Application Of Cultural Schema Theory In English Cultural Teaching In Secondary Vocational School

The English Curriculum Standards for Secondary Vocational School states the importance of cultivating students’ cultural understanding.At the same time,cultural teaching and learning should be emphasized in English teaching.Teachers’ task is to lead students to be sharp for cultural differences and similarities about different languages so that they can enhance cultural confidence and promote cultural communication.Over the years,researchers have carried out abundant researches on English teaching and cultural teaching,which has proved that the culture plays an important role in language learning.Paying attention to cultural teaching in English classroom teaching can arouse students’ interest in English learning.However,in secondary vocational school,many a teacher still adopts traditional teaching methods in their teaching,in other words,they have paid much attention to vocabularies,grammars,texts and exercises instead of rich cultures hidden in the language.Maybe some teachers have realized the importance of cultural teaching,but they have little knowledge of organizing cultural teaching well and properly.After reading varieties of research papers,it has been proved that cultural schema has a beneficial effect on students’ comprehension and memory.Besides,It’s helpful for students to use what they have studied in class.Therefore,this research aims to explore whether English cultural teaching guided by cultural schema theory can be helpful to cultural teaching.Then,Based on cultural schema theory and the theory of constructivism,a teaching model including two parts based on the combination of language teaching and cultural teaching is created for cultural teaching in secondary vocational school,namely,“the 3 steps and 8 methods culture schema constructing model”.In this model,“3 steps” refers to before class,in class and after class.“8 methods” means the learning situation analysis and information collection before class;autonomous learning,contrastive analysis,direct explaining and situation and practice teaching in class;extended reading and a students’ self-reflectionafter class.Then,taking 75 students from two classes in a secondary vocational school in Taiyuan as an example,this paper explores the application of cultural schema theory in English cultural teaching in secondary vocational school by adopting four main research instruments: literature analysis,case analysis,questionnaires and tests.At the same time,the writer gives the explanation of how cultural schema theory is used in cultural teaching by using reading teaching of color words as an example.At the end of the research,some major findings and some practical teaching implications are presented.Also,some limitations and suggestions for further study are listed.Finally,it turns out that the application of cultural schema theory in English cultural teaching in secondary vocational school in English teaching is feasible and worthy of further research.The results of the research show that it helps students to develop the interest in culture learning,enrich the cultural knowledge and improve the scores.Meanwhile,more empirical research needed to be carried out,which can improve the level of secondary vocational school English teaching ultimately.