An Empirical Study On English Cultural Teaching In Senior High School Under The Background Of New Curriculum Standards

In order to meet the increasing need of the development of globalization and communication with foreigners, foreign language teaching needs to cultivate the talents with cross-cultural communicative competence.New English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School issued by The Chinese Ministry of Education in 2001 stipulates that the a target of English teaching is to develop the students' cultural awareness. This standard enlightens a way to teach English culture. However, English teachers always pay more attention to English language but they pay less attention to English culture for a long time in China.Based by the above background, three research questions are put forward in this paper. 1.How is the status quo of English culture teaching for senior high school? 2.With the proceeding of English culture teaching, how is students' cultural awareness? 3.For the problems of English culture teaching in senior high school, how to get these problems solved? According to the 3 research questions, I analyze and summarize language and culture,cross-culture communication and culture teaching that have been studied by former scholars. At the same time, the quantitative study(questionnaire survey,questionnaire test) and the qualitative study(interview and classroom observation)are used to find out the three research questions. It takes more than 2 months to finish the research:163 senior two students(92 boys, 71 girls) that they are studying in 4 teaching classes in Yongjing High School take part in the questionnaire survey and test; 25 English teachers they are working in Yongjing High School and other high schools in Gansu Province participate in the questionnaire survey; 4 English teachers who are working for Yongjing High School accept the interview and 2 English teachers' teaching with English culture in 2 weeks is observed.Three findings are found in this paper: 1.Most of English teachers and students can keep a watchful eye on English culture teaching, but because of College entrance examination system and textbook design,English culture teaching in senior high school is not well carried out. 2.Most teachers and students don't have a good knowledge of English culture and they can not well understand the differences between Chinese culture and western culture, which will be bad for the development of English culture teaching in senior high school.3.Methods for English culture teaching are simple and monotonous and the ways to get information for students about English culture are limited. English culture teaching in senior high school lacks institutionalized and professional support.At last,I put forward some ways and suggestions to solve the problems of English culture teaching in senior high school.