The Cultivation Of Cultural Awareness In The Teaching Of English Reading In Senior High Schools

Language is a part of culture and it is also the carrier of culture.With the globalization of the world economy,more and more people are aware of the important role of cultural awareness in language learning.The purpose of language learning is to develop students' communicative competence.English teaching is not only about the basic knowledge of English,but also about students' ability of using the language to communicate.To some extent,language teaching means teaching culture,cultivating students' cultural awareness,improving their cultural knowledge,consolidating their understanding of cultural knowledge and enhancing students' understanding of Chinese and Foreign cultures and their recognition of excellent cultures.With the in-depth study of the ultimate goal of language learning,more and more scholars from different angles verify the importance of teaching culture in the process of language learning.English Curriculum Standard for Senior High School(2017)stipulates that cultural awareness embodies the value orientation of core literacy of English subject.The cultivation of cultural awareness helps students enhance their national identity,strengthen cultural self-confidence,and become civilized and socially responsible people.But because of various internal and external factors,there are still many problems in the actual teaching process.In the study of the comprehension ability of English learners,reading comprehension occupies more and more important proportion,and more and more attention has been paid to the teaching of English reading comprehension.A large number of experimental studies show that the English reading barriers for students not only exist in the vocabulary and grammar,but also in cultural background knowledge.If students lack awareness and understanding of western culture,ignoring the differences between two kinds of cultures,it will lead to misunderstanding in the learning and communication.So teachers should introduce the cultural background knowledge of English-spoken countries and the differences between Chinese and western cultures,and strive to cultivate students' cultural awareness.In the thesis,an experiment is conducted in two parallel classes of Senior 2in Taiyuan No.55 Middle school,one as the experiment class and the other the control class,including 90 students in total.The whole experiment lasts for 36 weeks,which istargeted to investigate how to cultivate the awareness of senior students through reading teaching.In the thesis,the author aims to integrate cultivation of cultural awareness in English reading teaching in Senior High School.Before the experiment,the author has made much preparation for it,analyzing the reading passages in Book 4,Book 5 and Book 6 in FLTRP,generating the teaching goals in cultural awareness.Furthermore,the general idea of cultivating cultural awareness in English reading teaching is preliminarily worked out and teaching plans are designed.Through the methods of cultural knowledge test,questionnaires and reading tests,the author evaluates and measures the performance and changes of two groups before and after the experiment.The experiment is targeted to investigate whether cultivation of cultural awareness in English reading teaching in Senior High School is effective in improving the English reading ability of high school students.The results of the study show that both cultural awareness and reading comprehension ability of the students in the experiment group have been greatly improved.Due to limited sample size,this experiment still has some limitations that need to be improved.However,it is hoped that the research in this thesis helps improve the effects of English teaching and reading comprehension ability of the students.