Last week, we had a lesson given by our experimental teacher Tang Ying and learned something meaningful — Western culture and customs. With the teacher’s teaching, I now know how Westerners live and how they treat their pets.

    As we all know, we Chinese normally live in flats while Westerners live in houses. Their houses are different from ours, not only can they have four to five bedrooms, but also they can have a backyard, a front yard and a swimming pool. How comfortably they live! Also, they treat their pets, especially puppies, like parents treat their children. It’s adorable.

    For many years, learning languages has been very popular, but there are still a lot of differences between Westerners and Easterners. People who live in the West like going everywhere around the world.

    Certainly, I think if you want to learn a language, you’d better learn their culture first because it is the background knowledge which will help you understand the language more easily.

    Well, Western people’s speaking is very gorgeous. When they are speaking their languages, their tongues have to roll very often. They roll their tongues to speak while Chinese don’t.

    In conclusion, Western culture and customs as the background knowledge are necessary and very important for us to learn. It is also quite attractive and different.

    For me, it’s special and deserves to be learned because background knowledge of Western culture often helps us understand better what is heard or read in the target language.

    Moreover, such knowledge helps us know what is culturally appropriate to say aloud or in writing. In addition, it can help us to be aware of what fits with Western culture and what doesn’t so that we can avoid misunderstandings.