A Survey On Actuality,problems And Countermeasures Of English Classroom Culture Teaching In Junior Middle School

English has the dual attributes of “instrumental” and “humanistic”.Therefore,English teaching is not only the learning of language knowledge and language skills,but also the understanding of the cultural content behind the language,also the cultivation process of students’ cultural awareness and intercultural communication skills.In the basic education stage,cultural awareness is the one of the five teaching goals and the one of the four elements of core literacy in the English curriculum standards respectively for junior middle and senior high schools.It can be seen that cultural teaching and language teaching are accompanied by each other,and it has become a consensus that it is indispensable.At this stage,there exists an “empty shell” foreign language teaching,that is to say,over-emphasis on the “instrumental”of the language while ignoring the “humanistic” of the language,only seeing language teaching but not cultural teaching.The aim of this research is to investigate the situation and existing problems of junior middle school English classroom culture teaching at the current stage,analyzing the causes of the problems and propose corresponding countermeasures.Therefore,based on the social cultural theory,the language and cultural relationship theory,and the cross-cultural communication theory,this article selects eighth-grade English teachers and students from Y middle school in X City,Xinjiang as the research objects,using classroom observation method,interview method and questionnaire survey method to explore the following four questions: Firstly,what is the current situation of junior middle school English classroom culture teaching?From the teacher dimension,it includes the teacher’s attitude towards cultural teaching,the setting of cultural teaching goals,the selection of cultural content forms and the cultural teaching methods used;from the student dimension,it includes the students’ cultural learning attitudes,the effects of cultural learning after learning,and cultural learning expectations.Secondly,what are the existing problems in junior middle school English classroom culture teaching? Thirdly,what are the reasons for the existing problems in junior middle school English classroom culture teaching? Lastly,what are the countermeasures to improve the English classroom culture teaching in junior middle schools?Through research,it is found that: Firstly,junior middle school English teachers hold a positive attitude towards the importance and role of cultural teaching;they have the characteristics of integration and generalization in the setting of cultural teaching goals;the selection of cultural content forms mainly depends on English textbooks;the teaching method of culture is based on direct explanation,so that showing unity and fixedness.Students have a high interest in cultural learning and a positive attitude in English learning;the average score of the cultural learning effect dimension in the questionnaire is not high,and the learning effect needs to be further improved;teachers are expected to increase cultural learning content and expand cultural learning materials.Secondly,there are still the following problems in the actual English teaching practice: For teachers,it appears that cultural teaching knowledge and attitudes are not consistent with teaching practice.Cultural teaching objectives are too broad.Cultural teaching methods are simple and single and cultural content teaching depth is insufficient.The proportion of Chinese and Western cultural content is out of balance.For students,cultural learning interest is high but the effect needs to be improved,the lack of diversity of cultural learning materials and cultural knowledge output activities are the problems they are facing.Thirdly,through further analysis,it is found that the reasons leading to the above problems can be summarized into the following three factors;teachers’ own factors,teaching materials use factors,and school environment factors.The teacher’s own factors include weak teacher cultural teaching awareness,insufficient teacher cultural teaching knowledge,neglect of cultural teaching preparation links,and excessive emphasis on testing and evaluation of language knowledge.The use of textbooks refers to the inflexible use of English textbooks.The school environment factors include the pressure of the teaching environment to restrict cultural teaching,neglecting the training of teachers’ cultural teaching and lack of cultural output extracurricular activities.Lastly,this article takes the teacher’s own level,the use level of teaching materials,and the school environment level as the starting point based on the above research,and proposes countermeasures to improve the junior middle school English classroom culture teaching.