Research On The Role Of Original English Picture Book Reading Teaching In Cultivating Cultural Awareness Among Junior High School Student

Cultural awareness helps students to understand a language properly,use it appropriately and form positive reading attitude.The Compulsory Education English Curriculum Standards(2011)points out the humanistic nature of English curriculum and lists cultural awareness as one of the objectives of English curriculum.Original English picture books record the content of society,culture and history of English-speaking countries.These books provide students with authentic contexts,which not only helps them boost cultural awareness,but helps to increase students’ input of English language knowledge.However,middle school English teaching prioritize English language knowledge,ignoring the importance of culture and cultural awareness in English learning and communication.Therefore,students are naturally unable to understand and embrace English culture from many perspectives.In turn,students’ reading attitude and verbal communication behaviors can be affected.Due to the current situation of weak cultural awareness among middle school students,based on schema theory and Krashen’s input hypothesis,a teaching experiment was done to study the role of English picture books in the cultural awareness of junior high school students.The research participants are students from two parallel classes in Grade 8 of Experimental Middle School in Tai’an City,Shandong Province.By using questionnaires,English tests and interviews,the present study tries to answer the following three questions:(1)Can English picture book teaching effectively enhance middle school students’ cultural awareness of both Chinese and English cultural issues?(2)Does the middle school students’ English reading comprehension increase significantly?(3)Can students’ reading comprehension be influenced positively by cultural awareness? And after the experiment,the questionnaires,English test data and interview results of two classes before and after the experiment are analyzed qualitatively and quantitively.The results show that:(1)The original English picture book teaching effectively improved middle school students’ cultural awareness,and students’ levels of cultural awareness was improved in the experimental group.(2)Students’ reading comprehension was quantifiably improved in the experimental group.(3)Students’ levels of cultural awareness positively affected their reading comprehension.This study combines English picture books with the cultivation of cultural awareness,which can provide references for the application of English picture books in middle school English teaching,inspire middle school English reading teaching,and give some reasonable suggestions for English studying of middle school students.In the future teaching practices,this study can be applied to a larger sample or longer-time teaching experiments for more effectively raising students’ cultural awareness which will in turn to improve their reading comprehension.