An Experimental Research On Cultural Island Approach Applied In Junior High School English Culture Teaching

Since the Ministry of Education issued the New Curriculum Standards for Junior School English in 2012,cultural awareness has been proposed as one of the five curriculum objectives.From then on,the status of culture teaching becomes more and more important in China's English teaching.Culture teaching methods also become the hot topics of researchers in recent years.The culture teaching method of cultural island was rarely mentioned in culture teaching in China.In order to explore the effects of cultural island on Chinese junior high school English culture teaching,the author did an experimental research on it.On the basis of Krashen's Input Hypothesis,this research adopted various research methods,such as literature review,experiment,interview and so on.The purpose of this research is to explore the effects of cultural island on Chinese junior high school English culture teaching.In this research,SPSS 19.0 was adopted to analyze the results of the immediate posttest and the delayed posttest of the experimental class and the control class by descriptive analysis,independent-samples t test and paired-samples t test.The statistics show:(1)In the immediate posttest,there is a little difference of the scores between the experimental class and the control class(Sig=0.095>0.05),indicating that the difference between the two classes is not significant;(2)In the delayed posttest,the scores between the experimental class and the control class emerge significant difference(Sig=0.022<0.05).And the scores of the control class are higher;(3)In the paired-samples t test of the experimental class and the control class,the P value of the two classes are 0.000<0.05,so there is significant difference between the immediate posttest and the delayed posttest in these two classes.The results of this research testified that compared with the traditional culture teaching methods,cultural island didn't play an important role in Chinese junior high school English culture teaching.The main reasons can be explained as follows:the students have low interests in learning culture;the students have heavy study burden,so they have no time to learn cultural knowledge through cultural island;a small proportion of cultural knowledge is examined in the English tests,so the teachers and the students didn't pay much attention to cultural knowledge.However,after the interview of the experiment,the author knows that cultural island still has its advantages.Some students have great interests in the culture teaching method of cultural island.They think that the colorful pictures and the explanatory words on the pictures can attract their attention;being immersed in a cultural atmosphere for a long time can help the students to remember the cultural knowledge;without the restriction of the time,the students can learn the cultural knowledge at any moment,so they can acquire the cultural knowledge unconsciously.This thesis discussed the effects of the culture teaching method of cultural island on Chinese junior high school English culture teaching.The results of the research can provide some references to the researchers who are interested in culture teaching methods.