Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 The Background of the Research
In today’s era, political multi polarization, economic globalization and cultural pluralism have become irreversible trends. No matter what we do, we need to examine the development trend of the era in which we live. The exchanges between countries in the world in politics, economy and culture have reached an unprecedented breadth and depth. Today’s era is called the era of globalization. Globalization always reminds us of cultural diversity, cross-cultural communication and the coexistence of diversity. Education and culture are closely related. The characteristics of this era require that the teaching of English for the purpose of ideological and cultural exchanges should also undergo a historic transformation. The disadvantage of traditional English teaching in China is that grammar, vocabulary, rhetoric and other linguistic knowledge are the key to teaching, while ignoring the most basic function of language, that is communication. The communication between people in different mother tongue backgrounds is not only the exchange of language, but also the thought carried by language, that is, the exchange of culture, and the communication of culture is often an obstacle to communication.
It is not difficult for us to find that some English teachers have insufficient understanding of the importance of cultural awareness and their cultural awareness is relatively weak. Due to many factors such as traditional concepts and their own cultural expertise, some teachers did not place cultural awareness training and language knowledge learning and language skills training on the same level. They failed to consciously and actively cultivate their own cultural awareness. At the same time, due to other factors such as the environment and society, many teachers lack life experiences in the target language countries and lack the opportunity to acquire relevant knowledge and abilities in real situations. Therefore, cultivating the cultural awareness of teachers is also an urgent need.
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1.2 The Research Purposes of the Thesis
For a long time, under the background of exam-oriented education and college entrance examination, teaching focuses has been attached importance to vocabulary, grammar rules, and the language translation. There is very little detailed explanation about information of the cultural context involved in teaching. The training of teachers’ cultural awareness has been ignored. Many teachers focus on teaching tasks and college entrance examination results, but neglect the cultivation and improvement of their own cultural awareness.
Through the investigation and research on the status quo of teachers’ English culture awareness, this study aims to find out the level of English teachers’ cultural awareness and cause teachers to pay more attention to the cultivation of cultural awareness. This thesis reveals the Status Quo of cultural awareness of English teachers in Senior High School through a test of cultural questionnaire. The questionnaire was used to investigate the correlation between teachers' teaching age and teachers’ cultural knowledge, cultural comprehension, intercultural communication awareness and intercultural communication competence. Finally, combined with the interview analysis and the conclusions of the above survey, the author sums up the different needs of teachers for their own cultural awareness training, hoping to provide some suggestions for the education authorities, schools and teachers to effectively implement the training of English culture awareness. Specifically, this study attempts to find answers to the following questions
(1) What is the level of high school English teachers’ cultural awareness compared with the core literacy requirements of English subjects?
(2) What is the correlation between teachers’ teaching age and cultural knowledge, cultural comprehension, intercultural communication awareness and intercultural communication competence?
(3) What are the different needs of high school English teachers for the cultivation of cultural awareness?
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Definition of Culture and Cultural Awareness
2.1.1 The Definition of Culture
The understanding of the term culture varies from nation to nation and from person to person all over the world. At present, there are more than 250 definitions of culture.
In the Chinese dictionaries, culture can be divided into broad sense and narrow sense. The broad sense of culture refers to the sum of material wealth and spiritual wealth created in the process of the human race social and historical practice, while the narrow sense of culture refers to social ideology and the corresponding institutions and organizations, sometimes also refers to spiritual wealth in education, science, literature and art.
Deng Yanchang (2005) and Liu Runqing (1989) believe that culture is the life style of whole society and entire nation. It includes two parts, one part is material such as city, school, etc., and the other part is non material, including human thoughts, regime, the survival mode and communicative languages. Chen Shen (2010) and Huang Hebing (2001) regard culture as a structural system that contains the surface level and deep level. The former one refers to direct-viewing cultural phenomenon. It belongs to the external level of behavior and material. The deep level attaches to the inner level of awareness, which behinds the cultural phenomena and contains the global ideas, the outlook on life, the values, and the ways of thinking.
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2.2 Relationship Between Culture and Language
According to Finocchiato (1964:8), language refers to an arbitrary system, vocal symbols that allow all people in a given culture or others who have leaned the system of the target culture, to communicate or interact.
Webster’s New World Dictionary provides several most frequently used sense of the word ’’language’’, to put it into other way, including human speech, the ability to communicate by this means and a system of vocal sounds and combinations of such sounds to which meaning is attributed, used for the expression or communication of thoughts and feeling, the written representation of such a system, any means of the expressing or communicating, as in a computer (1997:759).
As with the definition of culture, it is not easy to define language and there is no simple answer to this question. Language is the product of the development of the society and plays an essential part in society. The main purpose of language is to transmit and share thoughts and information in the form of written language and spoken language. Language is not isolated but it is closely related with culture. Klamseh (2001) points out that language is a system of signs which is seen as a cultural value.
For one thing, language is an essential and important part of culture. Some social scientists regard language as the keystone of culture. Goodenough (1957:8) believes that a society’s language is a facet of its culture. The relation of language to culture is that of a part to the whole. For another, language is the carrier of culture and it is shaped and influenced by culture. Language develops with culture development, and culture would be impossible without language.
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Chapter 3 Research Design ............................ 20
3.1 Research Questions and Subjects ............................. 20
3.1.1 Research Questions ............................ 20
3.1.2 Research Subjects .............................. 21
Chapter 4 Data Analysis and Discussion ............................................... 25
4.1 Date Analysis of Teachers’ Cultural Test Results ............................... 26
4.1.1 Score Distribution of Cultural Test Questionnaire ....................................... 26
4.1.2 Distribution of Four-Dimensional Scores of Cultural Awareness ................ 27
Chapter 5 Conclusion .................................. 56
5.1 Summary .................................... 56
5.2 Major Findings .......................................... 57
Chapter 4 Data Analysis and Discussion
4.1 Date Analysis of Teachers’ Cultural Test Questionnaire Results
In order to investigate the cultural awareness of senior high school English teachers, 200 teachers were given cultural test papers. In this section, the teacher’ test results are discussed and analyzed by being divided into two parts. One part is used for discussing the score distribution of Cultural Test Questionnaire, one part is used for discussing the distribution of four-dimensional scores of Cultural Awareness.
4.1.1 Score Distribution of Cultural Test Questionnaire
The cultural test mainly contains six parts with 40 items in all. There are altogether 200 test papers sent out and 200 papers received. In this test, Questions 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 14,17 are about history, geography, and folklore. Questions 9 and 20 are about politics and religion. And questions 3, 4, 6, 7, 12, 15 are about language knowledge. In the second part, questions 1 to 10 are about rules of social communication of western culture. Questions 11 to 20 are about non-verbal communication.
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Chapter 5 Conclusion
5.1 Summary
With the new curriculum reforming, teachers’ Cultural Awareness is becoming more and more important to improve teachers' teaching ability. After a comparative analysis of the data, the following major findings were drawn:
From the the scores of 200 teachers’ cultural test papers, the author shows that most Senior High School English teachers' Cultural Awareness is relatively low. From the cultural test and questionnaire, teachers' cultural knowledge is not in place, especially their cross-cultural communicative competence is inadequate. The author makes a conclusion that Senior High School English teachers need to improve their Cultural Awareness.
Through the analysis of the questionnaire results of 200 teachers and the summary analysis of the relationship model, the relationship variance analysis and the regression coefficient analysis of the questionnaire results, the following conclusions were drawn. Firstly, there is a positive correlation between teachers’ teaching age and Cultural Knowledge. The more the teaching year, the higher the level of teachers’ Cultural Awareness is. Secondly, teacher’s teaching year is positively correlated with Cultural Comprehension, with the increase of teaching year, the level of teachers’ Cultural Comprehension will rise accordingly. Moreover, there is a positive correlation between teaching year and Cultural Understanding, with the increase of teaching year, the level of teachers' cultural understanding will rise accordingly. Furthermore, there is a positive correlation between teaching year and Intercultural Communication Competence. The more the teaching year, the higher level of teachers' Intercultural Communication Competence is.
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