A Study On Teachers’ Culture Teaching Of Demonstration Lessons In Junior High Schools

Culture teaching,as an important aspect of the English curriculum,can help students develop cultural awareness and strengthen their national feelings.This study conducts a qualitative research on 19 English teachers’ culture teaching of 13 th National Junior High School English Teaching Demonstration Lessons based on Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory and English curriculum standard.Specifically,the research aims to answer the following three questions:(1)In demonstration lessons,what contents are involved in teachers’ culture teaching?(2)In demonstration lessons,what teaching methods are used in teachers’ culture teaching?(3)In demonstration lessons,what teaching organization forms are adopted in teachers’ culture teaching?In order to answer the above three questions,this study adapts discourse analysis.In terms of the cultural teaching content,the research results show that:(1)the distribution of cultural teaching contents in the demonstration lessons is unbalanced.The frequency of cultural knowledge is more than the total frequency of cultural skill,cultural emotion,and cultural behavior;(2)English teachers emphasize Chinese cultures and pay more attention to American and British cultures in foreign cultures;(3)there is a difference in the number of teachers in teaching different cultural teaching contents.In terms of teaching methods and teaching organization forms,this study finds that:(1)the teachers use situational teaching less frequently;(2)each teacher can use two cultural teaching methods at least in the classroom;(3)the distribution of teaching organization forms is not balanced.This reasons behind the above finding are:(1)different units include different cultural contents;(2)the teachers do not expand the cultural content beyond the textbooks;(3)the teachers do not know “what to teach” in culture teaching;(4)the teachers do not know “how to teach” in culture teaching.Based on these findings,this research proposes suggestions for teachers,schools,and textbook compilers.As for teachers,they are advised to make the goal of cultural awareness clear;improve cultural literacy;use textbooks flexibly,and reflect the teaching process.As for schools,they should provide the opportunity for teachers to improve themselves and organize extracurricular activities for students.In terms of the compilation of textbooks,they should enrich the different cultures and update the cultural content.