On Culture Teaching In High School ELT Class In The Background Of New Curriculum Reform

In 2006, Ministry of Education of P.R. of China issued the new English Curriculum Standard, which, as an ELT (English Language Teaching) guidance for middle schools, benefited from the latest research productions from home and abroad on the relationship between culture and ELT. It is for the first time that cultural awareness, as one of the five objectives of ELT, has been prescribed in the new English Curriculum Standard. Accordingly, it makes great sense how senior school English teachers explore appropriate means of cultivating students' cultural awareness as well as linguistic knowledge and skills in ELT class.For the first place, this paper is trying to theoretically probe into the relationship between culture and language, culture and ELT, which suggests that culture and language are not separated from each other. Then it analyses the high school ELT actuality that culture teaching is not effective and efficient. In succession, it puts out the characteristics and requirements of the new English Curriculum Standard, which appeals for culture teaching in high school ELT class. After it shows the comparison of the advantages and disadvantages in carrying out culture teaching, it makes an approach to the possible principles and efficient methods aiming at the contents and objectives of culture teaching in high school.Furthermore, the author of the thesis emphasizes that literature teaching is a necessity in the process of culture teaching, but, of course, classroom teaching is the main approach to carry it out. Enlightened by the research concerning culture teaching and the demands of English Curriculum Standard, the author conducted a 16 weeks' culture teaching experiment in a Middle School. The outcome of the experiment proves that culture teaching strategies of enhancing students' culture background knowledge and communicative culture in ELT class can stimulate students' enthusiasm for English learning, which will surely enrich students' linguistic knowledge, enhance students' cultural awareness and promote their comprehensive linguistic competence. In the meanwhile, culture teaching can facilitate ELT itself and the new curriculum reform.