A Case Study On The Current Situation Of Cultivating Students' "Cultural Consciousness" In English Teaching Of High Schools

Language is closely related to culture.The teaching of language inevitably involves the teaching of culture.“Cultural consciousness” as a vogue word of the new era is put forward by Fei Xiaotong(1999,p.196).It refers to the positive value orientation of human cultural consciousness,that is,“every form of beauty has its uniqueness,and it is precious to appreciate other forms of beauty with tolerance;if beauty represents itself with diversity and integrity,the world will be blessed with harmony and unity”.In addition,different cultures carry different values.High school students are the most vulnerable groups to be influenced.As a result,foreign language teaching in high schools should bear the responsibility of cultivating students' cultural consciousness.So far,there has been lots of researches focusing on cultural teaching in China and abroad.However,there are few researches focusing on how to cultivate students' cultural consciousness in English teaching of high schools.Therefore,this study intends to take Longquan No.2 High School as an example to explore the current situation of cultivating students' cultural consciousness in English teaching of this school by analyzing relevant researches on cultural consciousness.Then the author is going to analyze current problems of cultivating students' cultural consciousness in English teaching of this school and give some corresponding suggestions based on transfer theory and schema theory.The author selects 21 English teachers and 350 students from Longquan No.2 High School as research objects and combines the quantitative method with the qualitative one.Learning from Yuan Xiaolu's(2017,pp.56-61)survey on the current situation of cultivating cultural consciousness in higher foreign language education,the author investigates the current situation and problems of cultivating students' cultural consciousness in this high school and give some corresponding suggestions through cultural tests,questionnaires,interviews and other research methods.The research questions of this thesis are as follows: 1.What is the current situation of cultivating students' cultural consciousness in English teaching of this high school? 2.What are the problems of cultivating students' cultural consciousness in English teaching of this high school? 3.What suggestions can be given to solve the problems?The result of the investigation shows that most students' level of cultural consciousness mainly focuses on the first level of cultural identity and selection,while the higher level of cultural reflection,criticism,and cultural innovation still have a long way to be further improved.The author finds out that English teachers of this school have not held the faith of cultivating students' cultural consciousness firmly;there is a lack of deep analysis of cultural consciousness content of textbooks and extra-curriculum reading materials of English teaching;the forms and methods of English tests and evaluations care much more on students' language learning skills than cultural quality formation;and limited cultural literacy of teachers leads to their limited abilities of cultural consciousness cultivation.In order to cultivate high school students' cultural consciousness,the author gives some suggestions based on the current situation.Firstly,English teachers should hold the faith of cultivating students' cultural consciousness firmly.Secondly,English teachers should thoroughly analyze cultural elements of textbooks and extra-curriculum reading materials and integrate them into English teaching.Thirdly,tests and evaluations should emphasize the cultivation of students' abilities of cultural reflection,cultural criticism,and cultural innovation.Lastly,English teachers should promote their cultural literacy consciously.