A Study On Culture Teaching In Senior High School English Class

The General Senior High School English Curriculum Standards (2003) point out that English teaching in senior schools should cultivate students'cultural awareness and cross-cultural communicative competence. For a long time, English teachers in senior high school have attached importance to English language knowledge instruction, ignoring the cultivation of students'cultural awareness. Therefore, this paper does the practical study of senior school English culture teaching, expecting to find out some implications for culture teaching in senior English class.The subjects of this research involve English teachers and the students of two key schools and an average school in senior one and two in the city of Shan Wei. Students'questionnaire mainly investigegatesl) the motivations of students in English learning; 2) their understandings, attitudes, and ways of learning culture; 3) Students'opinions on methods used by the teachers in English class; 4) students'needs in culture of English learning. The teachers'questionnaire mainly researched on:1) teachers'opinions on English teaching; 2) teachers'understanding of ENCS; 3) teachers'attitudes to culture teaching of English; 4) methods they use in culture teaching and difficulties they meet in the process of it.This thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter 1 is the introduction, which introduces the background and aims of the research.Chapter 2 focuses on the review of the research, which firstly and theoretically presents the concepts of culture, analyze the relations between language and culture; secondly, discusses the necessity of culture teaching in senior English teaching.Chapter 3 is concerned with the research through questionnaires. The subjects are 360 senior middle school students and 34 English teachers from two key senior middle schools and an average senior middle school in the city of Shan Wei. The valid copies of the students' questionnaires are 344, and 32 of that of the teachers. The results of the research show that 1) Most of the students have extrinsic motivations in English learning, while the process of English learning needs intrinsic motivation as their motives; 2) Most of the students show that they are expecting interesting culture learning. Therefore, teachers should make comparisons of Chinese and English, so that students not only can learn foreign cultures, but also deepen their understandings of the native culture, so as not to lead to misunderstandings in communications; 3) Most of the students are willing to learn interesting language materials outside the textbooks and expecting to be exposed to lively and interesting English learning materials of eastern and western; 4) Most of the them are very eager to be taught with different methods in culture teaching which can enhance their interest in learning English; 5) Some of them are not satisfied with the culture teaching status quo and hope teachers can improve their teaching methods in English class to facilitate their interest and efficiency of English learning 6) Students are eager to communicate with the teacher in class. The results of the English teachers show that (1) English teachers in senior high schools pay different attention to culture teaching. Although most of them have realized the importance of it, it cannot be implemented effectively and is handicapped due to their culture knowledge insufficiency; 2) Some English teachers hold that students only want to learn what will be examined. Hence, they instruct purely language knowledge teaching which leads to dullness of the English class and the loss of interest in learning English; 3) Some of them do not make full use of the teaching materials; 4) Many of them can employ multi-media to carry out culture teaching, but limit to only the presentations of slices and they seldom use music and video files; 5) Some of them only employ one or two teaching methods limit to oral instructions and seldom organize cultural activities for the students; 6) Text-oriented convention has confined them to carry out culture teaching instructions. Thus culture can not be in the equal position with language teaching.Chapters 4 are the suggestions. Firstly, senior English teachers should create English atmosphere in class and make students staying around the environment of culture learning; secondly, teachers should offer culture information related to the textbooks; thirdly, teachers should make comparisons in culture teaching, and lastly, to let students use proper literature and authentic materials.Chapter 5 is the conclusion. This chapter presents the findings and limitations. Since the survey is only on three schools of city of Shan Wei, there remain some limitations and problems such as 1) how can the English teachers apply different teaching methods flexibly in order to achieve the maximum effectiveness of culture teaching? 2) What are the levels of students' culture? 3) What is the relationship between the students'culture level and their English level?...