Culture Teaching In Senior High School English Classroom Under The New Curriculum Standard: Status, Problems And Strategies

Language and culture are closely related with each other. They promote and interact with each other. After many years of learning, we still make mistakes when communicating with foreigners due to cultural difference. The main reason is the lack of attention to cross-cultural communication in English teaching and the separation of language and culture under the impact of traditional language teaching and the evaluation mechanisms. The New Criteria for English Syllabus in Senior High School in 2003 made “cultural awareness” one of the English Curriculum Criteria in senior high school for the first time, which means that the foreign language teaching in our country is stepping onto a new stage. Only by combining language teaching with culture instruction can teachers truly help students to acquire the ability of intercultural communication.On the basis of the previous research and related theories, this study tries to analyze the current situation of culture instruction in senior middle schools by means of questionnaire survey, interview and class observation. The objects of the survey are teachers and students from the High school attached to Shandong Normal University. The questions involved in the study are:1. What is the attitude of teachers and students towards culture teaching?2. What is the situation of culture teaching in high schools at present?3. What should be done to put culture teaching into practice?The findings are: Firstly, the teachers know well about culture teaching and support it. Among the surveyed 13 teachers, 77% of them think that culture teaching is important, and 90% of the teachers say that they are facing big difficulties. Secondly, the practice of culture teaching in class is not satisfactory. Among the 120 students surveyed, 60% of them say that in most cases they just listen to the teachers in class, which is very monotonous. Class observation shows that teachers' culture teaching lacks variety. Thirdly, college entrance examination, and the lack of time, teaching resources, and teachers' cultural knowledge constitute barriers to effective culture teaching in high school English class.The effective cultural teaching requires efforts from many aspects. Based on the results, the study gives the following suggestions. Firstly, make full use of the cultural knowledge in the textbook to enrich culture teaching. Secondly, transform the traditional idea of language teaching in class and vary the mode of culture teaching. Thirdly, improve the teachers' ability in culture teaching so they can adopt appropriate ways of teaching. Fourthly, create a relaxing and active learning environment for better cultural teaching effect.