Cultivating Junior High School Students’ Cross-Cultural Awareness in EFL Context: Evidence From an Empirical Studies

Keqiang XU

Abstract


This paper is an attempt to paint a picture of cultivating junior high school students’ cross-cultural awareness in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. It starts with an investigation of the present situation of culture teaching, especially those problems in culture teaching. Culture teaching is long neglected or taken as a subordinate part of the language teaching in junior teaching practice. Worse still, the methods of culture teaching are sole and simple. The aim of culture teaching is misunderstood as a glimpse of cultural knowledge only, but not as an essential step to develop students’ correct attitudes and beliefs about the target culture. Therefore, the cultivation of cultural awareness is nearly ignored in junior English teaching. This reality of English teaching results just from the influence of the old English teaching method, the pressure of the exam-oriented education, the teacher’s lack of cultural knowledge and cross-cultural awareness, and obscure understanding of culture teaching.


Keywords


Cross-cultural awareness; Culture; EFL

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/%25x

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