The Teaching Of English Vocabulary And The Cultivation Of Cross-cultural Consciousness In Middle Schools In China

This dissertation is an attempt to find how to cultivate students' cross-cultural consciousness in both vocabulary teaching and cultural input, with a focus on connotative meaning of words based on the theories of semantics. Its main objective is to shed some light on the cultivation of cross-cultural consciousness in senior high English teaching.This paper consists of five chapters. Chapter One is the rationale of my research and the scope of discussion. Chapter Two deals with the background of this paper's theoretical basis starting with the definition on words' connotative meanings along the lines of Geoffrey Leech, followed by a discussion on how a series of theories on constructivism represented by Piaget can be applied with the daily English vocabulary teaching. A review of some researches both at home and abroad is also included in this chapter. Chapter Three explores the differences of connotative meaning between English and Chinese in three aspects, as well as the profound reasons behind them. It is pointed out that the introduction of culture in the English classroom is both necessary and feasible. In this chapter there is also a description of various methods of cultivation of cross-cultural communication that I employ in my class. Chapter Four mainly describes a teaching experiment conducted in my class, including its design, goals, principles, process, and results, followed by a detailed analyses.Chapter Five is the conclusion. On the whole my experiment did fulfill its objectives, though there is still some room for improvement.