江曉進(jìn)

As for English learners， having English cultural awareness is necessary in English learning since culture is the basis of grasping a language. Therefore， the teachers should realize some problems in traditional teaching and have the cultural awareness through teaching.

1. Introduction

Cultural awareness is the understanding of the social regulations， the concept of value， beliefs of the target language.

2. A Survey on Cultivating Cultural Awareness in a High School

2.1 Students subjective attitude

Interest： Every 57 just so so 41 none 2 resist 0

Importance： E very 53 just so so， 46 not important 1， doesnt matter 0

Easiness： Every 4 just so so 66 little difficult 28 very difficult 2

External learning factors

Teacher： none 0 not adequate 0 moderate 100 too much 0

Class activity： none 1 not adequate 2 moderate 97 too much 0

Materials： none 1 not adequate 17 moderate 83 too much 0

Test： too little 21 moderate 75 much 3 too much 1

Main way： traditional media 19 new media 49 teachers 25 go abroad 7

Experience： many 16 sometimes 74 once 4 none 6

Concrete settings

Cultural conflict： accept 43 adapt 42 resist 4 not met yet 11

So we can note that most of the students are interested in English culture but some of them still think that English culture is not that easy to learn. Most of the students think that their teachers， the class activities and materials have given them a proper amount of teaching about the culture part. But there are still 25% students regard the teachers teaching in class as their main way to get cultural knowledge.

2.2 Questions accuracy：

11 47.5% 12 40% 13 78% 14 91.5% 15 98% 16 94.5% 17 78% 18 40% 19 96.5% 20 75%

So we can conclude that the students know some common cultural knowledge， but they dont have a very good understanding about some deep cultural background knowledge， such as belief and nicknames. The third part reflects students communicative ability， and the results show that they need more knowledge to reach a high communicative ability especially about some common phrases.

3. The Problems and Solutions

From the research， we can find out these problems in current situation of cultivating cultural awareness. We find that our teaching emphasizes on the language knowledge rather than cultural awareness cultivation. And we emphasize on memorizing cultural knowledge rather than understanding. Thirdly， we emphasize on the knowledge rather than practical use. Whats more， we emphasize on learning in class rather than exploring by themselves.

According to the current situation and the existing problems based on the analysis of the survey， the author tries to put forward some suggestive solutions for the teachers. First， the teachers should design more activities in class related to cultivating cultural awareness. Then the teachers should perform the culture teaching in deeper and wider Range.

It is desirable for the findings reported in this paper and I hope that they can also be used to give some help to English learners in China.

References

[1] Brown， H. D. Principle of Language Learning and Teaching. Beijing： Beijing Teaching and Research Press， 2002.

[2] Chomsky Noam. Language and Mind. Beijing： The Commercial Press， 1971.

[3] Fries. Charles C. Teaching and Learning English as a Foreign Language. Michigan： University of Michigan Press， 1947.

[4] 畢繼萬. 跨文化非語言交際[M]. 北京：外語教學(xué)與研究出版社， 1999.

[5] 陳申. 語言文化教學(xué)策略研究[M]. 北京：北京語言文化大學(xué)出版社， 2001.

（作者單位：福建省廈門實(shí)驗(yàn)中學(xué)）endprint