Towards Closing the Language & Culture Gap: A Pedagogical Approach

This paper advances an approach to culture and language instruction through the theoretical construct of the 3Ps (Products, Practices, Perspectives), combined with an inquiry-based approach utilizing the theory on stages of second language acquisition. Culture elements, when embodied in a properly developed and organized curriculum can be systematically implemented all along the different phases of language growth. Mastery of a language is not simply mastery of vocabulary as well as grammar and spelling rules. The most successful language learners learn both culture and language together. The conceptualizations provided by research, although at times conflicting, form a useful foundation for language teaching that provides a deeper and a more enriching human experience. Making culture the core in a language class is akin to asserting the obvious (Furstenberg, 2010);they are two flip sides of the same coin. With its focus on revisiting the role of culture in the FL Classroom, the paper seems to fall into the same category - affirming the tried and true, but like Furstenberg, the author believes there is good reason to re-consider the possibility of closing the language and culture gap.

Cognitive Science,Cold War,and Cultural Imagination:A Case Study of The Body Snatchers

Cognitive cultural studies discuss the connection between culture and mind with insights from different areas of cognitive science and explore the functions of the shared features of human cognition in cultural production of specific historical context.The analysis of the American Sci-Fi The Body Snatchers from this perspective reveals the cognitive logic during the cold war period,and indicates that this science fiction not only records and shapes the American social psychology during the Cold War,but also serves as an effective medium through which the political and cultural symptoms of that period can be observed,interpreted,and reflected.

Lignin Biosynthesis Studies in Plant Tissue Cultures

Lignin, a phenolic polymer abundant in cell walls of certain cell types, has given challenges to scientists studying its structure or biosynthesis. In plants lignified tissues are distributed between other, non-lignified tissues, Characterization of native lignin in the cell wall has been difficult due to the highly cross-linked nature of the wall components. Model systems, like plant tissue cultures with tracheary element differentiation or extracellular lignin formation, have provided useful information related to lignin structure and several aspects of lignin formation. For example, many enzyme activities in the phenylpropanoid pathway have been first identified in tissue cultures. This review focuses on studies where the use of plant tissue cultures has been advantageous in structural and biosynthesis studies of lignin, and discusses the validity of tissue cultures as models for lignin biosynthesis.

Remembering Raymond Williams:His Theoretical Heritage to China’s World Literature and Culture Studies

Raymond Williams,the eminent British Marxist literary theorist,was introduced to China in the late 1980s.and his theories have since been increasingly attractive to China’s literary and cultural studies.He not only touched upon some of the fundamental issues of Marxist literary theory,such as ideology,culture,hegemony and aesthetics,but also developed it with his dynamic construction of a sort of cultural materialism,thus bridging between Marxist socio-historical and aesthetic criticism and cultural and linguistic factors.While literary and cultural theory is in decline in the West,Williams’s legacy is still appreciated in international circles,which ought to be cherished and inherited by us Chinese scholars in our studies of world literature and culture.

Mrs. Browning's Poetess: Poetry of Dedication and Commitment

Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh was well accepted in Britain and America when published in 1856 during the Victorian era. An epic-like autobiographical novel-verse in its form, Aurora Leigh concentrates on a thirty-year-process of a talented poetess, Aurora, who is destined to write with dedication and commitment, for art, and for truth. With the approaches of New Criticism and Cultural Poetics study, this thesis will focus on the identity of Aurora Leigh as a poetess, who is neither a revolutionary feminist writer, nor an suffocating"angel in the house". As a pious daughter of God and a sympathetic descendant of Virgin Mary, Aurora performs an intelligent role in reconciling masculine power with feminine tenderness. Meanwhile, as a prophet preacher, Aurora embraces an epiphany through years of seeking and wandering and eventually constructs her own city of poetry in which an interwoven pattern of time and space conveys her ambition of being a female Homer.

Beyond the Political Economy Versus Cultural Studies Debate？ Toward a New Integration

Since the late 1980s, the encounter between political economy and cultural studies within the field of media research has raised continuous debates and confrontations among academics and policymakers, but at the same time it casts light on the important questions as well as methodology in media scholarship. This paper aims to analyze the differences between political economy and cultural studies, two primary but sometimes competing ways of examining media and communication, following a detailed description of their theoretical trajectory. Also, this paper suggests building a bridge connecting the two disciplines, the integration of which is essential to an adequate account of gender, race and social movement studies in addition to class analysis.

＂All Happy Families＇： The Sopranos and Television Culture in the Twenty-First Century

Since the 1980s, Cultural Studies have analyzed television in the context of the present. They have asked how soap operas and TV series contribute to the circulation of meanings and pleasures in everyday contexts. John Fiskes coined the concept television culturein his very successful book with the same title Taking The Sopranos as an example, this article shows that quality TV is an outstanding contribution to television culture. The show is more complex, more layered and more intertextual than the shows of the 1980s that Fiske interpreted. The Sopranos is a postmodern cultural phenomenon that appeals to different groups of viewers. It is no longer only about the addicted fans, but also about critical viewers who want to better understand themselves and their lives, and also about connoisseurs and art enthusiasts to whom serial reception becomes a distinctive feature. This article comes to the conclusion that popular culture in the sense of Cultural Studies is still of important political significance in the twenty-first century.

German Popular Music Studies as Part of （International） Media Cultural Studies

This paper begins by explaining current developments in popular music research, mainly in connection with approaches used in international media and Cultural Studies. It then provides an overview of German-language research methods and discourses on popular music. In addition to the traditional reflections from musicology and music education, nine perspectives will be described, primarily from the media, communications, culture and social sciences. These nine contemporary perspectives are distributed along lines of thematic focus, moving beyond disciplines or fields per se. This paper will close with a list of suggestions for popular music research and education in the German cultural sphere, insisting above all on a clear connection/link, in the sense of a mixing/incorporation/integration, with （current） international discourses. Finally, the paper synthesizes German research, not only to systematize it but also to illustrate its diversity and multiperspectivity.

A Politics of Engagement: On Stuart Hall, Cultural Studies and Intellectual Practice

This paper discusses eleven key features of Stuart Hall’s life and work:(1)his view that being an intellectual is a serious,often difficult vocation;(2)his commitment to studying the“here and now”—the present conjuncture;(3)his refusal to think of“the cultural”as separate from structures,relations,and practices of power;(4)his dedication to public engagement,including innovative use of television;(5)his practice of collaboration as a mode of intellectual production;(6)his privileging of the essay—the short intervention;(7)his recognition of the importance of oration,rhetoric,and performance—and learning to speak with multiple tongues;(8)his long-term engagements with artists—especially“Black”British artists;(9)his self-reflexive posture;(10)his commitment to practices of humility;and(11)his adoption of a critical-intellectual stance that is simultaneously optimistic and pessimistic.

Hua Mei's Study of the Culture fo Human Clathing and Ornament

OPENING up Human Clothing and Ornament Culturology, a recently. published academic work, is like entering a comprehensive museum of the history of apparel. Readers will marvel at the extensive knowledge of clothing contained in each chapter of the thick volume, which is filled with numerous photos and illustrations. Its author is Hua Mei, a professor at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts. Born in 1951 to an intellectual family,

LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGIES AND LANGUAGE ACHIEVEMENT: ACROSS-CULTURAL STUDY

This study explored the relationship between LLS and LA in two different cultural contexts. The findings revealed that the differences between Australian and Chinese university students tend to lie more in their language proficiency levels than in cultural factors. This study also compares learners' strategy use and its relationship to LA in two different educational systems. It is evident that the difference in teaching methods, learning tasks and achievement assessments would have an impact upon learners' strategy use and its relationship to LA.

Mourning a Master Ji Xianlin, China’s foremost expert in cultural study and exchange, dies at 98

Always plainly dressed and amiable, Ji Xianlin wouldn’t be given a second glance in a crowd. Yet looks can be deceiving. He was

Minor Movies： On the Deterritorialising Power of Wong Kar-wai＇s Works

The article approaches Wong Kar-wai＇s cinematic work using the notion of ＂minor literature＂ as coined by Gilles Deleuze and F61ix Guattari. Minor literature--or, in other words, minor language signifies oppositional/resistant uses of a major/hegemonic language. It appropriates hegemonic language and deterritorialises it by re-signifying its original meanings. By transferring this concept from literature to cinema, we can describe Hong Kong cinema, which deterritorialises Hollywood cinema, as a minor cinema in relation to Hollywood. Following this interpretation, Wong Kar-wai＇s movies appear as a ＂minor language of a minor cinema＂ because they are significantly different from Hong Kong＇s mainstream action cinema. Consequently, Wong＇s movies possess a high level of deterritorialising power, which opens up new spaces of meaning and gives voice to positions usually oppressed by mainstream cinema. Finally, a close reading of Wong＇s movie Happy Together shows how ＂minor movies＂ challenge the mainstream＇s unison and give space to a resistant and transforming polyphony.