On Teaching Culture in Middle School English Classrooms 英语专业毕业论文.doc

On Teaching Culture in Middle School English Classrooms Abstract: The teaching of culture is an indispensable part of foreign language teaching. This thesis explores the teaching of culture in the middle school English classroom. It will be demonstrated that teaching a foreign language in middle school is not just to give a homily on syntactic structures or learning new vocabulary and expressions, but mainly incorporates, or should incorporate, some cultural elements, which are intertwined with language itself. Specifically, some consideration will be given to the relationship between culture and middle school foreign language teaching and principles of teaching culture. Furthermore, an attempt will be made to incorporate culture into the classroom by means of considering some techniques and methods currently used. The main premise of the paper is that effective communication is more than a matter of language proficiency. And apart from enhancing and enriching communicative competence, cultural competence can also lead to students’ understanding and respect toward different culture. Keywords: culture; English teaching; cross-cultural communication; culture awareness 1. Introduction 1.1 Research purpose The modern society accelerates the circulation of material and cultural products. It brings all the nations into a global village and it makes cross-cultural communication an indispensable part in all nations’ life. However, the cultural differences are the barriers in cross-cultural communication. So the world is concerned on how to remove the barriers in cross-cultural communication. Language and culture are closely related, each influencing and shaping the other. In learning language knowledge, to acquaint oneself with the knowledge of culture is the key point. One can hardly learn a language well without knowing the cultural pattern and rules of the target language. To foster the students’ abilities in cross-cultural communication, it is necessary to incorporate c