Abstract

Language and culture are inseparable. English learners cannot correctly understand and use the language without knowing the language’s cultural background. Culture is an important part in English teaching of higher education. Teachers need to cultivate students’ oral and written communicative skills while students should seek their own English learning methods, in which cultural knowledge constitutes an inseparable part.
This paper starts with an introduction of the definition of culture and language’s definition, and expounds the importance of culture in language teaching and learning by analyzing their relationship and how they affect each other. This paper then analyzes the significance of Anglo-American cultures in English higher education. This paper also puts forward some strategies from both students’ and teachers’ angles in order to achieve the purpose of fully grasping foreign languages and train students to be full competent English language users.

Keywords: Anglo-American cultures; culture input; English teaching and learning; language and culture

摘要

语言与文化密不可分，不了解英语的文化背景，就无法正确理解和运用英语。文化教学是大学英语教学的重要内容。教师要注意培养学生口头和书面的实际交际能力，学生也应该寻找适合他们自己的学习方法，而这都离不开必要的文化背景知识。
本文从介绍文化及语言的定义出发，并分析他们之间的关系，进而研究文化与语言是如何相互影响，从而阐述语言学习中了解目标语文化的重要性。接着分析当今高等英语教育中英美文化对于英语学习的重要性，并分别从学生和教师的角度提出一些途径与方法，避免学习语言步入文化盲点的误区，以达到全方面充分掌握英语的目的。

关键词：英美文化；文化导入；英语教学与学习；语言与文化

1 Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Culture in general including different beliefs, customs, concepts, and social behaviors is permeated into many areas of human society. Language has a dual character: as a means of communication and as a carrier of culture [1]. Language without culture is unimaginable, so is culture without language.
Byram, a famous linguist, indicates that when people learn a new language, they also learn its culture and when they learn to use the language, they are learning to make conversations with other people from a new cultural situation [2]. The knowledge of culture has a great impact on learners’ language use and sometimes directly influences the result of their communication with native speakers.