Research On Developing Senior High School Students' Cultural Awareness And Communicative Competence In English

With the development of linguistic theory and the ever-increasing requirement of intercultural communication , the new curriculum lays emphasis on the cultivation of students' cultural awareness , cultural sensitivity and cross-cultural communicative competence on English language teaching in the middle school. Just as Brown pointed out , "Language, the means for communication among members of a culture is the most visible and available expression of that culture , culture patterns, customs and way of life (Brown, 1994:170)." Therefore, the knowledge of language and the training of basic skills should be put into the context of its culture so that the students can acquire the cultural communicative competence.In recent years, the profound reformation of English teaching in China has brought out varied researches into the following aspects :1) the inner relationships between language, culture and communication ; 2) the social cultural factors hidden behind the language; 3) the strategies on how to carry out the cultivation of cross-cultural awareness in school English language teaching; 4) the methods of how to correctly instruct the students' understandings about the original information in intercultural communication; 5) how to cultivate/foster the students' cultural awareness and sensitivity so as to develop their cultural communicative competence. A lot of experts have undertaken these researches and published related works and articles. For instance, 300 articles and 20 books have been published and have started to form the basic systems/structures concerned with the study of intercultural communication. Among these works and articles, very few are connected with how to develop high school students' intercultural awareness and competence according to New Curriculum Requirements. Therefore, this paper intends to do some research in this field. By means of questionnaires and interviews, it gives brief descriptions of the present language teaching and learning in high schools and analyzes several reasons for that. It focuses on practical performance in carrying out cultural teaching and learning in high schools with related goals, principles, contents, strategies and assessment as its research objects.The present thesis consists of six parts. Part 1 gives introductory remarks on the necessity for this study and a general description of it. Chapter 1 discusses the general definitions and features of language, culture, communication and relationships among them , which were based on the description and criticism of relevant theories; In Chapter 2, three surveys are given to reveal the state of the present English language teaching and learning. With statistic analysis and questionnaire results as its foundation, it conveys the necessity and urgency of carrying out cultural teaching at high schools. Chapter 3 offers suggestions for pedagogy, which involve goals, principles, contents, strategies and assessment in relation to cultural teaching in high schools, with the consideration of New Curriculum requirement and results of relevant research. The fourth Chapter introduces a teaching experiment conducted in a key high school, including its designs, goals, principles, materials, measures as well as the ways of assessment on the samples, followed by the conclusions drawn from it. Chapter 5 summarizes what is essential in this thesis, proposes the importance of this cross-cultural study on English teaching and learning in China, and points out its limitations as well as opportunities for future research.