A Study On Junior High School English Teachers' Culture Teaching Competence In The Minority Areas In The Deepened Curriculum Reform Context

The cultivation of cultural awareness was for the first time included in the teaching goals in the trial version of English Curriculum Standard of 2001.Nevertheless,it is still an ubiquitous phenomenon after more than a decade's curriculum reform that people put much emphasize on students' intelligence and scores instead of the nurture of moral.The overall plan of the curriculum reform has not been fully coordinated with its actual implementation.Research reveals that students lack cultural awareness.They often know the vocabulary and grammar but failing to understand the cultural connotation,which in turn hinders the development of intercultural communication skills.The present researches have confirmed the importance of integrating culture teaching into language teaching,but the methods and principles of culture teaching proposed by researchers are difficult for teachers to adopt.The Proposal of Comprehensively Deepening Curriculum Reform and Implementing the Fundamental Task of Cultivating People with Moral released by the Education Ministry in 2014 emphasizes the importance and urgency of moral education.It claims to cultivate students' core competency including Chinese culture and the international horizon.Strengthening the cultivation of teachers' competence to educate people is one of the most requisite parts of the reform.This study aims to investigate junior high English teachers' culture teaching competence in minority areas in regard to Western culture,Chinese culture and ethnic culture.And the culture teaching competence in this study refers to teachers' cultural knowledge status,culture teaching awareness as well as culture teaching in class.Based on Acculturation Theory,Krashen's Input Hypothesis,Constructivist Theory and Schema Theory,this research,on the basis of reviewing the research literature in relevant fields at home and abroad,tries to answer three research questions:(1)What's the status of junior high English teachers' cultural knowledge in minority areas?(2)What's the junior high English teachers' culture teaching awareness in minority areas regarding Western culture,Chinese culture and ethnic culture?(3)How do the junior high English teachers in minority areas carry out culture teaching in class at present?With a questionnaire,interviews and classroom observation,the author investigated 56 teachers from five junior high schools in Shilin and analyzed the results of the investigation in detail by using SPSS.The results show that these teachers lack culture teaching competence,to be specific:(1)Junior high English teachers in minority areas haven't systematically possessed cultural knowledge,their limited cultural knowledge just results in the failure to successfully pass on cultural knowledge to the students.They know only some information about festivals or customs of Western culture.As for Chinese culture,they have difficulty to express in English,let alone Yi culture.Above all,teachers have realized that their culture accomplishment is not enough to cultivate students' cultural awareness.But they have no motivation to improve.(2)Junior high English teachers' culture teaching awareness in minority areas regarding Western culture,Chinese culture and ethnic culture is not strong though they all know the importance of culture teaching.Teachers haven't understood the teaching goals proposed by the Curriculum Reform thoroughly and completely.They still regard the development of students' listening,speaking,reading and writing skills as the single goal of English teaching.However,the survey shows that teachers agree that language and culture are indivisible,and culture learning plays an essential role in language learning.Even so,teachers' culture teaching awareness is still very weak due to the influence of complex factors,leading to a very small proportion of culture teaching in reality.(3)Teachers generally carry out culture teaching by leading students to compare culture differences between China and the West.Language knowledge is still the center in English teaching at present.The content of culture teaching is mainly from teaching materials,teachers generally conduct culture teaching by using cultural comparison method.The method of culture teaching is too single and the effect isn't obvious.In order to cultivate students with core competency,some implications from the survey results are drawn:(1)English teachers should study the English syllabuscarefully and develop a school-based curriculum that is suitable for students according to local conditions;(2)English teachers should improve and strengthen their teaching competence through training both in theory courses and practical courses;(3)Teachers could flexibly choose various culture teaching methods such as cultural comparison,cultural experience and cultural narration.