An Action Research On The Influence Of Reading Masterpieces On Junior High School Students’ Cross-cultural Knowledge

The High School English Teaching Curriculum Standard has stated the requirements of cross-cultural awareness clearly in 2011. The general culture objective is to cultivate cultural awareness which is helpful for understanding the language correctly and using it appropriately.Can Masterpiece reading help raise the cross-cultural awareness of junior high school students? What are the effective ways to carry out masterpiece reading in order to help improve the cross-cultural knowledge of junior high school students? Based on the Schema Theory and the Input Hypothesis theory,this action research aims to figure out whether masterpiece reading help raise the cross-cultural awareness of junior high school students and what are the effective ways to carry out masterpiece reading in order to help improve the cross-cultural knowledge of junior high school students. The participants are 73 Grade two junior high school students, taking part in two cycles of the research, each of which lasted for 8 weeks.Six masterpieces, three for each cycle, were chosen for the participants to read. Through instruments like questionnaires, interviews and students’ reflective reports, this study found that masterpiece reading can help raise the junior high school students’ cross-cultural awareness, with cultural knowledge built up previously as the content schema for the following reading. What’s more the study also suggest that masterpiece reading is more effective if it is carried out in some ways, including giving students chance to select the reading material,teacher’ help and interference with the help of abundant activities like competitions, movies, performances, etc.