Practices Of Global Citizenship Education In Foreign Language Education

Currently, in the context of globalization, more attention has been paid to theissue of education of global citizenship or intercultural citizenship, cross-culturalcitizenship. As it is known to all as a fact, the English language plays an importantrole in creating a global community and developing global citizenship. The role ofthe English language learning in global citizenship education should not beneglected. However, in China, the area of global citizenship education is still farfrom being explored in terms of theories and practices, because education processis a complicated and complex one which will involve more factors, such as theestablishment of concepts, the design of a curriculum, the training of teaching staff,the development of teaching materials, and the conduct of teaching plans, etc. Thispaper intends to conduct some action research in ELT classes at tertiary level andtries to explore in what ways some language learning activities can contribute toglobal citizenship education along with the traditional language skills teaching.To observe what can be taught and learned in various activities in Englishclass, a theoretical framework is drawn based on the literature review, mainly thethree dimensions in Byram (2008)：knowledge, skills and values and attitudes. Theactivities designed for the research: international news report，lecture on the texts，movie watching，project-based research，play performance. By analyzing students journals, reports, presentations, playwrights, we try to find out what contributionseach kind of activity can make in terms of global citizenship education in Englishlanguage class. The significance of this study is to explore in what ways eachlanguage learning activities can contribute to global citizenship education.It is found out that each activity contributes differently in terms of knowledge, skill and values and attitudes of global citizenship education. The activity of international news report provides more information about international issues inlearning culture knowledge, which cannot be done by any other activities. Theactivity of lectures provides more other knowledge in many aspects of cultures. Solecture is and will be the dominant way of learning in foreign language education.Projects are another profitable way for students to learn more information aboutculture which gives students the opportunity to do something to cater their owninterests. Movie is a good way of learning cultures but it is a challenge to selectthe proper movie. Play performance have a limitation in learning cultureknowledge.In terms of skills to be practiced for the purpose of global citizenshipeducation, we can see that the activity of international news report and researchprojects could offer students more opportunities in seeking information from theinternet, communicating with each other, giving some critical thinking; relatingthe new information about other cultures and interpreting it to aspects of one sown culture; more cooperation and working together to solve some problems. Atthe same time, it provides the opportunity for critical thinking skills. Lecture onthe texts in some extent decided by whether the teacher in class have a criticalthinking consciousness. Movie watching is another effective method for studentsunder teacher s instruction. Play performance provide more chances for studentscooperation, but have a limitation in critical thinking aspect.Looking at the values and attitudes part, it is hard to draw a definiteconclusion. This part emphases the changes of students in their values andattitudes towards the other cultures, and we cannot know from these activities howmuch they have changed. If we want to know the real result we need to take a test, which is not included in this study.To sum up, along with the dominant way of teaching of giving lectures inlanguage classes, it is recommended that activities of international news report an research projects should be encouraged, while other activities of moviewatching and play performance should be conducted with caution and not veryfrequently. For the research of global citizenship education in foreign languageeducation, we try to improve students intercultural ability and critical thinkingskills, in order to change their cognition and knowledge structure and explore howto conduct teaching practice activities in the future.