A Research On The Cultivation Of Senior High School Students’ Intercultural Awareness In English Teaching

Language is used for communication and we learn English to communicate with English-speaking people. If we want to communicate with others successfully, we must be familiar with their cultural norms, because language is a cultural phenomenon, In communication, if speakers don’t follow the pragmatic principle of English, then they may be considered to be "behaving badly"; so intercultural awareness is vitally important to students. In addition, the New Senior High School English Curriculum Standards state clearly that fostering students’ cultural awareness is one of the five objects of teaching English. Owing to the fact that intercultural awareness is a crucial part of cultural awareness, the cultivation of senior high school students’ intercultural awareness in English teaching cannot be ignored.Taking Foreign Language Experimental School Affiliated to Tanghu Middle School in Shuangliu for instance, the study investigates the current situation of senior high school students’ intercultural awareness and the problems existing in the cultivation of senior high school students’intercultural awareness by using methods of test paper, questionnaire, interview, and classroom observation; and the focus is on the latter. The results of the study indicate that students’mastery of cultural knowledge in the textbook is satisfactory while their mastery of social values, social customs and habits, etc. which are not included in the teaching material is not good, of which their mastery of words and idioms with rich cultural implication and non-verbal behavior is not optimistic in particular; the main reasons why some students have weak intercultural awareness are negative transfer of the native culture and ethnocentrism. When it comes to teachers ’fostering students’ intercultural awareness, many teachers have realized the importance of it and put it into practice. However, there still exist some problems. For example, a small number of teachers haven’t established a correct concept of intercultural awareness cultivation and the methods that many teachers adopt in culture teaching are not diverse enough. Besides, the author gets inspiration from the investigation:limited class time and heavy teaching task prevent some teachers from cultivating students’intercultural awareness; as a result, to let students acquire more cultural knowledge, their initiative should be made full use of.Finally, some suggestions are proposed on the basis of the result of investigation and analyses to help teachers better cultivate student’ intercultural awareness; for example, some teachers establish a correct concept of intercultural awareness cultivation and teachers make full use of students’ initiative.