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A Survey and Analysis on Cultivation of Intercultural Communicative Awareness in Senior High School English Teaching

Author: SongYan
Tutor: ZuoZuo
School: Shandong Normal University
Course: Subject Teaching
Keywords: Senior High School English Teaching Intercultural Communicative Awareness Survey Strategies
CLC: G633.41
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2011
Downloads: 640
Quote: 1
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Abstract

With the globalization of the world economy, intercultural communication has gradually become the feature of this new era. Because the enhancement of the international position of China has increased her contacts with other countries, more and more people who can fully appreciate the cultures of foreign countries are in great need. In this way, culture becomes an important part in English teaching to guarantee good communication between China and other countries.New Curriculum Standards for senior high school require that intercultural communicative awareness of the students should be cultivated. It also puts forward the levels that the senior high school students should reach. Then what level of intercultural communication have the senior high school students achieved since the New Curriculum Standards have set? What are main factors that influence the students’mastery of English knowledge about culture? These questions are to be discussed in the thesis.The thesis analyzes the test results of 180 senior high school students to know about their intercultural communicative levels. The findings are that the students have inadequate knowledge about English culture. Their intercultural communicative competence is low and they have not formed the sensitivity to the differences between Chinese and western cultures. The reasons are as follows: First, the students lack the background knowledge to understand the culture; Second, the influence of negative transfer from the mother tongue in the communication; Third, ethnocentrism (taking the national culture as superior to other’s) works as a hindrance to the acceptance of foreign culture. At the same time, the senior high school English teaching is still directed to the college entrance examination. What the students want to do is to pass the college entrance examination and the examination refers to limited culture knowledge, which makes the teachers attach great importance to the language itself and ignore cultural information.As a supplementation to the results of test papers, 15 teachers and 28 students are interviewed to learn about their attitudes about intercultural communication. The thesis has proved that cultural teaching is an indispensable part of English teaching. The teachers should enhance their own comprehensive quality, strengthen intercultural teaching researches, and conduct a cultural difference teaching based on the principles of gradualness, practicality and comparison. The students should take a correct attitude towards foreign cultures and decrease the influence of negative transfer from the mother tongue on English learning by using the strategy of the cultural empathy, which can raise the students’intercultural communicative competence.In addition to the introduction and conclusion, the main body of the thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter One is literature review, mainly introducing the researches about English cultural teaching at home and abroad. Chapter Two mainly demonstrates the theories about the relationship of language and culture, the relationship of communication and culture, the conception of intercultural communicative competence and intercultural communicative awareness. These theories serve as a theoretical support for the following analysis. Chapter Three introduces the purpose, the objective and methodology of the research. Chapter Four analyzes the test results and provides a model teaching plan of a lesson to show how culture should be involved in English teaching. Chapter Five presents some suggestions and strategies about cultivating intercultural communicative awareness of the senior high school students from the aspect of teachers and students as solutions to the problems which are discovered from the analysis of the test results.The significance of the research is to investigate the intercultural communication levels of the senior high school students, to reveal the main factors that affect the students to master the intercultural knowledge and to find out the defects of the senior high school English teaching in the class. To solve the problems that the thesis raises, the suggestions and strategies about how to cultivate intercultural communication awareness of the senior high school students are presented.

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CLC: > Culture, science,education, sports > Education > Secondary education > Subjects teaching methods, teaching aids > Foreign language > English
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