A Survey Study On The Current Situation Of Senior High School Students’ English Cultural Background Knowledge

Culture and language are closely related.If we only study language without studying the social and cultural background behind the language,it is difficult to fully understand and master the language.The English curriculum standard for senior high schools（2017 Edition,2020 Revision）points out that teachers can take various measures to carry out teaching around cultural knowledge,including consciously helping students understand the cultural background knowledge of Britain,the United States and other countries,and understanding,analyzing and exploring the cultural connotation and value orientation of the text.Therefore,this study takes senior high school students as the research subjects to investigate the current situation of their cultural background knowledge.This study adopts a mixed method of quantitative and qualitative research to explore three research problems: 1.What is the current level of senior high school students’ English cultural background knowledge? 2.What is senior high school students’ performance in each dimension of English cultural background knowledge ?3.Are there differences in English cultural background knowledge among students with different English proficiency? If yes,what are the differences?Firstly,this study takes 214 sophomores of No.45 middle school in Tianjin as the research subjects.Test papers are issued to investigate the current situation of English cultural background knowledge of senior high school students.Then,six students with different English levels were interviewed to know the students’ attitude towards cultural background knowledge and the reasons for causing the current situation.Through the analysis of the test papers and interviews,the results show that:firstly,senior high school students’ English cultural background knowledge is at an intermediate level.Secondly,students perform well in geography,religion＆festivals,literature＆music and history,but poor in education,politics,communication and cross-cultural communication.Thirdly,there are significant differences in education,history and politics dimensions among students with different English levels,and high-level students perform better than medium-level and low-level students.Based on the research findings and cause analysis,this study puts forward some suggestions for teaching of cultural background knowledge: firstly,improve teachers’ and students’ understanding of the close relationship between cultural background knowledge and English learning.Secondly,teachers should strengthen the explanation of knowledge in education,politics,communication and cross-cultural communication,and explain the cultural background knowledge in a more intuitive and vivid way,so as to stimulate students’ learning interest.Thirdly,teachers should pay attention to students’ cognitive level and take various ways to improve students’ motivation to learn cultural background knowledge.