Cultural Adaptation In Senior High School English Learning

The inter-cultural communication between the people from different cultural backgrounds is becoming more and more frequent, with economic globalization. Thus it is urgent and imperative to raise students' awareness of cultural differences, and to develop their cultural adaptation and inter-cultural communication ability. This thesis, based on the theory of inter-cultural communication, studies the cultural adaptation in foreign language learning in senior schools, analyzes the current situation and existing problems of cultural education in English language teaching, and proposes the strategies to develop the students' cultural awareness and adaptability. This thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapter One reviews the relationship between language, culture, and inter-cultural communication, and the role culture plays in foreign language teaching and inter-cultural communication. Language and culture are interrelated. So, it is inevitable to learn the culture of the target language when learning a foreign language. Chapter Two analyzes the current situation and existing problems of cultural education in English language teaching. Cultural education is still being neglected. The students often fail to attach sufficient importance to cultural appropriateness and find difficulty in learning due to their ignorance of cultural differences. They also take biased attitudes towards the home culture and western culture. Chapter Three deals with the causes of the students' low cultural awareness and adaptability, in terms of structural linguistic theory, socio-cultural factors, textbooks, teachers and students. Chapter Four summarizes the experiment of cultural education and discusses the methods and strategies to improve the students' cultural adaptability. It focuses on how to integrate cultural education into classroom teaching, and how to broaden students' view and raise their cultural awareness through extra-curricular activities, and put forward such proposes as reform of MET, learning of culture by students themselves, and training of teachers on language and culture. This thesis is the author's preliminary attempt to get insight of cultural adaptation in English learning. The study of it will help the students raise their awareness of cultural differences and lay a good foundation of developing their inter-cultural communication ability. It is of practical significance to promote the communication between the people of different nations.