Teaching Vocabulary In Senior High School And Cultivating Students’ Intercultural Awareness

With the deepening of globalization, foreign language education, which aims at developing students’ intercultural communication competence, has become a necessity. Vocabulary, constituting the basic element, is considered to serve as the cornerstone of language. As a consequence, vocabulary teaching plays a definitely vital role in the whole process of language teaching. To be specific, the achievement of the language teaching aim relies mainly on the effective and successful vocabulary teaching. Therefore, acculturation provides us a viable way to cultivate students’ intercultural competence in vocabulary teaching.Incorporating linguistics and intercultural communication theories, this thesis analyzes how vocabulary teaching affects the development of intercultural competence. In the first study, it surveyed752students in Grade2with questionnaires, which reveals the present situation-the existing problems of English vocabulary teaching and intercultural awareness. In the second study,94students attended prior and post tests and the experiment in approximately a year time. The experiment results report that:First, the input of culture in vocabulary teaching can stimulate students’ curiosity about other cultures, arouse their enthusiasm to learn vocabulary. Second, acculturation in vocabulary teaching can improve students’ efficiency in vocabulary learning, and promote the student’s understanding, reduce misunderstanding and pragmatic failures. Third, acculturation can cultivate students’ intercultural awareness, enable them better appreciate foreign and domestic cultures, and help students form healthy cultural attitudes and values. This thesis has practical significance to middle school English teaching. In fact, the development of cultural awareness, cultural knowledge, and intercultural communication competence is its ultimate goal both students and teachers strive to reach.