On Cultural Awareness in Middle School English Teaching

Abstract

This paper focuses on enhancing students’ ability of cross-cultural communication and their understanding of cultural differences especially in attitudes and values. Teachers can obtain the goal by providing cultural information, experiencing culture via role-plays, explaining culture with authentic materials and encouraging students to communicate with native English speakers. This article suggests that in middle school English teaching, teachers can provide a relaxed atmosphere for students to have an idea of the differences between their own culture and others’ and explain the differences to strengthen students’ cross-cultural awareness. It is expected that students can learn a second language not only from the aspect of grammar but of both language and culture. Keywords—cultural awareness; difference; cross-cultural communication; English teaching I. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CULTURE AND LANGUAGE A language not only expresses facts, ideas, or events which represent similar world knowledge by its people, but also reflects the people’s attitudes, beliefs, world outlooks, etc. However, culture is a wider system that includes language as a subsystem. They have very close relationship. “On the one hand, language as an integral part of human being permeates his thinking and way of viewing the world; language both expresses and embodies cultural reality. On the other hand, language, as a product of culture, helps perpetuate the culture, and the changes in language uses reflect the cultural changes in return. ”[1] Language and culture affect each other and cannot be separated. Culture is the root for a particular language to exist. If a second language learner has little knowledge about the cultural background, it will result in confusion, frustration and misunderstanding in cross-cultural communication. Culture is like the water and language is the fish. Language cannot exist without culture. For a second language learner, he will master the language only after knowing about the culture. Language and culture affect each other and cannot be separated. Culture is the root for a particular language to exist. If a second language learner has little knowledge about the cultural background, it will result in confusion, frustration and misunderstanding in cross-cultural communication. Culture is like the water and language is the fish. Language cannot exist without culture. For a second language learner, he will master the language only after knowing about the culture. II. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FOSTERING STUDENTS’ CULTURAL AWARENESS IN ENGLISH TEACHING. A Cultural awareness should be considered as a very important component in teaching a second language. One does not learn a language but acquires a language, and what one learns is not a language but the use of a language. In an English class, teachers should think about students’ cultural awareness, attitude, creativity, and understanding, communicative competence and so on. Culture is an important property of language; language is a part of culture. One culture differs from all other cultures. When it comes to English teaching, it is very important to master cultures in English-speaking countries. Teachers should make the differences between the two cultures clear; help students acquire English in a spontaneous way. Then students can communicate in the target language properly to achieve not only the linguistic competence, but also the communicative competence as well. That is of great significance in learning a foreign language. Therefore, when learning a foreign language, students should not only learn the pronunciation, grammar, words and so on, but also learn to see the world as native speakers do. That is to say, students need to learn enough about the culture of the target language so that they can communicate with it properly to achieve not only the linguistic competence, but also the communicative competence as well. Otherwise the ignorance of cultural differences may create barriers in learning the second language, furthermore, cause the unnecessary misunderstanding and confusion. III. APPROACHES TO DEVELOPING STUDENTS’ CULTURAL