On Cultivating EFL Learners' Cultural Awareness

With the economic and social development, the communication between China and the outside world is increasingly frequent. People have more opportunities to contact foreign cultures. Culture teaching is playing an important role in foreign language education. At the same time, the modern theories abroad concerning culture teaching are widely spread in China. As such, how to teach culture in foreign language education in the Chinese cultural environment is a hot topic. However, it is unfortunate up to now that no agreement has been reached in terms of how to effectively cultivate learners' cultural awareness in EFL teaching and learning. Culture teaching needs being imperatively unproved. Inspired by the above discussion, the researcher selects the topic of "on cultivating EFL learners' cultural awareness" as the study in his Master's program.The researcher carried out this study through a sociocultural test and two questionnaires among college English teachers and learners, with the expectation to get an objective view of the current status of culture instruction in foreign language education in China. Accordingly, suggestions for promoting the cultivation of EFL learners' cultural awareness were put forward.The focus of the study is how to practically solve the problems in cultivating EFL learners' cultural awareness. The researcher applies "A Sociocultural Test" (Wang, 1990) and two self-designed questionnaires respectively answered by teachers and learners in English school or department at four domestic universities to this study. The learner participants' achievements of culture testing ("A Sociocultural Test") are used to comparatively analyzed with that of language testing (TEM4). Feedbacks from the teacher and learner participants are arranged according to their answers in the two questionnaires. Data analysis indicates the problems as follows. (1) Learners' cultural competence is weaker than their linguistic competence. (2) Learners' competence on the small c cultureis stronger than their competence on the big C culture. (3) Learners' competence on verbal communication is stronger than their competence on non-verbal communication. These problems show that language teaching and culture teaching are not balanced in foreign language education and teachers should pay more attention to the appropriate selection of sociocultural items in culture teaching. Feedbacks from learners in their responses to the questionnaire include the following aspects. (1) Learners have not paid sufficient attention to culture learning. (2) Learners' attitudes towards the native and target cultures should be adjusted. (3) Learners have not quite clearly understood the relationship between language and culture. (4) Learners have not completely grasped effective culture acquisition channels. Feedbacks from teachers in their responses to the questionnaire mainly concern such aspects as follows. (1) Methods used in cultivating EFL learners' cultural awareness are simple. (2) Aspects of culture involved in culture teaching are one-sided. (3) Materials applied to culture teaching are unscientific. (4) The testing and evaluating system for the target culture requires to be improved. It is the researcher's belief that cultivating EFL learners' cultural awareness through establishing a conceptual framework of culture teaching and learning is more effective and practical than through isolated classroom instruction. Thus, a conceptual framework of cultivating EFL learners' cultural awareness is raised and illustrated in detail from the aspects of the goal, principle, content and procedure of culture teaching. The researcher advocates different methods for cultivating EFL learners' cultural awareness in accordance with features of two stages of teaching and learning, namely curricular and extracurricular time. Methods for cultural awareness cultivation at curricular time are lectures of special topics, information presentation supported by technology, role-playing, group discussion and cultural inquiry. Literature reading, newspaper surv...