A Survey On Senior High School Students’ Intercultural Awareness In English Learning

With the development of globalization,the communication between countries is more and more frequent.In order to make students use English better for intercultural communication,English teachers pay more and more attention to cultivating students’ intercultural awareness in recent years and know the practical significance of the existing intercultural awareness of senior high students.Based on the theories of intercultural communication and the requirements of intercultural awareness in the New English Curriculum Standards,this study aims to know the current situation of high school students’ intercultural awareness and find out the problems as well as the factors influencing students’ intercultural awareness,so as to provide suggestions for English teaching.This study takes 100 students and five English teachers from Xi Ke Senior High School in Renshou County,Sichuan Province as the subjects.This study,according to the content of cultural awareness in the New English Curriculum Standards(2017),Fu Yonggang,Li Tianxing’s(2003)Survey and Reflection on English Intercultural Communication,Cushner’s(1997)Improving Intercultural Interactions: Modules for Cross-cultural Training and Kang Zhipeng’s(2009)Survey on the Current Situation of English Culture Teaching and Culture Testing in Senior High Schools,compiles questionnaire,test questions and interview outlines,and carries out the investigation and research to answer the following two questions:(1)How is the current situation of senior high students’ intercultural awareness?(2)What factors influence senior high students’ intercultural awareness ?Through the investigation and analysis,the following findings are obtained: firstly,the level of intercultural awareness of high school students is different in different aspects.Among them,students’ cultural understanding and intercultural communication awareness are better,but cultural knowledge and intercultural communication competence need to be improved.Secondly,the main factors that affect senior high students’ intercultural awareness include the influence of college entrance examination system,teachers’ cultural literacy,students’ attention to cultural awareness,learning resources,learning interest and so on.In view of the above findings,it is suggested that the education department should increase the investment in teachers’ cultural literacy training;the school should provide training opportunities for teachers and implement the cultural awareness training requirements in the New English Curriculum Standards;teachers can consciously improve intercultural awareness and change traditional teaching ideas,methods and teaching models;students can treat intercultural awareness cultivation properly,actively enrich cultural knowledge and deepen the understanding of different cultures.