The Design And Practice Of Cultural Awareness Learning Activities Supported By Information Technology

The 18 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China(CPC)put forward the idea of "enhancing morality and fostering talents".The 19 th National Congress of the CPC strengthened cultural self-confidence and advocated "inheriting and carrying forward the excellent traditional Chinese culture".In order to implement the Party and the state to promote quality education,the English Curriculum Standards for Senior High Schools(2017)officially promulgated in 2018 clearly defines the core quality of "cultural awareness".The English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2011)points out that "cultural awareness" is an important component of students' comprehensive language using ability,which demonstrates that cultural awareness includes cultural knowledge,cultural understanding,cross-cultural communication awareness and ability.Nowadays,with the continuous development of information age and globalization,people of different languages and cultural backgrounds have contacted more closely.Hence cross-cultural foreign language communication meets the needs of muti-cultural society.However,due to the influence of Chinese traditional linguistics and the restriction of exam-oriented education for a long time,students' cultural awareness has not been paid attention to in foreign language teaching in our country,especially in the real English teaching in junior middle school.In this way it has affected students' comprehensive English ability and English subject to a certain extent improvement of core literacy.From this we can see the necessity and importance of cultivating cultural awareness in English teaching.Scholars at home and abroad have done a lot of research on cultural awareness and learning activity design,but there are few studies on the cultivation of English cultural awareness based on information technology,as well as the studies on the activity design of cultural awareness.Therefore,this study hopes to make a breakthrough in this respect.Based on the study of cultural awareness and learning activity design at home and abroad and guided by the theoretical bases,such as the principles of instructional system design and activity theory etc,this study investigates the current situation of junior middle school students' cultural awareness and learning needs.Then it designs the process of information technology-supported cultural awareness learning activities,and conducts three rounds of action research.The research subjects are students in Grade Seven in Guilin NO.19 Junior Middle School,and the practice is carried out on three modules of listening&speaking and reading classes.After each round of practice,the author would make summary and improve the activity design process.Finally,the learning activity is evaluated and rethought through evaluation scale,questionnaire survey,interview,pretest and post-test papers of cultural awareness and mid-term examination results combined with work analysis.Through the design and practice,students' cultural awareness has greatly improved.Besides,it puts forward the flow chart of information technology supported cultural awareness learning activities in English teaching and some relevant strategies and suggestions.The conclusions of this study are:1.Through investigation and interviews,it is concluded that there exists a bad tendency of attaching importance to instrumentality and neglecting humanism in junior middle school English teaching.Students lack cultural knowledge,low level of cultural understanding and low awareness and ability of intercultural communication.2.The process of designing English cultural awareness learning activities supported by information technology includes six key links,learning autonomy before class,creating situations,learning new knowledge,exhibition and promotion,reflection and evaluation,and extension.3.Some suggestions in the design and practice of learning activities: In the support of information technology,use interactive computer-aided teaching and use the integrated computer functions comprehensively such as classroom activities,teaching assistants,class optimization masters,etc.,in this way can promote human-computer interaction.In the evaluation,attention should be paid to the use of self-assessment within groups,inter-group evaluation,teacher evaluation and the combination of student performance for comprehensive evaluation of the cultural awareness learning activity design.According to the different types of English course,such as listening&speaking and reading classes,there should be some differences,and English cooperative learning groups should be determined reasonably.