An Empirical Study On Application Of English Movies In Cultural Teaching In Middle Schools

Cultural teaching is a necessary element in English teaching because the communicative students are indispensable from their cultural awareness. Then how to improve students’cultural cognition becomes more crucial in English teaching. In recent years, more teachers have focused on cultural teaching. Yet, most of them are keen on teaching to students in tertiary schools, and few have touched the middle schools. Therefore, this thesis attempts to do corresponding empirical study on the methods of cultural teaching in middle schools to prove that the cultural teaching in middle schools can not only improve the cross-cultural communication ability, but also stimulate the students’motivation of language learning.Based on the Input Hypothesis and the Dual Coding Theory, the thesis constructs the Movie-Input Model in English cultural teaching. It’s known to us that movie is culture disseminator, shadow of different ages. The Movie-Input Model in English cultural teaching can make students have deep understanding of western cultures, promote the cultural construction of students, improve the ability of cross-cultural communication and stimulate the students’motivation, especially benefits to the teaching of middle school students. The Movie-Input Model includes three main parts: in the first part, a small part of the movie, which is in accordance with the teaching tasks and purpose, should be chosen as the teaching content. Before the class, certain background knowledge, content summary as well as the main characters should be introduced to the students, so that student will have a pre-understanding. In the second part, some special questions should be designed carefully according to the purpose of this class. Let students watch the movie with questions and find the answers to those questions. In this part, different teaching methods can be applied to inspire and guide students to think actively. In the last part, some comments and summary should be made by the teacher.This thesis aims to prove that English movies can be used for cultural teaching feasibly and effectively in middle schools and the author expects to explore a set of effective English teaching methods through English movies. The thesis adopts the research approach including qualitative and quantitative studies, with the analysis of test papers being dominant, questionnaires and interviews being supplementary carried out by experimental research. In this research, firstly, students have been divided into the Experimental Class and the Controlled Class, and the statistical analysis of the subject students’test scores on the pre-test are also made to evaluate the cultural learning. Then, the Movie-Input Model is being used. Finally, a general evaluation on the Movie-Input Model in English cultural teaching is produced based on the data results obtained by test paper analysis, questionnaires, and interviews.Through the experimental results, we can safely draw a conclusion that English movies can be used for cultural teaching feasibly and effectively in middle schools. At the same time, this study also puts forward the constructive methods on how to apply English movies in cultural teaching. Generally speaking, there are six chapters in this thesis. The first chapter introduces the background of research, the purpose and significance of research, and the organization of the thesis. Then, a general introduction to the theoretical background of the thesis and the related research are being made in the second chapter. The research design generally, covering the research questions, subjects and instruments are being introduced in the third chapter. The fourth chapter, the main part of the thesis, is concerned with the specific teaching model-the Movie-Input Model with its methods, problems and suggestions. The fifth chapter presents the analysis of results of the present study. The conclusion is the sixth chapter, first recapitulates the main results of the study, then discusses the limitation of the study, finally proposes some related suggestions.