An Experimental Study Of The Influence Of The Theme-based Instruction On High School Students' Intercultural Sensitivity

Nowadays,China has been playing more and more crucial role in the circumstances of the globalization.The development of the globalization puts forward the new requirements for the students that they should be well-rounded individuals,so this kind of trend presents great challenges for the modern English teaching.The goal of the modern English teaching is to cultivate applied talents and to fully improve students' ability of application;students are required not only to grasp the theoretical knowledge of English,but also to understand how to apply the knowledge into daily life and their work.Therefore,it is urgent to improve students' intercultural communication ability,and it also enables teachers to constantly explore new teaching models so as to meet the purpose that students can communicate with others in English.Intercultural sensitivity is a significant component of the intercultural communication,it is the core element to connect the intercultural awareness and intercultural effectiveness,the improvement of intercultural sensitivity plays an important role to enhance students' intercultural communication.The Theme Based Instruction(TBI)is one of the models of the content-based instruction(CBI);it combines content and language to assist students in acquiring the general language skills through content and theme.The researches on the theme-based instruction in foreign countries are earlier than that in China,and a number of outcomes have been achieved and all of these achievements provided precious experience for TBI applied in China.Although the theme-based instruction in China has a very short history,it has attracted more and more scholars' attention.This study was based on the theories and research outcomes in foreign countries and at home,and combined the TBI and high school students' intercultural sensitivity.The students' intercultural sensitivity is intertwined in the teaching process,and the author wanted to check out whether the TBI can affect the students' intercultural sensitivity or not.This study was implemented in two classes of high school,one of the classes was experimental class,and the TBI was used in this class;another class was control class,and the traditional teaching method was implemented.Before the experiment,the questionnaire results of the students showed that there was no significant difference in intercultural sensitivity between the two classes.During the experiment process,the author designed the teaching process and activities in the class based on the TBI.After a semester's experiment,the same questionnaire was conducted in the experimental class and the control class,and the results were compared with the results before the experiment.Although the TBI is not very mature in China,it proved that the level of intercultural sensitivity in the experimental class is better than that in the control class,and there was significant difference.The experiment showed that the TBI can improve the students' intercultural sensitivity better than the traditional teaching.Therefore,in high school English teaching,the TBI is worth popularizing.In addition,the author also summarized the problems in the process of experiment and put forward some suggestions for future teaching and research.