英语国家文化主题作业westerncultu.doc

英语国家文化Western Culture affecting our livesWestern Culture affecting our livesI. The effects that Western Culture have on our livesA. HolidaysWith more and more exchange between China and western countries, more and more Chinese get to know the culture and customs. A lot of western holidays were introduced from western countries. For example, Christmas is one of the biggest events of the year in America, and for members of the Christian religions it is an important day on the religious calendar. It is both a holiday and a holy day. The word Christmas comes from the words Cristes maesse, or Christs Mass. Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus for members of the Christian religion. Most historians peg the first celebration of Christmas to Rome in 336 A.D. Modern customs of the holiday include gift-giving, church celebrations, and the display of various decorationsincluding the Christmas tree, lights, mistletoe, nativity scenes and holly. Santa Claus (also referred to as Father Christmas, although the two figures have different origins) is a popular mythological figure often associated with bringing gifts at Christmas. Santa is generally believed to be the result of a syncretization between Saint Nicholas and elements from pagan Nordic and Christian mythology, and his modern appearance is believed to have originated in 19th century media.Some Chinese also celebrate it just because gift-giving and several other aspects of the holiday involve heightened economic activity among both Christians and non-Christians. In addition, there are some other western holidays introduced into China. Such as, Valentines Day, Mothers day, Fathers Day, April fools day and Thanksgiving Day.B. EntertainmentAfter the implementation of the reform and open policy, many foreigners arrived in China, and they also brought in some of their own entertainment especially films. China imported many foreign films. Foreigners use films to express their ideas and show their cultures. More and more people begin to like watching movies and usually go to cinemas to spend their weekend. The films storm stimulates a lot of Chinese directors produced many so-called blockbuster. We can learn from films about foreign political, family, clothing, and food culture. Political culture: In foreign movies, there are lots of scenes such as election, parliament and ballot. Chinese know the western democracy truly that is different from the education of the Chinese Communist Party. Family culture: In the Chinese culture, there are usually big families. Lots of people live together including your grandparents, your parents, your aunts, your uncles, your brothers, your sisters and you. However, when we have seen American movies, we changed our concept. We know that parents and we can live separately. Parents will not put so much attention on us as before after we could support ourselves. They can live happily by themselves, but in past, parents put their attention on us all their lives. Meanwhile, we also find that we will not take care of our parents so much when we come up the stage. In past, the situation is not so. Chinese attach importance to filial piety so that we should take care of our parents very much.Clothing culture: In foreign movies, we find that we can live by ourselves which is called individualism. In the past, Chinese clothing is simple that is different from motley clothing and hairstyle in America. Recently, from Sun Yet Sens uniform to business suit, from cheongsam to erogenous clothes，the clothing has changed greatly.Food culture: In foreign movies, we can frequently see a family having breakfast together in the morning. Milk and coffee become more and more popular among youths in China. Meanwhile, tea that represents traditional drink in Chinese culture has less influence than before. Moreover, fast foods such as hamburgers, sandwiches, chips and buffet dinners impact Chinese food. A lot of Chinese, especially youths consider them as their favorite food, though they are a litter expensive.Western culture also promoted the development of Chinese media industry. Medias used to mainly report the political news. Now they not only focus on the political news but also all respect of peoples lives. For example, many documentary films about global geography and history were produced in recent years. I still remember a documentary film called “Polar across programs”(极地跨越). It talks about the geographical features, history and local customs of areas from the South Pole to the North Pole and largely extends my knowledge. I am benefit from it a lot. Many of such TV programs enrich peoples inner life in this materialistic Era.The fast developed Media industry greatly expands the visions of Chinese. C. Science Technology and EducationIn the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution was burst in Britain. From then on, the western science and technology was developed rapidly and surpassed all the orient countries. Nowadays, the western science and technology is still far ahead in the world. With advanced science, the education is also getting a good lead especially America and Britain. Most of the universities in these countries have a good learning environment and long history, strong atmosphere of learning and own rich teaching power. Students can think dependently and learn the frontier technology. So more and more Chinese people study and work abroad. Many Chinese parents want to send their children studying in the foreign universities. II. The influence that Western Culture have on usThe western culture has changed us a lot. It just likes a double-edge sword, not only has positive influence but also has negative influence.A. Positive InfluenceWe cant defy that western culture changes Chinese a lot. It makes us to be more humorous, live a happy healthy life. Because of the traditional ideas constraining the thoughts of Chinese since the Ming and Qing Dynasty, most Chinese were starch, inert and conservative. Now this phenomenon is eliminated, it is greatly influenced by the western culture. Western culture still continues to influence young Chinese people. For instance, many young people pursue the freedom, likes to live an unrestrained life and dont like parents to interfere their own lives.The historical experience of the second sex is the common fate to females all over the world. For thousands of years of feudal society and over a centurys semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, Chinese women especially had suffered long-standing oppression, humiliation and violence hard to imagine. After understanding western culture, a flourishing Chinese womens liberation movement woke them up. Chinese women broke out of humble, selfless and collective unconscious situation, and began to pursue self-liberation and development. After the founding of new China, women who had gained equal legal status with men stepped out of their homes, and participated into society widely.Western culture inspires young people to innovate, imagine and be open-minded. China has a lot achievement in many fields because of the open-mind, inspiration of imagination. It also changes the family education in China. We all know the family education is the elementary education for children. Many serious problems have appeared in our education system in recent years. Almost everyone has realized the importance of solving these problems and many people have presented a lot of valuable suggestions. There are many types of family education in the world and each of them shows distinctive features and is closely responsive to its culture. And American family education is the most famous one among them. There are great differences in the concepts of education, methods of education and results of education between East family education and West family education. Some Chinese parents begin to change the method of raising children and train the independence of their children.On account of the diversity of western culture, Chinese begin to learn tolerance, absorb the essence of the multiple world culture.B. Negative InfluenceWestern culture also brings its dross. Many Chinese see the rich material life in western countries. They begin to change their life values. Some even hold unreasonable worship for western culture and values.First, the May 4th movement in Chinese history serves as the dividing line between the Old Democratic Movement and the New Democratic movement, whose advocate of freedom and democracy still stood the test of the time. It, however, went too deep to blindly worship the western culture and civilization while degrading traditional Chinese culture by emphasizing too much the disparity between tradition and modernity, thus creating a sense of national inferiority and blind faith in things foreign, which in turn lead to the loss of Chinese root and Chinese identity for modern Chinese people.Second, with the foreign holidays were introduced into China, some people are keen on western holidays and discard our traditional festivals. They think that these holidays are fashion and romantic, they even think that these holidays are more important than our traditional holidays. So it causes Korea cybersquatting Dragon Boat Festival events. Dragon Boat Festival is a Chinese traditional festival to commemorate Qu Yuan. We have to admit that Chineses blindness.Third, English is becoming a wide used language. So many Chinese parents send children to learn English in childrens young ages. But the result is not optimistic. Some children can speak English fluently and write excellent English articles, while they cant read the writings in classical Chinese. We must admit that we discard our traditions in some degrees. Last, some Chinese are addicted to foreign blockbuster. It brings some negative culture such as Sexual and violent culture. As everyone known, there are lot of sexual scenes such as bareness and sex in Hollywood movies. Praiseworthily, they bring liberation of sex in China. However, it leads many problems such as porno, coprology(色情文学), carnalism(寻欢作乐) and one-night love. And typical violent movies such as 007 greatly influence Chinese. A lot of people like to use violence to settle problems.III. How we should take advantage of the western cultureIn modern times, we should face a world contains multiple culture. On the one hand, we must be obliged to protect our own special aspects of culture. On the other hand, we cannot belittle the importance of the cultures that come from other countries. Only we select the essence and discard dross can we pass our traditions to our descendants.A. Improving national qualityChinese peoples low quality is a main factor to leading Chineses worship blindness. It takes a long time to achieve this goal and needs the efforts of generations after generations. First of all, education plays a vital role in national development. We can know that education is an important element of the development of a country from the western history. We must promote the compulsory education, and improve the quality of the education at the same time.Developing our country by relying on science, we should implement the strategy of developing the country by relying on science and education. Because scientific and technological progress is a decisive factor in economic development, and educational development is the foundation of scientific and technological progress. Only by developing education and science and technology and really setting forth on the path of developing our economy by relying on scientific and technological advancements and improving the quality of our laborers can we accelerate the process of modernization and narrow the gap between China and the developed countries. We talking about the methods above is general. There are two specific measures:1. An effective way to improve the quality of the education in a country is to increase teachers salary. It seems to be advisable that the proposal will boost teachers enthusiasm and devotion. Whats more, the proposal will draw more brilliant college graduates to devotes themselves to teaching and keep them. Cleverest people of the country are all willing to compete for this honorable and profitable job and the quality of teachers are improved eventually. Raising teachers salaries is the important effective way to improve quality of education is an overstatement.2. Building more public libraries is an applicable choice. Since the importance of knowledge is already accepted by every citizen of a civilized country, one of the factor constrains peoples self-learning process is the insufficiency of public learn