On The Cultivation Of Non-English Majors' Cultural Awareness In Higher Vocational Education

As the reformation of English teaching deepens in our country, much attention has been paid to the acculturation and cultural awareness. Recently it has been widely accepted that the process of learning a foreign language should be the process of learning the cultural context of this language at the same time. English teaching is not only a transmission of language skills, but also an integrated teaching of language and its culture. However, for a long time, our English teaching has accepted and practiced the teaching method which is based on the theory of structuralism. It emphasizes on the cognition of the structure. More attention has been paid to the knowledge such as vocabulary, grammatical rules, while the cultural context of the target language is ignored. As a result, the students who have learned English for many years often make mistakes in the communication, because they do not understand the cultural differences between the East and the West. Similarly, the teaching of English in higher vocational education also continues with the same teaching methods. It diverges from the aim of cultivating students' talent in higher vocational education. It is known to us all that the purpose of English teaching in higher vocational education is to cultivate the students' practical application competence in foreign language learning. For this reason, in view of the current particular situation in English learning in higher vocational colleges, in the thesis, the author tries to explore the problems about the teaching of English to non-English majors in training the students' cultural awareness.First, the thesis carries out a questionnaire about the culture teaching in Xianning Vocational and Technical College, and analyzes the results.Second, the thesis refers to related achievements about culture and language to seek out the theoretical basis, and states that culture teaching should become an integrated part in English teaching of higher vocational education and it is the key element to form the intercultural competence.Third, through the practice, the thesis tries to explore the principles and methods of the culture-loaded teaching and comes to the conclusion that culture-loaded teaching helps students develop both their language competence and communicative competence. Finally, the thesis offers suggestions concerning the problems revealed in the experiment.