An Analysis of Teaching English Reading in Middle Schools from the Perspective of Intercultural Communication 英语专业毕业论文.docVIP

An Analysis of Teaching English Reading in Middle Schools: from the Perspective of Intercultural Communication I. Introduction With the booming global economy, English plays a more and more important role in international trade. The number of students and social groups that are interested in learning English has sharply increased in recent years. Hao (2007) stated that with the increase of cross-cultural communication and to go with the present society, the final purpose of English teaching should be defined as developing the students’ cross-cultural communicative ability. This is the capability of perpetrating communication with people from different places with different cultural backgrounds. Therefore, English teaching also is a type of activity of cross-cultural communication teaching. In the English teaching system of middle schools, reading teaching plays a significant role. Furthermore, English reading input also is the major source for a Chinese ESL student. As Nuttall (2002) contends, language improvement is a natural by-product of reading (P.30). The role of reading, therefore, exerts great influence on the English reading teaching. However, for a long time, when teaching English reading in middle schools, teachers always emphasize the language teaching and overlook its cultural background knowledge. As a result, English reading teaching can not meet the requirements of the present cross-cultural communication for cultural knowledge is an important element of cross-cultural communication. Han (2007) stated in many situations, it is often found that although the students have mastered certain English vocabulary and grammar, they still can not comprehend the authentic meaning of text or encounter reading obstacles. The reason for this case is the absence of cultural knowledge. Hence, teaching language is to teach culture (Kramsch, 1993:177). According to Wu (2003), English reading ability can be called a kind of comprehensive communication ability. If people