On Culture Teaching In EFL Classrooms In Senior High Schools

With the development of globalization and China's entry into WTO, international contacts and intercultural communication have become more and more frequent, people have realized that pure linguistic form in foreign language teaching cannot meet the new demands of social development. Though many scholars have researched into the importance of culture teaching and its concrete principles and methods, most of the works are on foreign language teaching and learning in colleges and universities and there are seldom works on culture teaching in high schools. How to overcome culture barriers and achieve success in intercultural communication attracts people's great attention. How to improve students' intercultural communicative competence becomes the main request in English teaching in high schools.In 2001, the Chinese Education Ministry issued New Curriculum Standards for Senior English, in which culture awareness was put forward for the first time and it's one of the five components of comprehensive language competence. The new standards also clearly prescribed cultural goals for each grade, which made culture ? teaching stand out in EFL classrooms in high schools. Many English teachers in senior high schools and learners have realized the importance of culture teaching, but there are still problems in current English culture teaching. It's a challenge for teachers in senior high schools to probe adequate methods of culture teaching in real teaching contexts.This thesis expounded the necessity of culture teaching in senior high schools from different aspects in terms of the close relationship between language and culture. By consulting the new standards and making a survey among teachers and students at senior high schools, the author tried to find out the current situation of culture teaching in senior high schools. Based on the findings of two questionnaires, some problems were revealed, including teachers' attitude towards cultural teaching and the effect of NMET. The survey also showed that both teachers and students reached a consensus on the importance of carrying out culture teaching, whereas they had...