Culture Teaching In English Reading Course Of The Junior Middle School

It is well known that reading, as the main input manner of language, is of decisive importance in English teaching. For years, teachers hold that students'failure in comprehending a text is mainly due to deficiency in linguistic competence. However, in many cases, students misunderstand or feel puzzled over the meaning a sentence conveys, even though they understand every single word and all the grammatical structures. Actually, it is cultural background knowledge that blocks readers'understanding. A great number of tests show that the hurdle of English reading comprehension exists not only in vocabulary and grammar, but also in background knowledge and cultural information. In the past two decades, much attention has been given to the cultural effect on reading comprehension. Researcher and scholars home and abroad have reached a consensus that readers'cultural background knowledge could make comprehension of the reading materials much easier. So, in English reading classes, teachers should make students acquire cultural competence as much as possible.The importance of culture teaching in language class has been gradually recognized by teachers, especially those who are teaching the advanced level of English; while it's also true that the ignorance of culture teaching is a widespread phenomenon now in Junior English teaching practice. Although the aim of culture teaching has been clearly prescribed in the new English Curriculum Standard early in 2001, it appears that little change has really taken place in traditional English class over these years. Thus the purpose of this thesis is to study the current practice of cultural instruction in junior middle school and to draw teachers'attention on culture teaching at the beginning level of language class, especially in English reading.The present thesis consists of five chapters as follows:Chapter 1 illustrates the importance of cultural factors in text comprehension based on related researches home and abroad since 1970s and demonstrates the problems in current English reading teaching in Chinese middle schools.Chapter 2 analyzes the important role culture plays in the intercultural communication from the perspective of language, culture and communication; psycholinguistic model of reading; schema theory.Chapter 3 illustrates the methodology of the research. A questionnaire is used to...