摘要：Applied linguists and language teachers have been increasingly aware that a second or foreign language can hardly be acquired or learned without addressing the culture of the community in which it is spoken. A second language learner’s understanding of a second culture is fundamentally affected by his or her culturally-defined world of view, beliefs, and presuppositions. The beliefs and presuppositions have important pedagogical implications and need to be considered in second or foreign language teaching and learning. In cross-cultural communication, linguistic knowledge alone is not enough in guaranteeing successful interaction with native speakers. Cultural mistakes are worse than linguistic ones because they tend to create misjudgment, or ill feeling between native and foreign speakers. EFL teachers should stress the cultivating of learners’ cross-cultural awareness while they pass on linguistic knowledge. The study of communicative competence has received more and more attention in the field of English learning and teaching, and a great deal has been discovered about the culture teaching and communicative competence. I take these findings as a starting point and develop the discussion in the context of English teaching and learning in China. Accordingly, my discussion in the thesis aims to bring together some of the varied facets of the whole picture for the reader and present a brief analysis of how to cultivate learners’ communicative competence through cultural teaching.
关键词：language;culture;culture teaching;intercultural communication competence
