A Study Of Cross-cultural Education In English Teaching Of Secondary Normal School

With the development trend of economic globalization, Chinese have more and more chances or occasions to communicate with people from outside of China. English is the most extensive and widespread language in the world. For many years, English teaching in secondary normal school has been emphasized in language teaching. English learning strategies in secondary normal school have being focused on reading, writing, grammar, translation and memorization of vocabulary, which leads to the failure of developing communicative competence. The English students have learned is"dumb English". Therefore, while communicating with a foreigner, students are likely to make mistakes and to be unable to express themselves successfully. Many educational scholars have paid great attention to culture. The culture researches help much to know about other countries and communicate between different cultures. Correspondingly there exists cross-cultural communication, so the participator needs the cross-cultural communicative ability, which is the educational goal of foreign language teaching. And now the New English Curricular Standard prescribes the necessity of training students'cross-cultural awareness. And because language cannot be separated from culture, cultural education should be implemented while teaching language. Now English has become a universal language, so it's necessary to carry out cross-cultural education in English teaching in secondary normal school. However, a common sense among English teachers in secondary normal school is that they consider teaching English just as language knowledge, such as grammar, structure, etc., instead of integrating cultural education into language teaching. In fact, without cultural education, English teaching won't achieve successful results, because English learners cannot communicate successfully with foreigners in English without corresponding cultural knowledge. Some teachers even hold the view that cultural knowledge can be leaned about when needed. They ignore the rule of learning and the formation of habits, which can only be gradually cultivated. If they don't have the awareness of thinking in the target language and communicating with the target culture, students will be doomed to fail in cross-cultural communication. Cross-cultural education can help overcome this problem. Hence, as an English teacher in secondary normal school, the author tries to explore some strategies and approaches to implement cross-cultural education in secondary normal English teaching so as to cultivate students'cross-cultural communicative competence.This paper begins with the review of former researches on cross-cultural education both abroad and at home. Then the author describes the theoretical bases of this paper, including principles of cross-cultural education by UNESCO and PCF. At the same time, the author states the relationship between cross-cultural education and English teaching, from which the importance of cross-cultural education is further confirmed in English teaching. To learn about the status quo of cross-cultural education in secondary normal school, the author carried out a survey, by adopting the methods of test and questionnaire. The test shows students'cultural competence is not ideal, which partially results from the students'low level of language. But by analyzing the results of the tests and the questionnaire, we can see, on the whole, both English teachers and students haven't taken cross-cultural education important or just put it as a supplement part of language teaching. Teachers just mention the cultural points concerned about the context, seldom carrying out systematic or penetrating introduction or teaching. Thus it leads to students'neglect of cross-cultural knowledge. This situation is mainly the result of traditional teaching ideas. Certainly, some teachers'lack of cultural knowledge and improper comprehension of cultural education are also two main causes. To solve this problem, the author states some specific approaches under the guidance of the five strategies of Dr. Lu Ziwen to carry out cross-cultural education in secondary normal school, which considers the interests of students and the practical feasibility. The fundamental methods respectively are supplemental method, incorporation method, interaction method, practice method and experience method. Then the author lists some items to be noted while implementing cross-cultural education,such as the requirements for teachers and teaching materials, etc. At last the author stresses on the importance of assessment on cultural education so as to provide a prompt guidance for cultural education and motivate students'autonomous learning ability. The assessment of cultural education can be the assessment of cultural knowledge, cultural act and emotional attitude. Anyhow, the assessment is comprehensive and helpful.Definitely this new method has some shortcomings, and of course some ideas or point of views in the thesis might not be proper. In any case, all the above discussions have revealed that language and culture are dependent on each other and that full understanding of a language is correlated with a full understanding of its culture. In English language teaching and learning, English cultural education should get enough attention. To ensure more effective communication, practical and effective ways of English teaching must be taken. However, to realize this, we should further change our traditional teaching thoughts.To sum up, although it's a bit difficult to implement cross-cultural education in secondary normal school, the ideal result will be achieved if English teachers hold a proper attitude toward cultural education and integrate English teaching with cultural education, especially using appropriate methods to teach culture. Thus the status quo of cross-cultural education will be improved greatly in the future.