Strategies for Teaching Culture: On the Basis of Idioms Originating from the Analects of Confucius

• Main Authors: Lin Rou-You, 林柔佑
• Other Authors: 陳溫菊
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/uqt4xu

碩士 === 臺北市立教育大學 === 華語文教學碩士學位學程 === 98 === The increasing cross-cultural communication for the past decades has been enhancing the importance of culture teaching, making it no longer an auxiliary of language teaching. Learning idioms originates from the Analects of Confucius certainly relates to cultural issues because firstly, idioms extract and represent Chinese culture, and secondly, information of traditional Chinese values and ways of living can be found in the Analects of Confucius. Zhang ZhanYi distributes culture into cultural communication information and cultural knowledge information according to the function of language use; in addition, he considers idioms to be under the category of cultural communication information and that idioms will cause misunderstandings when communication is taken place. However, the findings of this research had shown that some content dealing with universal values does not become a difficulty for non-Chinese learners; it is the diversity of culture that does so, and the idioms in Analects of Confucius shows the exact picture. Therefore, this research first analyses the difficulties found in idioms originates from the Analects of Confucius that showed diversity of culture and moreover points out the factors that build up these difficulties. By understanding the factors causing culture shocks, appropriate strategies of culture teaching can be developed to help students overcome barriers of culture learning and build up their abilities of cross-cultural communication. There are five chapters in this essay. The preface starts with an introduction of the backgrounds of cross-cultural teaching and cultural communication information, as well as the motives of the research. Setting up research boundaries according to Dictionary of Chinese Idioms of Ministry of Education, research methods and objects are also clarified in this chapter. Chapter two discusses the inspiration originates from former research on culture teaching and its strategies and idioms teaching; besides, the value of the Analects of Confucius towards Chinese culture teaching is also mentioned in this section of the essay. The third chapter indicates difficulties that may occur when learning idioms from the Analects according to sortation and analysis on the evolving meanings of idioms from the Analects and barriers of cultural communication. Chapter four concludes the analysis in former chapters and furthermore brings out strategies and effective methods on teaching. Based on research results, both issues and suggestions on teaching idioms from the Analects are proposed in the fifth chapter, along with the discussion of the limits of this research. The result of this research suggests two main factors of creating difficulties for learners. One on the aspect of knowledge, it is lacking for understandings on the cultural backgrounds of the object language and the other on the aspect of attitude it is being ignorant of Chinese culture and traditional values. In order to help students overcome difficulties, teachers ought to have clear sense of cross-cultural concepts and adequate knowledge of Chinese culture. By using all kinds of teaching methods, students are able to acquire more information to adjust their biased attitudes towards other cultures. Through teaching cultural information with idioms from Analects of Confucius, learners can explore more about Chinese culture and be open-minded to different cultures.