A Study On The Current Situation Of English Teachers' Intercultural Awareness In Senior High Schools In Yining City

With the acceleration of globalization and the ever-increasing requirement of intercultural communication,the cultivation of intercultural awareness,as one of the requirements in English language teaching,is included in the English Curriculum Standards for Senior High Schools(2017).To cultivate students' intercultural awareness,attention should be focused on English teachers' intercultural awareness as teachers play a leading role in class.And teachers' intercultural awareness has a directly influence on students' intercultural awareness.Many studies have focused on how to cultivate students' intercultural awareness in recent years.However,there are relatively few studies on teachers' intercultural awareness.Based on Schumann's acculturation model and Young Yun Kim's intercultural adaptation theory,this study conducts a study on 97 English teachers from five senior high schools in Yining City by mean of culture test,questionnaire and interview.This study adopts the Inventory of Intercultural Awareness designed by K.Cushner(1997).According to him,intercultural awareness is composed of five dimensions: Cultural Integration,Behavioral Response,Intellectual Interaction,Attitude toward Others and Empathy.This study aims to investigate the current situation of English teachers' intercultural awareness and to explore the influencing factors on teachers' intercultural awareness.The specific research questions are as follows:1.What is the current situation of intercultural awareness of English teachers of senior high school in Yining City?2.What problems do the teachers face in cultivating their intercultural awareness and what are the main factors influencing teachers' intercultural awareness?The findings of this study are shown as follows: first,the current situation of English teachers' intercultural awareness of senior high school is generally low at present.To be specific,teachers involved in this survey have better performance in the response to Empathy.And they have relatively good performance in Attitude toward Others and Cultural Integration.However,English teachers' intercultural awareness on Behavioral Response and Intellectual Interaction is relatively lower than that on the other dimensions.Secondly,the problems faced by English teachers in cultivating their intercultural awareness can be classified into two categories: subjective aspect and objective aspect.Subjective aspect mainly shows the lack of motivation to cultivate intercultural awareness while objective aspects indicates the lack of professional training,loaded teaching burden,limited spare time and the lack of target language environment.As far as influencing factors are concerned,teachers' backward educational ideas,school leaders' neglect of intercultural awareness,the exam-oriented education and the imperfect evaluation mechanism are the main causes to the imperfect teachers' intercultural awareness.Some suggestions on cultivating English teachers' intercultural awareness from the perspectives of changing school leaders' education idea,correcting teachers' cultural view,constructing teachers' intercultural knowledge system,improving teachers' professional quality are suggested so as to achieve English teachers' intercultural awareness cultivation.