The Study Of Cultural Understanding Strategy In English Teaching Of Junior Middle School

In the era of globalization,English,as one of the most widely used languages in the world,has become an important tool for international communication and cultural exchange.With the deepening research of English curriculum and teaching,English curriculum is divided into two parts: language teaching and cultural teaching,while cultural teaching also includes two levels: cultural knowledge and cultural understanding.China’s middle school English teaching should go beyond the level of cultural knowledge and achieve cultural understanding by strengthening learners’ cultural awareness.As an emotional and ideogenetic process,cultural understanding,with language as its carrier,is the internalization of “cultural meaning” by the subject of understanding.However,on the one hand,the current junior middle school English teaching still focuses more on language knowledge teaching.There is lack of cultural understanding in the teaching process.On the other hand,teachers’ understanding of strategy is also biased.Specifically,the aim of English teaching is to emphasize the instrumentality of language rather than the culture.Teaching methods and means are inflexible.Therefore,how to carry out English cultural understanding teaching in junior middle school is a problem which needs to be paid attention to.This study applies hermeneutic understanding and constructivism theory to English teaching,puts the language learning of English courses into the level of cultural understanding,explains the necessity of English cultural understanding teaching and explores the strategies of cultural understanding in teacher’s teaching practice.The discussion of these problems will help to further improve cultural understanding and English cultural teaching,and also will help to guide teachers’ teaching practice.In addition to the introduction,this paper is divided into four chapters to discuss the cultural understanding strategy in English teaching of junior middle schools.The first chapter discusses the necessity of cultural understanding,the goal of cultural under-standing and the occurrence of cultural understanding from the connotation of cultural understanding,that is to say,this chapter explains the questions of “why to understand”,“what to understand” and “how to understand”.The second chapter of the thesis investigates the current situation of junior middle school students’ English learning and teachers’ English teaching in three schools from towns,counties and urban areas through questionnaire,interview and classroom observation,and finds that there is a lack of cultural understanding strategy in the English teaching practice of junior middle schools.The third chapter analyzes the origin causes of the lack of cultural understanding strategy in English teaching of junior middle school from the aspects of English discipline value,teaching philosophy and teachers’ quality,which sets up a thinking framework for the discussion of the following strategies.Centred on the basic concept of “strategy”: the means and methods which are adopted to achieve certain goals,the last chapter of this paper expounds the cultural understanding strategy of junior middle school English teaching from four aspects: guiding ideology,teaching purpose,teaching means and teaching methods.Language learning is not only knowledge learning,but also a kind of cultural experience.Only by fully understanding culture and regarding foreign language learning as cultural experience can language teaching and learning be more meaningful.