A Study On Culture Instruction In English Vocabulary Teaching For High School Students

Learning language should not only master the basic components of it, but also learn its corresponding cultural background knowledge. Language and culture complement each other and they are inseparable. Therefore, to some extent, language teaching is culture teaching. Culture teaching and language teaching are inseparable. In the process of English teaching, vocabulary is the most basic and important teaching element. English learners can correctly and fluently express their ideas and go on intercultural communication and cooperation by means of learning the cultural connotations behind vocabulary and master the correct usages of the words. However, at present, the process of English teaching in our country more focuses on teaching the words, syntax and grammar rules, so as to ignore the effect of cultural knowledge in language and learners. Actually, most students only remember many English words, and know a lot of English grammar rules. They are still unable to communicate properly in English with people from other countries.In order to discover the current situation of culture instruction in English vocabulary teaching and learn high school students’ culture awareness and cross-cultural communication competence, the author conducted a three-month investigation based on the internship school’s teachers and students in Dalian No. 62 Middle School. The author mainly adopts the method of questionnaire, pre-test and post-test, interview and classroom observation method. According to the research and the collection and analysis of related data, the author finds out the general situation and existing difficulties of culture teaching in English vocabulary teaching for high school students and puts forward to the effective strategies to cultivate students’ culture awareness and intercultural communication competence.This thesis is made up of five chapters in all. The first chapter is introduction. In this chapter, the author mainly introduces the background, purpose, significance and research questions of this thesis. The second chapter is the literature review and theoretical basis of this thesis. It provides theoretical support for this thesis. In this part, the author mainly demonstrates some domestic and foreign related research findings and achievements about culture teaching and vocabulary teaching at home and aboard. The third chapter is methodology. It includes objectives, subjects, instruments, procedures and data collection of the empirical study. The forth chapter is results and discussion. The author makes a series of analysis of the collected data and discussed the data results. The last chapter of this thesis is conclusion. It includes some main findings and limitations about this thesis. Besides, the author puts forward some suggestions about culture instruction in vocabulary teaching for high school teachers and students. According to research results, culture instruction in English vocabulary teaching can motivate students’ interest in vocabulary and enhance students’ vocabulary learning effectively and improve students’ intercultural communication competence.