erican customs, they tend to accept the compliment with the pleasure. The reply like “No, I don’t speak good English”—Americans think which seems to criticize the other side, is impolite.
Reading English articles requires a certain language basis, but the competence of reading comprehension is not entirely related to one’s language level. Knowledge of cultural background is also important. Reading is a process affected by integration of one’s language knowledge, cultural background knowledge and other professional knowledge, and a process of continuous guesses and corrections according to available language material, cultural background and logical reasoning. Generally speaking, Chinese people study Chinese without the difficulties aroused by cultural background. Chinese proverbs like “只许州官放火，不许百姓点灯”, “平时不烧香,临时抱佛脚”, “差之毫厘,失之千里” will not influence our understanding of article. The connotation of such new words as “改革开放” “大腕” “追星族” are easily understood, too. However, when we read English articles, differences between Chinese and western cultures often bring us many difficulties.
Following, effect of cultural background on reading will be discussed, with some common terms or expressions in reading material, which is often not understood by Chinese learners unfamiliar with western culture, as illustration.
Many allusions drawn from history, religion, literature etc., often appear in English works and have become common household terms. But without the knowledge of western 英语论文网 【http://www.51lunwen.org】culture and history, such allusions are not always easy to understand, and without understanding there can be little appreciation .For example:
a Herculean task—task requiring great power of body or mind. Hercules was a powerfully built hero of ancient Greek
David and Goliath (from Bible)—David was a shepherd boy; he killed the Philistine giant Goliath with a shot from his sling and later became king of the Hebrews; in metaphorical use, David and Goliath stand for a contest between two persons, enterprises, countries, etc., in which one is much smaller and/or weaker, but in which the smaller/weaker one wins out.
a Horatio Alger story—any “success story”, often considered a myth, of a poor boy who works hard and finally rises to the top, becoming rich, successful, famous; Horatio Alger was a writer whose stories generally had the same such plot. His best-known books are the Ragged Dick series and the Tattered Tom series.
Some of these allusions may be looked up in the dictionary, but with the continuous development of society and language, new allusions have appeared. Unless one is well acquainted with developments of a certain country, one would be at a loss about the meaning and connotations of terms or expressions such as those below:
a Rambo—Rambo is the character made famous by American movies around the mid-1980s. He is a tough soldier of the Vietnam War, resourceful, taciturn, lonely, somewhat “odd”. Rambo gets involved in numerous risky adventures or in one vi
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