Applying The "Culture Introduction" Approach To English Teaching In Vocational Schools

Culture and language cannot be separated, and teaching a language is teaching its culture. Linguistic teaching should combine with culture teaching. These ideas are commonly accepted in the education field. However, in real-life English teaching practices, culture teaching has not been truly incorporated into linguistic teaching. This is particularly true of China's secondary vocational schools, where incoming students in general have poor English proficiency and they tend to lose interest in learning English easily. This thesis aims at identifying the problems that have been preventing culture from being injected into the English teaching in vocational schools. And on the basis of the findings from some experiments the author has conducted, it argues for the necessity, the feasibility and the practicality of adopting "culture introduction" as a new pedagogical approach, thus proposing a solution for those problems.By "culture introduction" the author refers to a teaching method whereby teachers open up the culture meaning behind the language, introducing it first before turning the students' attention to linguistic knowledge. The author holds the view that only "culture introduction" approach can truly balance the relationship between linguistic teaching and culture teaching, truly focus on the role of culture in English teaching, and truly stimulate students' enthusiasm in learning.The author's idea is supported by an experiment on the effectiveness of "culture introduction" as an approach to teaching English in vocational schools.