Over a long time foreign language teaching in China suffered from the influence of the theory that “foreign languages are tools”, which focused on the teaching of language skills, and far too much attention has been paid to the training of students’ examination skills, often at the expense of teaching even the rudiments of foreign cultures, neglecting the introduction of the cultural value of the nations speaking those languages. This bias was manifested not only in English teaching at home but also in Chinese teaching abroad. For example, when asking someone’s name, students would pop out a sentence like this: “What’s your name?” Sometimes they just blurt out the sentence without thinking. People with basic knowledge of Western culture all know that only the police would ask “What’s your name?” when enquiring information on business. Take another example: to express modesty, when giving some gift, we Chinese would often say, “Please accept this small gift. It is by no means good.” Foreigners who do not know traditional Chinese ways may not understand why we give them something “not good”. Similarly, we may find such a sentence in the Chinese textbook for foreign students: “法国人喝凉水，中国人不喝凉水，喝开水 (The French drink cold water while the Chinese drink hot boiled water).” On the surface this sentence seems to contrast the drinking habits between the two peoples, but it fails to grasp the characteristics of different drinking habits of the two peoples. We can give prominence to cultural pluralism if we change the sentence into“法国人常喝咖啡，中国人常喝茶 (Habitually the French drink coffee but the Chinese prefer tea).” Sir Edward, a famous British anthropologist, rightly remarked that “culture is that complex whole that includes knowledge, belief, moral, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”

An all embracing “complex whole” like culture can hardly be comprehended or grasped through any single definition, phenomenon, or model. From the perspective of the temporal dimension, culture can be seen as a process, a fluidity which is open and pluralistic in its essence; from the perspective of spatial dimension, culture is a “cultural magnetic field” which penetrates texts, languages, behaviors, habits and capabilities. As for language to culture, just like the glimpse of a leopard seen through the hole of a bamboo tube to the animal itself, though the former is only but a small part of the latter, it is able to sketch a cultural frame through bit-by-bit accumulation. Divorced from culture, language is just like “water without a source” or a “tree without roots”. Likewise, divorced from cultural awareness, foreign language teaching is just like “fighting on the paper” or fancy boxing which can serve no purpose.

2. Cross-cultural communication capability training in foreign language teaching

Global exchanges became possible with the emergence of modern science and technology, especially that of the internet and the establishment of interdisciplinary sciences. This new way of exchange or communication is the result of interweaving of different cultures. The exchange and cooperation between different cultures is an inevitable outcome. Differences between nations in their cultural orientation, view of social values and norms as well as ways of living, result in different processes of encoding and decoding, in speech and non-speech acts, causing much difficulty in understanding each other and harmonious co-existence between peoples of different cultural backgrounds. Therefore, it is an urgent task to train students’ capability of cross-cultural communication in foreign language teaching, so that obstacles can be overcome and contradictions be solved, or avoided.

Here I would like to mention two cases. A British businessman had found a Chinese enterprise as a possible ideal business partner. To further business relations with this enterprise, he decided to pay a visit to this Guangdong-based enterprise. Told that a proper gift might better express his sincerity, he wandered what would be the best possible gift. First he had thought about buying some liquor, but he brushed off the idea because he was afraid people might take him as a drunkard; then he thought of some hi-tech product, but he was afraid it might lack human appeal; finally it occurred to him that most restaurants in Guangdong had shrines with Buddha, so he finally settled on buying some sacrificial joss sticks and candles, which he was sure would be the most ideal gift. Of course you can imagine such a gift only cost him the possible partnership. The other story is about an overseas Chinese student who held a concurrent job in a German company. He happened to learn that his boss’s birthday fell in the following week. To express his best wishes, he bought a birthday card, put down on it his well wishes and gave it to his boss in person, who, however, was by no means happy, because according to German belief, birthday greetings should be delivered after but never before the actual date of one’s birth, or it would bring bad luck. The above two cases tell us that lack of cross-cultural communication capability might bring unexpected serious, even disastrous consequences. Besides helping people predict and avert such cultural conflicts, training of cross-cultural communication capability is conducive to the exploration of people’s potential in thinking and creativity. Adler’s research in 1991 suggested that cultural pluralism was of great value for people who need creativity to take up complicate tasks, though it may not be of much importance for highly repetitive, or formulated routine work. Along with developing economic globalization and increasingly sharper international competition, creativity has proved to be an invincible magic weapon. As a result, every enterprise is infusing new vigor by bringing into full play their advantages and absorbing new pluralistic talents so as to boost its core competitiveness. In a word, cross-cultural communication capability mainly manifests in cohesion and creativity. On the one hand, both administrators and members of common teams need to solve problems concerning cultural differences and clashes in light of the environment and the demands of the projects they are working at on the basis of cultural aspect and knowledge; on the other hand, all participants should give conscious thinking about cultural differences, raise questions and seek for new aspirations so that they can achieve creative results. So the training of cross-cultural communication capability should introduce the concept of cultural pluralism in order to raise the students’ capability in cultural evaluation and identification through training their understanding of and sensitiveness about cultural differences, to form rich and harmonious cross-cultural ways of thinking through cultural convergence.

3. Cross-cultural exchange and cooperation in foreign language teaching.

Promotion of cross-cultural exchange and cooperation in foreign language teaching under the guidance of the aim to train the students’ cross-cultural communication capacity will not only benefit the building up of a better teaching atmosphere so that all students can receive plural cultural nurture in the culture that speaks the language they are learning, but is also conducive to China’s institutions of higher learning and other educational institutes to introduce in advanced administrative experience from other countries so as to promote the development of China’s education.

In my opinion, the mainstay of cross-cultural communication should be individuals who are learning foreign languages, and their ways of communication should be conducted in various forms. They may take the form of chatting between foreign language learners and native speakers of those languages, parties, seminars, or cooperation on certain projects. So foreign language teachers should encourage their students to communicate with native speakers of the language they are learning, should help students realize that really pure, vivid and appropriate language can only come from native speakers, so that they would grasp opportunities to carry out cross-cultural communication. Today’s is a really open and free world, and the whole world is concerned about China with unprecedented interest. An increasing number of statesmen, businessmen, tourists, and students all over the world are rushing to China, hoping to open her mysterious veil. This forms available sources for foreign language students to carry our cross-cultural communication. This source is, nevertheless, far from being fully tapped because of the restrictions imposed by traditional ideas and also because their teachers have not given them proper guidance. This not only turned out to be a loss on our part but also denied foreign friends many opportunities to better understand China. No wonder many foreign students from different countries have fostered long-term friendship with each other while Chinese students remained outsiders.

Comparatively speaking, cross-cultural cooperation in foreign language teaching requires more support from concerned institutions, systematic guarantee, and necessary platform of operation. No doubt such cooperation will be conducive to the students’ systematic, purposeful and rational comprehension and grasp of the languages they are learning and the cultures behind these languages. In addition, this will also raise the administrative standard and participating capacity on the part of institutions of higher learning themselves. The program for the training of young executives from the European Union undertaken by the College of International Exchanges of Beijing Foreign Studies University provides a good example. These young executives from Europe are required not only to study business Chinese but also to study its cultural background. For example, they also learn how to have dinners with Chinese customers, visit Chinese factories, and organize regular discussions and speeches on China’s political and cultural background, China’s laws, and investment environment. Thus they can gain a comprehensive view of the culture as well as the language concerning business in China and become real “China hands”.

Of course we should explore new ways of such cooperation. Besides bilateral cooperation between universities, colleges or departments, and multi-cooperation like symposiums or tribunes, we can open up new ways of cooperation between schools and enterprises. Foreign languages after all have their practicality, and cross-cultural communication is a natural product of actual needs that tally with modern social life, and thus obtaining its own practicality. Theories of cross-cultural communication have found application in many practical fields like international commerce and economic management. Multinational corporations in Europe and America like Rockefeller International, IMB, General Mills, etc. have all established “practical cross-cultural administration associations” or similar institutions to train personnel for international negotiations or overseas service so as to cater to the needs of international business. In this sense, this education mode better meets the demands of versatile personnel who have good mastery of foreign languages and are familiar with professional know-how. This is also a major move forward for foreign language colleges to develop into comprehensive universities.

Cross-cultural education in foreign language teaching is set up on the basis of the understanding that language and culture are inseparable and on the realization that cross-cultural communication capability is indispensable, which needs effective cross-cultural exchange and cooperation. Close relation between language and culture provides a theoretical basis to teach knowledge of foreign cultural background in foreign language teaching. Fostering the students’ cross-cultural communication capability serves as a guarantee for them to learn to solve contradictions in practical work and tap their creativity. Cross-cultural exchange and cooperation not only prepare material conditions for cross-cultural communication capability, but infuses new vitality to the reform and blazes new trails for institutions that have acquainted themselves with cultural background of foreign countries they deal with. The above mentioned three aspects are necessary conditions for the implementation of cross-cultural education, which can develop synchronously with the trend of economic globalization. Its vitality shall be manifested in the intercourses between different nations against the setting of economic globalization.

Beijing Foreign Studies University is a key university which offers courses for over 30 languages and has produced a large number of foreign language personnel of high quality. Graduates from our university are known and praised for their mastery of foreign languages, comprehensive professional knowledge, and their profound understanding of concerned cultures. The university has set up a number of research institutes on foreign cultures, who have achieved remarkable results through the years along with the reform of foreign language teaching. Great importance has always been attached to cross-cultural aspects, and the dialectical relation between language and culture has remained the focus in foreign language teaching, with the stress on the culture behind language, our aim is to build our university into a world renown multi-language, multi-discipline, and multi-echelon socialist university which combines teaching and research. It will train versatile foreign language personnel who master at least two foreign languages and professional personnel in economy, administration, foreign affairs, journalism, and law who are also proficient in foreign languages.

As the vice-president of the university in charge of teaching, I have a clear notion of the challenges and opportunities our university is facing against the setting of economic globalization. I am sure that we shall be able to sieze the opportunities and squarely face the challenges to realize our aim. Beijing Foreign Studies University shall develop in big strides in training competent foreign language personnel for the country.

Wish the forum great success!

Thank you!