The Cultivation Of Primary School Students’ Cross-cultural Awareness In English Picture Book Reading Instruction

With the widespread use of English,alongwith people’s comprehension of the concept cross-cultural awareness is their consciousness of its increasing significance.For the past few years,many Chinese educational researchers have developed a keen interest in the cultivation of students’ cross-cultural awareness.However,current research mainly focus on senior students,while relatively few applications and the realization of cultural awareness cultivation in teaching practice is also comparatively insufficient.In view of this,based on the Theory of Schema and Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory,and bringing Wang’s cultivation models of cross-cultural awareness into primary school English picture book reading instruction,this thesis aims to explore the way to cultivate primary school students’ cross-cultural awareness and English reading ability,verify the effect of introducing schematic reading methods into English picture book reading instruction,as well as to provide some theoretical and practical references for cultivating primary school students’ cross-cultural awareness.In terms of the research purpose,this thesis carries out the inquiry focusing on the following three puzzles: 1.Does the English picture book reading instruction improve primary school students’ cultural awareness significantly? 2.Does the primary school students’ English reading ability increase significantly? 3.Does cross-cultural awareness affect primary school students’ English reading ability? If yes,is it a positive one?80 students sorted out from class 1 and 2,grade 4 are confined as the research subjects of this study.Every Friday afternoon,the English picture book reading instruction was conducted in the English activity class.In this research,Class 1 Grade 4 was selected as the experimental class,which was applied with original English picture book reading instruction.While Class 2 Grade 4 served as the control class,which was tutored with the traditional English reading material.The research duration is one semester(four months).Before the experiment,the English reading ability and cross-cultural awareness of experimental class and control class were analyzed.The results showed that students in the experimental class and the control class had similar English reading ability,and no significant difference was found in their cross-cultural awareness,indicating the comparability in this research.During the experiment,students’ participation was observed and recorded.After the experiment,post-test questionnaires were conducted to find whether there were significant changes in cross-cultural awareness and English reading ability of students in experimental classes.In this research,data collection was mainly conducted through Cambridge Younger Learners’ English Test,Cross-cultural Awareness Questionnaire,experiments and interviews.All data was analyzed by using SPSS22.0 software.The research found that through English picture book reading instruction,English reading ability and cross-cultural awareness of students from the experimental class were significantly improved.Moreover,English picture book reading instruction is favored by most students.English picture book reading instruction can effectively supplement English textbook teaching to cultivate students’ cross-cultural awareness.