Discssin n the Mie Sch Engish Teaching in CrssCtra Awareness文档.doc

Discussion on the Middle School English Teaching in Cross-Cultural Awareness [Abstract] With the development of globalization, China’s entry into WTO and the coming Olympic Games in 2008, international contacts have become more and more frequent. The society is in great need of personnel who have a good command of knowledge and are able to communicate with people from different countries. How to make English teaching meet the needs of social and economic development has become an urgent task to English teachers. Therefore, developing students’ intercultural communicative competence has been paid more attention to in English teaching. Nowadays, it has been prescribed into the New English Curriculum Standards. Obviously, Middle School English teachers are facing the challenge of exploring appropriate means of culture instruction in their teaching contents. However, because of the testing system, teachers ‘academic proficiency, students’ attitude and so on , culture introduction has been ignored in middle school and students’ intercultural competence is poorly developed. Since language and culture are inseparable, one cannot master the spirit of a foreign language without knowing its culture. Culture teaching should be given priority to in English teaching. In the hope of improving culture teaching in middle school English classes, practical principles and effective techniques are suggested. This article proceeds with the understanding of culture, analyses the differences between Chinese and Western cultures, discusses how to help students to learn culture differences at the beginning of English learning and how to relate Chinese and Western culture differences with language differences so as to develop students’ cultural sensitivity and their abilities to use various ways of communication flexibly, so as to enable students to carry out intercultural communication with English. [Key Words] middle school English teaching; intercultural awareness; intercultural