A Tentative Study Of Culture Teaching In Junior English

In teaching English as a foreign language, the importance of teaching culture has been widely recognized, but not yet in junior middle schools in China. Chinese students mostly begin to study English in junior middle schools. In traditional English teaching, language knowledge is paid too much attention to, and words, sentences and grammar are taken as the dominant factors, being separated from the culture. English teachers, especially those in junior middle schools, neglect culture teaching intentionally or unintentionally, because of lacking cultural knowledge themselves or believing there is no need and no way to teach culture in the early stage of English learning. As a result, many a middle school student has learned a considerably large number of English words by heart and they can make grammatically correct sentences, but their actual communicative competence proves to be quite disappointing. In view of the above, English teaching in junior middle schools should not be focused solely on language and skills tout should be aimed at developing students' communicative competence. Therefore, this dissertation points out that language should be taught with culture even at the beginning of English teaching. Teachers ought to familiarize the students with culture knowledge through different channels so as not only to enrich and improve Englishteaching, but also to help students to communicate with native speakers of English in a correct, proper and decent way.This dissertation is made up of six chapters.Chapter One serves as an introduction, which gives a general account of the importance and feasibility of teaching culture, the status quo of culture teaching in junior middle schools in China and the layout of this dissertation.Chapter Two analyzes the relationship between language and culture. Since culture diversity is the main cause of cross-cultural pragmatic failure, it studies the cultural differences in both verbal and nonverbal communication, and contrasts four pairs of cultural patterns in dominant American and Chinese cultures: (i) individualism vs. colectivism, (ii) equality vs. large power distance, (iii) assertiveness vs. interpersonal harrnony, (iv) informality vs. formality.Chapter Three expounds the objectives, orientations, contents and principles of culture teaching in junior English.Chapter Four explores some ways of teaching culture in and out of English classes. English teachers should provide the students with enough information on Chinese and English cultures, point out the similarities and differences between Chinese and English, and lead them to observe and learn about different cultures through multi-channel and multi-visual angels. In brief, teachers ought to combine organically language teaching with cultural teaching so as to improve students' intercultural communication competence.Chapter Five is about the requirements for teachers, teaching materials and tests in culture teaching. Teachers should cultivate correct standpoints of teaching and students, comprehend the relationship between language and culture and help the students to develop in an all-around way; meanwhile, some suggestions are given for further empirical study.Chapter Six concludes the whole dissertation. It re-emphasizes the advantages of teaching culture in junior middle schools and reinforces the necessity of culture teaching in lanpiage teaching. Teachers ought to penetrate cultural knowledge into English teaching, contrast cultural differences and cultivate students' culture awareness in order to lay a solid foundation for their further study.