A Research On English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High School Based On The Cultivation Of Cross-cultural Awareness

Language is a kind of spiritual product based on the material life andproduced as well as developed by a nation in the long-time physical life. Asa communication tool, language is the carrier of culture and reflects it in allfields. Culture and language depend on each other and enjoy the mutual care.A nation’s cultural heritage is relying on language which can promote thedevelopment of culture; while this effect can be refined to the textual aspect.As the basic informative unit in the language, vocabulary has always beenthe most active and sensitive element. It can help a nation to elaborate theculture difference directly, quickly and comprehensively when they use theirlanguage. Therefore, vocabulary teaching which served as the basis oflanguage teaching is particularly important. However, the author found thatthe current English vocabulary teaching is focusing on the pronunciation,spelling, interpretation, morphology, property of words, while the culturalconnotation, significance and historical allusions behind the words are lackof adequate understanding and attention, the cultivation of cross-culturalawareness has not been penetrated and combined with vocabulary teaching,so the understanding of student has some degree of deviation, which causedthe misunderstanding of semantic and pragmatic, the reinforcement ofstudents’ intercultural communicative competence can be hindered, whichcan caused inconvenience to their interactions.In view of these problems, the author puts forward that the Englishvocabulary teaching in high school based on the cultivation of cross-cultureis imperative. This thesis can be divided into five chapters. The first chapteris an introduction. The second chapter is the literature review; the authorread a large number of literatures both in domestic and foreign countries,summarized the research results of vocabulary teaching at home and abroad,elaborated some theories related to the cross-culture and vocabulary. Basedon the above theories, Chapter three proposes that the English vocabularyteaching in high school should penetrate and combined with cross-culture awareness, and a detailed embodiment of vocabulary teaching from theperspective of the culture differences in Western and China is necessary.Chapter four is mainly taking the Taiyuan No.20high school as the example,a teaching experiment is conducted, including the experimental purpose,subjects, method and process (experimental hypothesis, time and procedure).During the experimental process, the author has always been explore theways of leading the culture into the vocabulary teaching, while summarizedand analyzed the experiment results. The experimental subjects are part ofEnglish teachers and students in Taiyuan No.20senior high school, theresearch method is experiment and questionnaire survey, the senior studentschosen are from class1and2, the whole teaching experiment lasted for4months from September to December in2013. After the experiment, theauthor tested these two experimental classes and analyzed their results, afterthe analysis there comes the conclusion that the English vocabulary teachingin high school based on the cultivation of cross-culture is imperative. Thefifth chapter served as the conclusion elaborates the experimental problemsand shortcomings; at last the author has given some suggestions to therelated research in this field.