Culture Teaching In English Instruction In China's Middle Schools: Problems And Suggested Solutions

Language and culture are inseparable. Learning a new language is learning a new culture, so foreign language education will certainly involve the cultural education of target countries. Although many English teachers in China's middle schools have realized the importance of culture teaching (CT), as has been found in the present investigation, most of them are still puzzled about the way of carrying it out.The present study has revealed four major problems with CT as follows:1) the problem with teachers'quality,2) the problem with shortage of time,3) the problem with the assessment of culture learning, and 4) the problem with the transformation of cultural knowledge into cultural competence and cultural awareness. On the basis of the data of the present investigation, this paper goes on to suggest some solutions to the problems and tries to propose a hopefully operational and effective CT mode, a mode of "five steps and six principles". The five steps include:1) creative use of the culture notes to every lesson,2) an English song once a week,3) an English movie every other week,4) a relatively systemic introduction to the target culture once a month, and an English contest in the form of mini-drama once a term. The six principles include:1) the principle of taking the National Standard as our teaching standard,2) the principle of student-centered approach,3) the principle of adequate quantity,4) the principle of comprehensibility,5) the principle of in-class and extracurricular complementary input, and 6) the principle of the integration of input and output.