A Survey Of Culture Instruction In Senior English

For the first time cultural awareness, cultural understanding and intercultural communicative competence has been prescribed in the new English Curriculum Standard. Accordingly, senior English teachers are faced with the challenge of exploring appropriate means of culture instruction in their teaching contexts.This paper is intended to prepare teachers for a successful transition to the new English Curriculum Standard by stimulating critical reflective teaching. It attempts to better understand teachers' and learners' views of culture instruction and their practices through empirical enquiries. The survey shows that both teachers and students have reached a consensus on the importance of carrying out culture instruction, whereas they have different opinions of its goal. However, most teachers still adopt a knowledge-based additive approach in English teaching. The survey also reveals that both teachers and students have failed to pay due attention to the importance of non-verbal behaviors in intercultural communications, and most teachers deal with literary texts on "efferent" level.In a word, from the survey it shows that culture instruction hasn't gained its due place in English teaching. It is a challenge to most senior English teachers. This paper suggests exploring the approaches to culture instruction from a comprehensive, multidimensional perspective. Teachers should provide more opportunities for learners to communicate through various "dialogues", multi-directional interactions, either on concrete or abstract level. In this process learners are expected to increase their cultural awareness and develop their intercultural communicative competence. The ultimate goal of culture instruction in English learning is to bring about learners' internal changes and benefit their all-round development.