Cultural Knowledge Teaching In Senior Middle School English Class

With the economic and social development, the communication between China and the outside world is increasingly frequent. People have more opportunities to have contacts with foreign cultures. Culture teaching is playing an important role in foreign language education. At the same time, the modern theories abroad concerning culture teaching are widely spread in China. As such, how to teach culture in foreign language education in the Chinese cultural environment is a hot topic. However, the current situation of the application of culture-emphasized teaching to English language teaching in China's secondary schools is not satisfactory. The idea of traditional English teaching has taken root in the hearts of the middle school English teachers. They lay stress on students' language competence but neglect their cross-cultural communicative competence, and they are hesitant about their views on how to teach the English language culture. Although some school teachers have realized the importance of integrating culture knowledge into English Language teaching, few of them have made it a regular systematic practice. To solve this problem, in this thesis the author tries to explore the problem about cultural knowledge teaching in senior middle school English class.Firstly, the thesis gives a brief account of the definitions of language, culture, cultural knowledge, culture teaching and the relationship between them. Secondly, the author of this thesis makes a survey of current culture teaching in the Middle School Affiliated to Wuhan University. Based on the questionnaires, she analyzes the results. Then, to find out whether the widely known culture teaching can be applied effectively in senior middle school English class, an experiment lasting for five months is conducted among the students in Senior One of the Middle School Affiliated to Wuhan University. The result of the experiment proves that not adding extra burden to the students' study, culture teaching in senior middle school English class will not have a negative effect on their language acquisition. At the same time, it can motivate the learners' interests in English learning, and improve the ability of their listening and reading as well.