An Investigation Of Cultural Awareness In Advance With English

In 2003,the Ministry of Education issued Curriculum Standards for Senior English,which first introduced cultural awareness as one of the five objectives in senior English teaching.Cultural awareness,as an independent part,was included in Curriculum Standards for Senior English(2003).The latest Curriculum Standards for Senior English(2017)clearly lists the cultural awareness as one of the core competence of English subject.It also emphasizes that English curriculum should include six elements:theme context,discourse type,linguistic knowledge,culture knowledge,language skill and learning strategy.Therefore,culture teaching is playing an important role in English teaching.However,in daily English teaching,affected by traditional exam-oriented education system,teachers always pay more attention to language points and ignore culture teaching.Teaching activities are also often centered on grammar and vocabulary.Thus,it's important to find the cultural contents in textbooks and cultivate students'cultural awareness in English teaching.In 2005,students in Jiangsu began to use Advance with English as their English textbook,which was written under the guidance of Curriculum Standards for Senior English(2003)and contained rich cultural contents.As an English teacher in Jiangsu Province,after analyzing Advance with English for seven years,the author selects this textbook as research objective.By questionnaire survey and interviewing teachers and students,the author analyzes and investigates the cultural awareness in Advance with English,and answers the following three questions:(1)Is the culture in Advance with English diversified?Are the target language cultural contents?Chinese cultural contents and world cultural contents in Advance with English rich?(2)Do the cultural contents in the textbook have a close connection with real life?Arc the cultural contents helpful to students' English learning?Can they help students master language points,improve communication skills and test skills?(3)Do the cultural contents in Advance with English take students' individual differences into account?To find out the answer,the author investigated 200 senior three students and ten English teachers from Taixing High School of Jiangsu Province.By questionnaire survey and interviewing them,the author made the following discoveries:(1)Advance with English contains diversified cultural contents,which includes target language cultural contents?Chinese cultural contents?world cultural contents and so on.This can help students have a better understanding of world culture and raise cultural awareness,thus improving their cross-culture communication.(2)The cultural contents in the textbook,to some extent,are connected with real life.In general,the cultural contents in the textbook are helpful to students' English learning.By learning the cultural contents in the textbooks,students can master the language points better under the cultural context.It also can help improve students' communication skills.However,the cultural contents are of little help to students' test skills.(3)The cultural contents in the textbook don't pay enough attention to students'individual differences,especially the differences in students' personal characters and interests.Therefore,in actual teaching process,some students can't be fully involved in it.Based on the research results above,some practical suggestions are given to urge textbook editors to further improve the textbook,thus helping teachers make better use of textbook and carry out culture teaching.Textbook editors should introduce up-to-date cultural contents and allocate different region cultures more reasonably.Cultural contents should be closely connected with real life and the edition of textbooks should be based on cultivating students' awareness of cross-culture communication.Teachers should establish the awareness of culture teaching and attach great importance to Chinese culture teaching.Besides,some limitations of the study are given.