Raising The Cultural Awareness Of English Teachers At Higher Vocational Colleges

Based on the fact that The English Teaching Syllabus at Higher Vocational Colleges doesn't mention the development of cultural awareness, the author attempts to select cultural items in English teaching for students at Hieher Vocational Colleges, and to discuss theproblem of how to raise the cultural awareness of English teachers according to the goal of English teaching and the training objectives for Higher Vocational Colleges.The author concludes the frequency of the common cultural mistakes that Chinese usually make in intercultural communication according to recent materials and documents on intercultural communication. The frequency of the cultural mistakes can be regarded as "the frequency of cultural items that should appear in cultural teaching". It has two functions. Firstly, it can be used as a parameter to measure the degree of necessity to choose this cultural item. Secondly, it can be used as a parameter to measure the relative degree of the importance of this cultural item, that is, as a parameter for us to determine that this item is more important than another. Then the author makes a comparison between the communicative functions in the Syllabus and the commoncultural mistakes made by Chinese learners of English, and proposes that we should be more alert to the 10 common cultural mistakes, but which are not found in the Syllabus. As for the 9 items in the Syllabus, but which are not the common cultural mistakes made by Chinese, we might not regard them as the main cultural content in English teaching. Lastly, according to the findings above, the author obtains the main cultural items that students at Higher Vocational Colleges must learn.In this thesis, the awareness and the techniques that teachers at Higher Vocational Colleges should possess in cultural teaching are discussed. In regard to this awareness, the author proposes that the goal that English teachers should achieve, and the 4 principles that they should adhere to in cultural teaching should accord with the goal of English teaching and the training objectives at Higher Vocational Colleges. The goal of cultural teaching at Higher Vocational Colleges includes 5 levels: 1) cultural knowledge teaching; 2) Cultural awareness; 3) Cultural understanding; 4) Developing communicative competence from the short term and developing comprehensive competence from the long term; 5) Developing an ability of obtaining cultural information. The four principles are the "practical" principle; the "segmental" principle; the principle of "main culture"; and the"appropriate" principle. Regarding the teaching system in cultural teaching, some suggestions on the revision of the Syllabus, the establishment of elective courses, the compiling of teaching materials and reference materials, and also the reform of exams are given. In regard to teaching methods in class, culture-based tasks are recommended as the method to develop students' cultural awareness in class. This method has its characteristics and advantages compared with the others. Culture-based tasks follow a culture-bound theme of training through the practice of its language realization to achieve a dual purpose of cultural sensitivity and reinforcement of language skills. To have a clear picture of how culture-based tasks are applied in teaching, a demonstration is provided in the Appendix II.