On Culture-Teaching In High School: A Historical Overview In Relation With NMET

For quite a long time, English teaching is limited to fostering students' ability to pass National Matriculation English Test(NMET), which focuses on morphology and grammer but neglects the background information of the target culture. However, in recent years, NMET has conveyed to us message: attention to both students' comminicative competence and language knowledge.This paper is intended to expound the relationship between culture and language, drawing attention to the importance and necessity of cultural instruction in English teaching. Based on the New English Curriculum Standard, the present study discusses the requirements for cultural instruction through an analysis of cultural elements in NMET and a critical examination of both disadvantages and advantages in th system of NMET. The findings include teachers' attitude towards cultural teaching and the effects of NMET on English teaching. The paper then goes on to analyze these problems. Finally some suggestions are put forward to improve cultural teaching in terms of attaching greater importance to cultivating students' skills of intercultural communication competence to meet the demands set the New English Curriculum Standard.