Factors Of Intercultural Communication In The EFL Classroom In Secondary Schools

Based on an overview of intercultural communication studies, this paper discusses the importance of cultural teaching in foreign language teaching. Language is a part of culture; language serves and reflects cultural needs. Since cultures differ from one another, when we come in contact with people from other cultures, the cultural differences often lead to failure in communication. Learning a language is learning a means of communication, so foreign language teaching is inseparable from teaching its culture.The paper takes communicative competence as one of the major aims of EFL teaching. One important component of communicative competence is intercultural competence. Therefore, developing students' skills in intercultural communication is an objective of the EFL teaching in secondary schools. The teaching of culture should play its role in every EFL classroom teaching. The learning of the target culture and cultural awareness can aid the attaining of second language proficiency.The integration of language and culture in secondary schools should be approached through the medium of the textbook teaching in EFL classrooms, In analyzing the textbooks, we can find that the textbooks in use (the 1993-English Series) contain much cultural information. So the textbooks are appropriate as the major source of cultural input in the EFL classroom. However, the textbooks should be used creatively.The paper also makes an attempt to suggest some methods for cultural teaching, dealing mainly with three aspects:1) The treatment of reading materials: using the reading materials as a means of developing cultural awareness & transferring the awareness into communicative skills with guided practice;2) The teaching of "Dialogues": presenting the cultural differences in daily conversation and the underlying reasons for these differences & providing opportunities to use the language in interaction in varied situation;3) The teaching of vocabulary: presenting cultural differences in conceptual meaning and cultural meaning of words & emphasizing the culturally conditioned association.With three teaching plans, the paper illustrates how a series of activities can be designed to develop the students' intercultural competence, making the teaching of culture an integral part of every lesson. The teaching techniques suggested can be summarized as: teaching culture through textbook-based language teaching; teaching culture through a comparative and contrastive analysis approach; teaching cultural differences and similarities; teaching culture through visual aids.English teachers in secondary schools used to aim at the teaching of language structures and the acquisition of linguistic competence. Now, as we move into communication-oriented approaches, the EFL teachers should realize the importance of cultural teaching and try every means to develop the students' intercultural communication competence through the teaching of textbooks knowledge in the EFL classroom.