The Construction Of Cultural Context And Its Application In Classroom Of College English Teaching

In recent years the researches home and abroad show that language and cultural context are closely related to each other. Cultural context makes an impact on illustrating and limiting the usage of language. So the promotion of Chinese college students'communicative competence and cultural awareness has been a key research topic in College English Teaching.The thesis is mainly devoted to exploring the effective application of cultural context construction in classroom of College English Teaching. The author attempts to make an analysis on the collected data in the questionnaire and socio-cultural test for non-English majors to find out the necessity of college English instruction model based on cultural context construction and how to integrate cultural context into classroom of College English Teaching. This research provides a description of historical and current situations about cultural context theory. Based on the research findings, the author illustrates a theoretical framework which is adequate to current study:Situational context is context in which the specific language is used and it is the embodiment of cultural context. So this thesis puts forward a framework of how to integrate the cultural context into different activities in classroom of College English Teaching on the basis of Hymes'theory of communicative competence and context theory (acronym SPEAKING) as well as Claire Kramsch's theory of contextual shaping in language teaching.In order to understand deeply about current situation and problems of Chinese culture teaching in colleges and then prove the necessity of the framework'implement in college English instruction, the author provides a study of the questionnaire survey on the current situation of cultural context construction in college English learning for non-English majors as well as a socio-cultural test concerning college students'cultural awareness in 120 subjects. The findings of data analyses indicate that the issue of cultivating students'communicative competence and cultural awareness in College English Teaching has been concerned, but students'knowledge of cultural awareness is still weak. It is supposed to point out those fruitful theoretical explorations in the field of cultural context studies in the past decades are not followed by equal zeal in actual teaching and learning practice. The reason for this, according to the author, mainly lies in the teachers'ignorance of the integration of cultural context theory and their language teaching. So it is quite essential to examine the efficient application of cultural context construction in classroom of College English Teaching practice.Combining with above studies and analyses, the thesis attempts to put forward a student-centered instruction model aiming at developing communicative competence, which is based on cultural context construction and guided by the theoretical framework of Hymes'theory of communicative competence and context as well as Claire Kramsch's theory of contextual shaping in language teaching. At last, the effectiveness of the model is tested through the 18-week experiment. The students'responses to the interview are taken into consideration to get a general idea of their feedback on the teaching practice, and the model arouses the students'interests in learning English, which indicates a positive impact on integration of cultural context and College English Teaching.The current research has its limitations and the existing problems are expected to be solved in future study. Therefore, the thesis sincerely offers some tentative suggestions and stimulates more ideas from others to better incorporate cultural studies into College English Teaching activities so as to promote the current innovation College English Teaching and Learning and raise the College English Teaching quality.