The Study Of Cultural Understanding Education In English Teaching Of Junior Middle School

With the rapid development of economic globalization and the world integration, the communication among different countries and regions has become more and more frequent, multiple cultures inevitably collide with each other. English has become a widely used language as an important bridge of international communication and culture exchange. The formation of any language is supported by culture, it plays an irreplaceable role as an important part of language learning. Therefore, we are in the process of learning language, not only learn the language itself, but also understand the culture behind the language, English learning should be like this.The reform of “New curriculum standard” for the first time to cultivate students’ culture awareness as the specific objectives of the course by 2003. According to the description of cultural awareness in the “New curriculum standard”, the culture awareness as a part of the ability of comprehensive using language, it includes cultural knowledge, cultural understanding, cross-cultural awareness and cross-cultural communicative ability. All the time, the English teaching in our country has been affected by the examination oriented education, and cultural understanding in the process of English teaching has not been implemented in the classroom. Pay attention to the vocabulary, grammar, sentence, reading are still the most important in English classroom teaching. Students are more familiar with the structure of language rules, but in the use of language rules are poorly understood, so that students are relatively weak in cultural understanding and cultural communication, there are cultural barriers in communication.Schema theory as a kind of structural theory, is applied in the fields of philosophy,psychology, cognitive science and so on, and now it is gradually developing into English teaching. Including reading, listening, translation, writing, pragmatics, it shows that schema theory plays an important role in improving learners’ understanding of English. The breadth of research in this field is increasing, which also brings opportunities for Junior English teaching.In order to analysis the present situation of cultural understanding education in English Teaching of junior high school, problems and causes, and to explore the strategies of cultivating students’ cultural understanding by using the schema theory, the methods of researching article are literature, interviews and classroom observation.Combing and reviewing the relationship between language and culture, the history andcurrent situation of culture teaching both here and abroad, the development and present situation of schema theory. And research to understand the cultural understanding education present situation in Grade Two, Experiment One of Sichuan Normal University. Using the schema theory to analyze the problems and reasons, to clarify the role of schema in cultural understanding, and to construct effective strategies on cultivate students’ understanding ability by using the selection and reorganization of schema in cultural understanding.This study found that the main problems in the current English Teaching in junior high school education is the obfuscation of the cultural objectives, the mechanization of the teaching mode, and the simplification of the evaluation method. The research analyzes the main factors include: 1.The restriction of mechanical teaching mode in examination oriented education; 2.The single of evaluation method by school and teacher; 3.The lack of teachers’ own cultural quality and professional knowledge; 4.The lack of cultural phenomenon and cultural information in teaching materials. This research mainly from the view of teachers, to explore the effective strategies to cultivate students’ cultural understanding in schema theory. To enable students respect and understand the cultural differences in other countries, improving the sensitivity and the ability to identify the similarities and differences between Chinese and foreign cultures,as well as the ability to use English language. It is conductive to the understanding of cultural understanding education by English teachers in junior middle school, and to strengthen the teachers’ sense of obligation and responsibility of cultural understanding education in teaching.