A Study Of Strategies For Cross-cultural Awareness Cultivation In Middle School English Reading Teaching

Between language and culture is a kind of interdependent relationship.We can not talk about culture without language and without the culture,language can not exist.Although students’ cultural awareness is an important part of comprehensive language use ability,the traditional English mode still occupies a dominant position,overemphasizing the vocabulary and grammar and culture is not taken seriously,resulting in students’ weak intercultural awareness.To face this situation,the author tries to research strategies for cultivating cross-cultural awareness in English reading according to the schema theory.In this study,questionnaire survey,observation and experiment are used to conduct a four-month teaching experiment on 100 students from grade 7 of a middle school in Hebei province.In this school,class5 is the experimental class which uses a variety of cross-cultural awareness cultivation strategies for English reading teaching and class3 adopts traditional reading methods for teaching.This study mainly researches three questions:First,can these strategies for cultivating cross-cultural awareness improve the students’ intercultural awareness.Second,can these strategies combined with reading improve students’ reading ability? Third,can these strategies combined with reading improve students’ initiate in learning English? Before the experiment,the two classes are tested for the intercultural awareness and reading level.After the experiment,they are tested again.The data shows that the intercultural awareness and reading level of the experimental class have been significantly improved.The observation table shows that students’ English learning initiative has been improved.Based on this experiment,the author puts forwards some teaching suggestions on the cultivation of intercultural awareness.For teachers,they should sort out the cultural knowledge,increase their own cultural reserves and give full play to the advantage of collective lesson preparation to excavate the culture of textbooks when they prepare for the classes.Besides,they should input culture in different ways andchoose strategies according to the characters of culture in class.Third,they should give students chance to show their cultural achievements and encourage students to read more.For students,they should learn cultural knowledge independently,overcome psychological barriers and take the initiative in intercultural communication.