A Case Study Of Implementing Cultural Teaching In Senior High School English Reading Teaching

Language is the carrier of culture. It is unavoidable for the students to confront therelated culture when learning language. The influence of English-speaking countries’ cultureis very pervasive in the teaching of English reading. The obstacle of English readingcomprehension exists in not only vocabulary and grammar, but also the cultural backgroundknowledge. However, the senior school English teaching in china has placed much emphasison the practice of language form rather than the teaching of foreign culture for a long time.The necessity and importance of cultural teaching is not got enough attention. Consequently,the students cannot master the connotative meaning of language form, which will have a greatinfluence on using English appropriately. According to Senior English Curriculum Standards(trial version), which clearly states that cultural awareness is the guarantee of decent languageuse and proposes the teaching objectives: comprehensively improve the students’ culturalknowledge and cultural understanding ability and enhance the students’ cross-culturalcommunicative awareness and cross-cultural communicative competence. The importance ofimplementing cultural teaching in English reading teaching has caused widespread concern inforeign language teaching profession.In order to further understand the essence of cultural teaching, the author introducescultural teaching from two aspects of the theory and practice by reading a lot of domestic andforeign literature. The author uses the research methods of classroom observation andinterviews to study the implementation of cultural teaching in senior English reading teaching.Three conclusions are drawn by analyzing two reading lessons of two English teachers fromone key middle school: first, the implementation of cultural teaching in senior English readingteaching is feasible; second, teachers should teach not only the cultural knowledge ofEnglish-speaking countries but also Chinese traditional culture; third, there is no fixedteaching mode for cultural teaching.