A Study On The English Cultural Teaching Concepts And Methods In Junior Middle School

As an important tool of communication,the cultural attribute of English determines the necessity of ‘language in culture' in English teaching.Learners need to know the cultural backgrounds and differences between China and Western countries.In order to help students foster an international perspective and achieve the ability of intercultural communication,teachers should combine the language teaching with the cultural instruction.On the basis of theprevious literature analysis,the present researcher attemptsto analyze the current teachers' concepts and approaches of the cultural instruction operated in junior middle school through questionnaire survey,interview and class observation.This research aims to address the following two questions:1.Are the teaching concepts of junior middle school English teachers consistent with their teaching methods? If there are differences,what are the manifestations?2.What are the causes for the discrepancy between teaching concepts and teaching methods of English teachers in junior middle school?The study has yielded the following findings: First,there is an inconsistency between the teaching concepts of English teachers in junior middle school and the teaching methods.Teachers have a clear and correct understanding of the importance and necessity of cultural teaching as well as the ability training of cultural awareness in the New Curriculum Standard.But the current situation and effect of cultural teaching in junior middle school is still unsatisfactory.The concrete manifestations include incomplete cultural teaching objectives,lacking of depth in the contents of cultural teaching,simple cultural teaching methods and unfulfilled principles of cultural teaching.Second,the subjective and objective reasons for the discrepancy between the cultural concepts and teaching methods of junior middle school English teachers are as follows: 1)The prominent factors that contribute to this situation include high pressure of entrance examination,insufficient teaching time and inadequate attention of cultural teaching,which should be taken seriously if we seek to effectively operate the cultural instruction.2)The lack of systematic and authoritative cultural teaching materials and evaluation mode leads to the high randomness of cultural teaching contents.3)Teachers' less experienced cultural teaching competence and students' underprepared cognitive levelresult in the incomplete cultural teaching objectives and improper teaching methods.The effective cultural teaching needs lots of efforts.According to the results,the writer offers three suggestions.First,it's the primary consideration to change the traditional teaching concept and balance the language teaching and the cultural teaching.Second,it's also worth mentioning that teachers need to creatively develop cultural resources and enrich the cultural content.Third,enhancing teachers' cultural teaching competence and adopting appropriate teaching approaches are highly necessary.