On Cultivation Of Cultural Awareness And Cross-Cultural Communicative Competence In High School English Education

The present thesis mainly discusses a most important problem in the language education: in exploring social and culture factors of a language, how teachers can cultivate students'awareness in using a foreign language, thus to help students form their cross-cultural communicative competence. By using the method of integrating theories into practice the thesis presents the necessity and importance of the teaching of culture and the implement of it in the practical teaching .It comes to the conclusion that cultural awareness is necessary in cultivating students'abilities to use a language properly.The main purpose of English teaching is for cross-cultural communication and for communicating with the people who have different culture backgrounds. To improve the efficiency and quality of English teaching, to improve the learners'ability of using foreign languages are not only the necessity of economy improvement, but also the task of Chinese basic education. For quite a long time, TEFL in Chinese middle schools has been based on structuralism, which considers a language as a closed system and makes a point of the perception and recognition of the internal linguistic mechanism in teaching, to enable learners to judge grammatical correctness of sentences. However, in the teaching practice, it is found that through the knowledge of phonemic, syntactic and semantic rules of the target language, it is possible to create sentences without grammatical or lexical mistakes, yet learners are incapable of communicating successfully in English-speaking contexts due to their failure to comprehend sociolinguistic rules and share the same cultural background of the native speakers. Many experiences and experiments show that Chinese learners of English have difficulty in communication despite a good command of the linguistic knowledge of language. The problem is not rooted in using linguistic rules, but in applying communicative rules, specifically pragmatic and cross-cultural communicative rules.Language is closely related to culture, and possession of some cultural background knowledge will facilitate the improvement of language performance. Language is not only the cultural carrier but also the important form of cultural manifestation. A particular language develops along with the development of the nation. Language is a component of the social national culture. Different nations have different cultures, history, customs and religions, which are shown in different nations'languages. Because of these differences, the Chinese learners will encounter various factors that interfere with their learning English at the middle school stage, In order to overcome the obstacles in communication caused by cultural differences , cultural education should not be ignored. Our aim of foreign language teaching is to train students'cross-cultural communicative competence.Now for the first time cultural awareness, cultural understanding and cross-cultural communicative competence have been prescribed in the new English Curriculum Standard. It requires that teachers should broaden students'cultural visions and develop their awareness of cross-cultural communications. English, as a foreign language in China, should be regarded not only as a resource for learning foreign cultures but also as a means of cultural interaction. Accordingly, English teachers are faced with the challenge of exploring appropriate means of culture instruction in their teaching contexts.This paper intends to investigate into and analyze the present situation of middle school student's cultural awareness in using a foreign language, explore the appropriate principles of culture instruction, discuss suitable teaching materials and content, and establish the focus of the teaching of culture. It also attempts to understand better teachers'views of culture instruction and their practices through empirical enquiries. The surveys show that culture instruction hasn't gained its due place in English teaching. The requirement for culture instruction put forward by the new English Curriculum Standard is a challenge to most English teachers. How should we develop cultural awareness in foreign language education in China? This paper suggests exploring the approaches to culture instruction from a comprehensive, multidimensional perspective. Teachers should provide more opportunities for learners to communicate through various dialogues, multi-directions. In this process learners are expected to increase their cultural awareness and develop their cross-cultural communicative competence. It also offers a chance for teachers to reflect their practices critically, understand their role and explore ways to solve their own problems in developing learners'cross-cultural communicative competence.