An Investigation On Cultural Awareness Cultivation In Rural Junior Middle Schools’ English Listening And Speaking Teaching

According to the English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2022edition),English curriculum should cultivate students’ core competence,including language ability,cultural awareness,thinking quality and learning ability.Language ability is the foundation of core literacy,and the cultivation of cultural awareness reflects individuals’ value orientation.The improvement of language ability can help students improve their cultural awareness and develop their intercultural communication ability.Listening and speaking ability is an important part of language ability.Cultivating students’ cultural awareness should be the focus of English listening and speaking teaching in the rural junior middle school English classroom.Therefore,this study investigates the cultural awareness cultivation during English listening and speaking instruction in rural junior middle school and provides theoretical reference and practical guidance to address the above issue.In this study,three hundred and fifty(350)rural junior middle school students and 30 rural junior middle school English teachers were recruited.Questionnaires and interviews were employed to investigate the present situation of cultural awareness cultivation in rural junior middle schools,English listening and speaking teaching to figure out the influencing factors and strategies.The findings suggest that:(a)there are individual differences in cultural knowledge,cultural skills,cultural attitudes and cultural behaviors among students,(b)the level of students’ cross-cultural awareness in listening and speaking needs to be improved,(c)teachers lack the knowledge of cultural awareness cultivation,and(d)the implementation of cultural awareness has room for improvement.The main factors that affect these situations are cultural differences,the lack of cultural awareness of rural junior middle school English teachers and the unsatisfactory environment for implementing cultural teaching.In order to improve the current situation of cultural awareness cultivation in rural junior middle school’s English listening and speaking teaching,this study suggests the corresponding countermeasures: teachers should:(a)understand cultural differences and improve the attitude of cultural awareness teaching during instruction,(b)actively participate in the training of cultural awareness teaching and improve their cultural teaching level,(c)optimize the cultural environment of rural junior middle school’s English listening and speaking teaching,and(d)carry out cultural teaching in an orderly manner and improve classroom efficiency.