Schema Theory And Intercultural Awareness

In order to improve learners’ intercultural communicative competence,the status of culture has been acknowledged in the process of language teaching and learning.According to Cultural Schema Theory,people’s knowledge is stored in long-term memory in the form of schema.When acquiring and interpreting external information,corresponding pre-acquired schema will be activated,if necessary,will be adjusted and completed.In the process of intercultural communication,only two communicative parties share common schemata and keep updating their schemata,can they fully grasp each other’s intended meanings.Textbooks,as a main channel for students to gain cultural knowledge,the selection and display of cultural content will be undoubtedly related to learners’ constructing cultural schema as well as to cultivating intercultural awareness.Therefore,the selection of cultural contents and the way in which they are distributed and organized are of great importance to both learners and teachers.From this point of view,textbook evaluation is worth much attention for teachers and textbook compilers to meet textbook users’ needs.Exploring what and how cultural knowledge presented in textbooks will be beneficial to cultivate students’ intercultural awareness,the author firstly gives a detailed interpretation on different levels of cultural awareness,then applies Cultural Schema Theory to evaluate the cultural content distributed in textbooks,which will mainly focus on the dynamic and systematic nature of culture.To be specific,this study selects the series of Oxford English published by Yilin Press for analysis and looks into the selection and organization of various cultural elements present in textbooks.Primary English courses(2012)are designed for students of Grade 3 to Grade 6,consisting of eight textbooks;secondary English courses(2012)are composed of six textbooks with 7A to 9B;the compulsory part of high school English courses(2003)corresponds with Module 1 to Module 5.Based upon Bates and Plog’s definition and Zhang Gecheng’s classification of culture,this study conduct a detailed analysis on the cultural contents in the series of Oxford English textbooks.At the end of the thesis,discussions on the advantages and disadvantages of Oxford English in terms of cultural contents are supposed to provide some practical implications for teachers to better conduct culture teaching and to give textbook compilers some enlightenment on selecting and designing teaching materials in the future.With this purpose,this study seeks to answer the following three questions:1)What and How cultural knowledge is presented and organized in Oxford English?2)Do the cultural content in textbooks conform to the characteristics of learners’cultural schemata?3)What are the appropriate and effective methods to present and organize culturalcontent in order to cultivate students’ intercultural awareness?The results of the study reveals that the cultural knowledge in Oxford English is comprehensive enough to cover all the five categories of culture,but they are in striking different proportions,that is,Artifacts and Behaviors take up an overwhelming space throughout the three periods of English learning,however,very few cultural content concerning with the category of Beliefs,which means students’ understanding of culture merely remain at the surface level without reaching the deep value of culture.With regard to the nationality of various cultural contents,Target culture and Other culture represent the majority,leaving limited room for World culture and Cultural contrast.These existing problems are disturbing because of following aspects.For one thing,artifacts are more easily recognized cultural elements and play an essential role in motivating language beginners’ learning interest.Nevertheless,as cognition develops,it is of great necessity to impart more deeper cultural implications to students so that they can process more complicated information and respond properly in the context of intercultural communication.For another,since the current status of English in global stage,overly emphasizing target culture and neglecting world culture and culture comparison will confine learners to English-speaking countries’ culture,which is not suitable to the present multicultural world.Hence,it is advisable to encompass target culture as well as native culture,world culture,culture contrast in English textbooks for the sake of cultivating students’ intercultural awareness and cultural tolerance.