A Systemic Model Of Developing Junior High School Students’ English Culture Awareness

With the continuation of globalization,especially with culture awareness listed as one of the core competencies in parallel with language ability in relevant curriculum standards issued by the Ministry of Education,educators and scholars gradually realize the importance of developing students’ culture awareness.However,in junior high school EFL teaching and research,most teachers and researchers still advocate traditional approaches,only focusing on the fostering students’ language ability but ignoring the cultivation of their culture awareness.Although some of them have begun to pay attention to developing students’ English culture awareness,few systemic models of cultivating junior high school students’ English culture awareness have been advanced and applied.Within such a practical and theoretical setting,this study attempts to propose and verify a systemic model for developing junior high school students’ English culture awareness through an integrated methodology combining theoretical exploration and empirical study.In particular,it addresses the following theoretical and practical questions: What is the systemic model(views,theories,methods and procedure)for developing junior high school students’ English culture awareness? Can the systemic model for developing junior high school students’ English culture awareness enhance students’ English culture awareness and their English language ability? In the stage of theoretical research,this study puts forward the systemic model in the light of dialectical systemic thinking and on the basis of constructivist theories of learning and teaching as well as theories of the relationship between language and culture.The resulted systemic model consists of four interdependent levels: views,theories,methods and procedure.It holds that developing junior high school students’ English culture awareness is a system composed of learning environment,learners,learning content,teaching methods and teachers with a certain structure,and that developing junior high school students’ English culture awareness should be implemented through adapting themethods of considering different factors(such as environment,schools,teachers and students)and via the procedure of creating an English culture environment,students’ autonomous and collaborative learning,teacher-students communication and assessment.In the stage of empirical research,this study conducts a one semester experiment with two classes from a junior high school in Rizhao as participants,using pre-and postquestionnaire surveys and English tests to know the students’ level of English culture awareness and English proficiency before and after the experiment.Results show that the proposed systemic model can improve both the junior high school students’ English culture awareness and their English ability.This study may be both practically and academically significant.Practically,the proposed systemic model of developing junior high school students’ English culture awareness may be applied to generate the desired practical effects.Academically,the present study may compensate for the lack of studies in constructing systemic models for developing junior high school students’ English culture awareness.