A Study On The Cultural Input In Secondary School English Teaching

Culture and culture teaching and learning are important themes in the current language research field. The importance of culture teaching in foreign language education has been recognized by Chinese scholars and educators in the early 1980s. And since then culture teaching has always been a hot issue in foreign language education study field. Great achievements have been made in theory concerning culture teaching and learning in the past twenty years. However, in spite of the theoretical achievements, culture teaching practice in Chinese secondary school English course remains limited.What status is culture in the language teaching? Is it just an assistance or of great significance? What status is culture in the real teaching process? The answers must be proved by practice. Thereby, the author had a sociocultural test on the secondary school students. But the result is very dissatisfactory. Then the author carried out an experiment on the secondary school students in the local area for almost 5 months, adopting various effective teaching methods and modes. From years'experience the author put forward some suggestions and ways to help the students know about the native language and target culture. This greatly broadened the students'horizon, improved their cultural qualities and made them acquire the greater development of individuals.This thesis consists of five parts.The first chapter presents a brief review of relevant literatures concerning culture teaching from both abroad and home in the past years; then a further discussion of the significance of culture teaching is given.The second chapter provides a theoretical basis of language, culture and communication and the relationships among them. The cultural difference often leads to pragmatic failure. Communication is the main objective of Foreign Language Teaching. In the third chapter the author gives an analysis of her sociocultural test of the secondary school students in the hope of investigating the situation of culture teaching practice; the result is not so satisfactory. Then the author continues to carry out an experiment on the subjects of two selected classes (experimental and control class). After effective and systematic culture teaching the scores of students in experimental class are significantly improved, but the control class hasn't much change. The result shows the importance of culture teaching in middle school.The fourth chapter attempts to explore the negative causes for the dissatisfactory situation of culture teaching practice.And finally, in the fifth chapter corresponding suggestions are provided to improve and promote culture teaching and learning practice in secondary school foreign language education.In a word, the positive result of the study shows that teaching target culture and cultivating students'cultural awareness in English teaching is not only helpful to solve the existing problems in English teaching in Chinese secondary schools, but also significant to the individual development of the secondary school students.