2。3 The earlier studies on cultural background knowledge

In the past few years, many linguists have done some studies on the influence of cultural background knowledge on English text reading。

WILGA M RIVERS, the professor of linguistics from Harvard University, presented ten principles of language teaching。 She emphasized more on students, creativity and environment。 Furthermore, she discussed the importance of culture of target language in language teaching。 Principle 9 emphasizes that language learning is penetrating another culture; students should learn to handle harmoniously within it or in contact with it。 Therefore, we cannot fully understand a foreign language if we have no cultural knowledge。 

In China, Zhuang Zhixiang translated one passage and published at a English forum named <Culture and Reading Comprehension>。 He thinks that, understanding a passage entirely not only depend on readers’ language knowledge, but also on their cultural background knowledge related to the passage。 Dong Hongchuan believes that the cultural factors in the British and American literature are the main barrier to understand the literature。来,自,优。尔:论;文*网www。chuibin。com +QQ752018766-

These professional studies and the theories from them can be conducive to my essay, and worth for my writing。 However, in my opinion, the cultural background knowledge deserves our deeper studies。 Therefore, I decide to write this article to further discuss about it。 In my essay, I start with the definition and types of cultural background knowledge, then state how the cultural background knowledge influence the English text reading, and finally I introduce some ways to help us enrich the cultural background knowledge。 Above all, I hope to contribute to improve learners’ reading ability through writing this paper。