An Investigation On Cultural Awareness Cultivation In Junior High School English Teaching

The English curriculum standard for compulsory education(2011)points out that the five objectives of English teaching are language skills,language knowledge,cultural awareness,emotional attitude and learning strategies.Cultural awareness includes enriching students’ cultural knowledge,promoting students’ cultural understanding and improving students’ cross-cultural awareness and cross-cultural communication ability.Cultural awareness embodies the value orientation of the key competencies of English subject.The English curriculum standards for senior high schools(2017 Edition)clearly points out that cultural teaching should aim at promoting the formation and development of students’ cultural awareness.As a value orientation,cultural awareness is the key factor to improve students’ cultural understanding and identity,and to cultivate students’ cross-cultural ability and communication ability.The purpose of this study is to provide theoretical reference and practical ideas for basic foreign language education.Taking Yan’an Shiyan junior high school as an example,this study selects 300 students and 30 teachers as the research objects,takes the Intercultural Communication theory and Schema theory as the theoretical bases,adopts the methods of questionnaire survey,classroom observation and interview,and investigates the current situation,existing problems and causes of the cultivation of cultural awareness in junior high school English teaching.The results are as follows: the current situation of cultural awareness cultivation in junior high school English teaching is mainly reflected in the teachers’ lack of understanding of cultural awareness,the poor implementation of cultural awareness goals in junior high school English teaching,the small proportion of teaching content involving culture and the lack of cultural materials;at the same time,junior high school English teachers’ cultural teaching strategies need to be improved,and there are few cultural factors involved in teaching evaluation.Through investigation,interview and classroom observation,it is found that the factors influencing the cultivation of cultural awareness in junior middle school English teaching are as follows:students’ cultural cognition is weak,teachers do not pay enough attention to the cultivation of cultural awareness,teachers’ own cultural literacy reserve is low,and the implementation of cultural knowledge teaching by schools and teachers is not good.Based on the above research results,corresponding suggestions for the existing problems in the cultivation of cultural awareness in junior high school English Teaching are put forward: the education department should bring the goal of cultural awareness into the training system,attach importance to the guiding role of senior high school entrance examination,and develop teaching resources;teachers can innovate English cultural teaching methods,excavate the cultural information hidden in the teaching content,and strengthen teachers’ own culture literacy;students should establish correct learning motivation,find ways to increase cultural accumulation,and use resources to strengthen cultural knowledge learning.