A Study On The Application Of Cultural Introduction To English Vocabulary Teaching In Middle School

Vocabulary is an indispensable element of having a good grasp of English and has a closed relationship with culture.Vocabulary teaching,as a significant way for students to learn English,runs through the whole process of English teaching.Whether the vocabulary teaching is successful will influence directly or indirectly the achievement of the general goal of language teaching.Thus,its significance is self-evident.However,under the influence of examination-oriented education,vocabulary teaching in China excessively focuses on words'pronunciation,spelling and the literal meaning etc,and ignores words' cultural connotations.As a result,students mechanically memorize words and are lack of interests in learning vocabulary,which leads to students' inappropriate use of words and ineffective communication.In view of this,this thesis discusses the current situation of vocabulary teaching and culture teaching in middle school and reviews the previous studies on vocabulary teaching abroad and at home.The relationship between vocabulary teaching and culture is also mentioned in this paper.It elaborates on the principles,contents and methods of the cultural introduction as well which is suitable for middle school students.In the light of the theories of Language Transfer and Input Hypothesis,this thesis carries out an empirical study concerning the current English vocabulary teaching in middle school from the perspective of cultural introduction.The major issues of this study focus on the following questions:1)Can cultural introduction stimulate students' learning motivation and interest?2)Can cultural introduction improve students' proper use of words?3)Can cultural introduction raise students' cultural awareness and further enhance intercultural communicative competence?Therefore,aimed at those problems,this thesis adopts some students from two parallel classes as the subjects.They are divided into the experimental class and the controlled class and carried out a semester of experimental study.The experiment adopts questionnaires,tests and interview to collect and analyze research data.On the basis of the contrast experiment between the experimental class and the control class and scientific analysis of the data collected from the tests and questionnaires,the empirical study findings state that cultural introduction can stimulate students' learning motivation and interest,improve students' proper use of words and make students understand the discrepancies of culture between English and Chinese,which contributes to the cultivation of students' cultural awareness and intercultural communicative competence.