A Survey Of Cultural Awareness Cultivation In English Teaching In Junior Middle School

Language is a carrier of culture,and culture is the base of language.Speakers,as a foreign language speaker of English,is supposed to be familiar with cultural norms about English-speaking countries in English communication.Therefore,cultivation of learners' cultural awareness is stressed in "The opinion on deepening the curriculum reform to carry out the comprehensive fundamental task" issued by Ministry of Education in 2014.The New English Curriculum Standards(2011)for junior School states students' integrated competence should include linguistic knowledge,linguistic skills,emotion and attitudes,learning strategy,and cultural awareness.Therefore,it is essential to cultivate students' cultural awareness in English cultural teaching.However,in reality,the English cultural teaching is not satisfactory.Many teachers don't conduct English cultural teaching well and students' cultural awareness remains unimproved.Because of those facts,it is necessary and urgent to cultivate students' cultural awareness in English cultural teaching.In recent years,many domestic and foreign researches are mainly focus on schema theory and English teaching,such as schema theory and listening;schema theory and reading;schema theory and writing.Some of them are cultural schema theory and English teaching,such as cultural schema theory and reading;cultural schema theory and writing;cultural schema theory and cross-cultural communication teaching.Therefore,few researchers combine cultural schema theory with the cultivation of students' cultural awareness.In this study,the author will explore the cultural awareness of students in English teaching based on the cultural schema theory.Three questions will be studied in this research.First,What is the status quo of intercultural knowledge and consciousness in junior middle school?Second,What are the reasons for the lack of cultural awareness cultivation in junior middle school?Third,What are the measures based on cultural schema theory to enhance students' understanding of Chinese and western cultures and so as to improve their intercultural consciousness and intercultural communication competence?This study took 300 eighth-grade students and 30 English teachers from Haifeng Middle School as example.Research methods are questionnaires,observations and interviews.The research results showed that in middle school English teaching,teachers can cultivate the cultural awareness of students according to the classification of cultural schema theory,that is,cultural schema overlaps,cultural schema conflicts and cultural schema deficiency.In other words,teachers can help students deepen their understanding of Chinese and western cultures based on cultural schema theory,expand their horizons,and improve their sensitivity and discriminatinate ability to Chinese and western cultural similarities and differences,thereby improving intercultural communication skills.Finally,based on the survey data and interviews,as well as the results of observations,the author summarizes the teaching implications for teachers and proposes English teaching methods for cultivating students' cultural awareness.And the author summarizes the limitations of this study and recommendations for future research.