Developing Cultural Awareness In EFL Classroom At College Level--A Tentative Study On Task-based Approach To Cultural Teaching

Foreign language teachers in China have recognized the importance of developing learner's cultural awareness. But what to teach and how to teach in EFL classrooms are still problems. In most colleges and universities, the teacher provides knowledge of big C culture to learners. The approach adopted is fact-based. It involves little participation and interaction on the part of the learner, thus has some limitations. In order to explore a more effective approach to develop learner's cultural awareness, a teaching experiment has been conducted. This experiment was conducted on the second-year students in Foreign Language Department of Jinggangshan Teacher's College. The experiment was commenced in February and concluded in June 2001. A task-based method was employed for the Experimental Group with the Control Group following the traditional fact-based. In the task-based classroom, the ultimate goal of the teaching was to provide the students with conditions and opportunities to develop cultural awareness through meaningful communicative activities. Both the Experimental Group and the Control Group were required to take a pre-test and a post-test. According to the statistical analysis, students in the experimental group improved in both cultural knowledge and languagebehavior and demonstrated significant difference from those in the control group. Therefore, the task-based approach could be a feasible alternative of cultural teaching to raise learner's cultural awareness in the EFL classroom in colleges and universities. Besides, with regard to cultural awareness, the cultural components should not only include achievement culture (big C culture), but also include behavior culture (small c culture).