Study On The Cultivation Of Cultural Awareness In English Reading Teaching In Senior High Schools

The General Senior High School English Curriculum Standard（2017edition）puts forward the concept of English key competencies,and cultural awareness is an important part of them.Reading teaching occupies a large proportion of class time in senior high school English teaching.Therefore,reading class has become the main venue to cultivate students’ cultural awareness.This study investigates teachers’ cultivation of students’ cultural awareness in high school English reading teaching,and intends to answer two research questions:（1）What is the current situation of the cultivation of cultural awareness in high school English reading teaching?（2）What are the factors that influence the status?In order to answer the research questions,based on the theories of cultural schema theory,constructivism and meaningful learning,this study uses classroom observations,questionnaires and interviews to investigate 160 students and 5teachers in the first grade of a senior high school in Tianjin.The findings are as follows: as far as students are concerned,most students are interested in Chinese and Western cultures and their differences,but they lack the enthusiasm and initiative to explore cultural knowledge in the learning process.As far as teachers are concerned,the content of cultural teaching is not deep enough,and the teaching methods used are relatively simple.In addition,cultural teaching is mainly reflected in the process of pre-reading and post-reading.Teaching materials rely too much on textbooks and pictures,and it takes less time to cultivate students’ cultural awareness,which takes about 5-8 minutes on average.In this study,the factors affecting the status can be attributed to three aspects.In terms of teachers,the cultural literacy of teachers is not good enough.In cultural teaching,teachers do not explore the cultural connotation of texts deeply,and rarely create contexts to guide students to participate in,thereby enhancing students’ cultural awareness.In addition,teachers lack systematic linguistic knowledge and rarely stimulate students’ interest in cultural learning.Influenced by the college entrance examination,teachers are more utilitarian in teaching and pay more attention to language knowledge teaching.In terms of students,they lack of cultural knowledge,and their enthusiasm and initiative to explore cultural knowledge are not good enough.In terms of schools,schools rarely organize cultural literacy enhancement activities and cultural teaching skills seminars for teachers.In addition,the school’s personnel evaluation system needs to be improved.