An Empirical Study Of The Application Of Cultural Awareness To English Reading Teaching In Senior Middle Schools

With the coming of the information era and the flaming of the international communication, the English language has already made itself become a lingua franca. At the same time, it is playing a more and more important role in the international stage. Therefore, many countries are improving and reforming English language education in basic education. One problem in English language teaching has been attached more and more importance:students make comprehension mistakes when reading English texts. This kind of understanding error or comprehension barrier is closely related to the cultural differences reflected by Chinese and English languages. English reading comprehension is, in fact, a cross-cultural communication event, and students'familiarity with the target culture is the premise of successful English reading comprehension.This thesis is based on the theory of language and culture and Schema Theory, emphasizing on the important role played by cultural study in English reading. The author of this thesis has carried out a survey of 192 senior high school students and also made an interview of some of them to reveal their major problems in cultural learning and English reading.This thesis can be divided into five parts:In the first part, the author points out the major problems in current English language teaching;The second part deals with the discussion the language and culture and Schema Theory;In the third part, the survey and interview are described;In the fourth part, some suggestions based on the results of survey and interview which are combined with the Schema Theory are put forward;The fifth part is the conclusion.