Investigating The Cultivation Of Cross-Cultural Communication Awareness In Primary School English Teaching In China

Due to the deepening of globalization,cross-cultural exchanges between nations are increasingly frequent.How to achieve success in cross-cultural communication and develop students' cross-cultural communication competence is an urgent need in our society.English language teaching is the main way to cultivate talents with international vision in China,so cultivating students' cross-cultural communicative competence is a key goal of English language teaching.Although cross-cultural awareness cultivation has been attached great importance in college and even middle-school English teaching,it has only recently started to attract attention at the primary school level.Cross-cultural awareness is a very important precondition for and basis of cultivating students' cross-cultural communicative competence.Based on Hanvey's four-level cross-cultural awareness theory,this research investigates the teaching mode of cultivating cross-cultural awareness among Grade 5 students at a primary school in Wuhan,Hubei Province,through classroom observations and interviews with Chinese and foreign teachers and nine students of English.Based on the school's cross-cultural awareness cultivation situation,this research identified cross-cultural awareness cultivation teaching methods for primary school students,and cross-cultural awareness cultivation teaching modes.Data collection lasted for a semester,with the cross-cultural awareness cultivation teaching mode and strategies being analyzed based on the English-language classroom teaching and English activities of Chinese and foreign Grade 5 teachers.This research found that teachers mainly used a teaching mode combining teaching and study,cooperation between Chinese and foreign teachers,the cultivation of cross-cultural awareness and of English language ability and skill,together with such multi-level teaching and teaching strategies as cultivating students' cross-cultural awareness through textbooks,cross-cultural contrastive teaching,questioning teaching,and student-centered situational teaching to comprehensively and deeply cultivate students' cross-cultural awareness.There were some limitations in teaching modes and strategies for cultivating cross-cultural awareness.The cooperation mode between the Chinese teacher and foreign teacher should be further developed,and the combination mode among teaching and studying should function as a study and apply its research results to English teaching.Moreover.English teachers should strengthen the connection between the consolidation of English language skills and cross-cultural awareness cultivation.In terms of the multi-teaching mode,teachers should not just select the top students to cultivate,but use different teaching activities,aims and strategies to cultivate students who have different English levels.Finally,teaching strategies should be more diversified.This research offers suggestions on the limitations of teaching modes and strategies for students' cross-cultural awareness cultivation.Due to such objective conditions as limited time and researcher energy,this qualitative study focuses on only a relatively few teachers and students in one school with a high level of English education in Wuhan.Choosing more participants from different primary schools for further research may provide a global picture of cultivating primary school students' cross-cultural awareness.