An Investigation Of Students’ Cultural Awareness Cultivation Of Senior High School From The Perspective Of English Subject Core Competencies

Cultural awareness embodies the education value of English subject and points out the future development direction of students.It is an essential quality and ability of students in the 21 st century.The National English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School Students(2017 Edition,2020 revision)puts forward the specific goal of cultural awareness for high school students.Cultural awareness is the value orientation and the direction of other factors’ development of English subject core competencies.It is an important task for teachers to cultivate students’ cultural awareness in English teaching.Based on the goal of cultural awareness in the National English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School Students(2017Edition,2020 revision),this study takes 305 students and 70 English teachers from four high schools in Jincheng as the research subjects.Through questionnaires and interviews,supplemented by classroom observations,this study investigates the cultivation of cultural awareness among high school students,focusing on the following three questions: 1.What are the teachers and students’ cognition towards the cultivation of cultural awareness in high school English teaching? 2.How do teachers cultivate students’ cultural awareness in senior high school English teaching?3.What are the difficulties to cultivate students’ cultural awareness in senior high school English teaching?The major findings are as follows: 1.Most teachers and students are interested in cultural knowledge and think it necessary to learn cultural knowledge.Students as a whole have a general understanding of cultural knowledge.There are a few students who are not interested in cultural knowledge,but all the students are willing to spread excellent Chinese culture.Most teachers lack a deep understanding of the connotation and specific goals of cultural awareness and do not truly implement the cultivation of students’ cultural awareness in English class.2.At present,most teachers just focus on the explicit cultural knowledge in textbooks but the exploration of the implicit cultural knowledge is insufficient.Moreover,teachers mainly use expository method in class.The methods and activities of cultivating students’ cultural awareness are relatively single.3.The difficulties and obstacles in cultivating students’ cultural awareness are as follows: Firstly,under the pressure of college entrance examination,teachers still focus on language knowledge in English teaching.Students have heavy learning burden and their learning time and English level are relatively limited.Secondly,schools rarely offer chances for teachers to cultivate their cultural awareness and improve their cultural teaching skills.Teachers’ cultural teaching concepts lag behind and their cultural teaching skills need to be improved.Thirdly,schools lack teaching resources to cultivate students’ cultural awareness and students lack the environment to experience culture.In response to this situation,this study puts forward suggestions for schools and teachers.First of all,teachers should gain a greater insight into the connotation of the English subject core competencies and the basic requirements of cultural awareness and consciously cultivate students’ interest and stimulate students’ motivation to learn cultural knowledge.Secondly,teachers should constantly update their teaching concepts,improve their own cultural awareness and cultural teaching skills,make full use of teaching materials and cultivate students’ cultural awareness through various teaching methods and activities.Finally,schools should provide more opportunities for teachers to improve their cultural teaching skills.Moreover,schools should devote to create a campus with strong English culture atmosphere and incorporate the cultivation of students’ cultural awareness into the evaluation system.