Cross-Cultural Differences

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 rules are taken as the dominant factors, separated from the culture. English teachers, especially those in junior middle schools, neglect culture teaching intentionally, because they themselves lack the knowledge of culture. They think there is no need teaching culture in the early stage of English learning. As a result, many middle school students have learned a considerably large number of English words by heart and 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 skills but should be aimed at developing students' communicative competence. Therefore, this thesis points out that language should be taught with culture even at the beginning of English teaching. Teachers ought to familiarize the students with the target culture through different channels so as not only to...