The Influence of Intercultural Awareness on Senior Students’ English Reading Competence20

1、跨文化意识对高中生英语阅读能力的影响 the influence of intercultural awareness on senior students english reading competence abstract: with the amazingly rapid development of science and technology, it naturally follows that intercultural contact has become more and more frequent. people receive various information th

2、ey need through reading. therefore, reading has become more significant than ever before. the main purpose of english teaching is cultivating students better reading ability, moreover, intercultural knowledge is the key points to the reading comprehension. nowadays, the importance of intercultural a

3、wareness cultivating in senior english teaching has been gradually recognized by teachers. however, its difficult to put it into practice. this thesis is based on relative theory and questionnaire to demonstrate the close relationship between the students intercultural awareness and their english re

4、ading competence and also gives some suggestions to promote reading efficiency through imparting them with sufficient intercultural knowledge in english learning. key words: intercultural awareness; english reading ability; senior students跨文化意识对高中生英语阅读能力的影响摘 要：随着世界科技的日新月异，世界人们相互交往的日趋频繁，通过阅读来广泛获得各种所需

5、信息显得越来越重要。英语教学的主要目的是培养学生较强的阅读能力，而跨文化知识是影响阅读理解的关键。目前看来，跨文化意识培养的重要性在英语教育中已逐步得到认可，但跨文化意识的培养很难理论实践相结合。本文是在相关理论和问卷调查的基础上，阐述了学生跨文化意识和英语阅读能力的紧密关系，并提出一些在英语学习中通过增加学生充分的跨文化知识来提高阅读能力的建议。关键词：跨文化意识；英语阅读能力；高中生contentsintroduction11. the necessity of developing the senior students intercultural awareness in englis

6、h reading teaching.11.1 the relationship between intercultural awareness and english reading.11.2 the requirement of syllabus.22. survey of intercultural awareness in senior english reading teaching.32.1 design of the survey12.1.1 aims of the survey.32.1.2 participants of the survey.32.1.3 design of

7、 the questionnaires32.1.4 design of the reading tests.42.1.5 design of the interview.4 2.2 results and discussion4 2.2.1 analysis of the questionnaires.4 2.2.2 analysis of the reading test7 2.2.3 analysis of the interview.83. suggestions according to the survey.93.1 pre-reading, while-reading and po

8、st-reading.93.2 teachers role.9.4. conclusion.10bibliography.12introduction the world seems to be getting smaller with the convenience brought about by modern transportation and communication. in this “global village, the contact between people of different cultures becomes more and more frequent. t

9、his contact is mainly carried out in spoken and written forms. reading materials, majority of most which are written in english, are often thought to one of the main channels for most chinese to communicate. the more and the faster we read and comprehend, the more valuable information we will receiv

10、e to benefit ourselves. thus, to read and comprehend english materials efficiently deserves our due attention.for years, teachers hold that students failure in comprehending a text is mainly due to deficiency in linguistic competence. however, in many cases, students who have a good command of the e

11、nglish grammar and a large vocabulary cannot understand or misunderstand a simple sentence what they are reading, even though they understand every single word and all the grammatical structures （dai weidong and he zhaoxiong, 2002）. actually, it is intercultural knowledge that blocks readers underst

12、anding. a great number of tests show that the hurdle of english reading comprehension exists not only in vocabulary and grammar, but also in background knowledge and cultural information. therefore, how to make teaching of english meet the needs of social development has become an urgent task to eng

13、lish teachers. language teaching should include culture teaching, we need to pay more attention to develop students intercultural awareness and cultural creativity (wei shaohua,2006). for the first time it has been prescribed into the new english curriculum standard, which is being carried out all o

14、ver the country. obviously this is a challenge to most senior english teachers.in this study, the main purpose is to research senior school students intercultural awareness and to draw more attention from teachers and students to the importance of cultural background knowledge in english reading com

15、prehension. by designing test papers, collecting data and analyzing the result, the hypothesis raised can be confirmed and some correlated suggestions will be given.1. the necessity of developing the students intercultural awareness in english reading teaching1.1 the relationship between intercultur

16、al awareness and english readingas kramsch defines it, the term intercultural means the meeting of two cultures or two languages across the political boundaries of nation-states, or communication between people from different ethnic, social, gendered cultures within the boundaries of the same nation

17、al language (kramsch 2004). the term cultural awareness is used to describe as the sensitivity to the impact of culturally-induced behavior on language use and communication. it has three qualities, namely, awareness of ones own culturally-induced behavior; awareness of the culturally-induced behavi

18、or of others and the ability to explain ones own cultural standpoint (tomalin 1993). becoming more aware of the influence of cultural values leads to a better understanding of us and of others.as we know, english reading is one kind of comprehensive ability which is an intelligence activity unique t

19、o man. reading is not simply a process of knowing sounds, words and sentences. there are so many english articles including the certain background knowledge. some reading, although has not bumped into a new word in the reading process, and does not have the grammar barrier, but it is difficult for t

20、he students to know the meaning of the whole passage, especially when the students lack of the intercultural knowledge（bao zhikun, 1997）.from the above, it can be seen that if a reader has little cultural knowledge, he cannot understand an english text which conveys a lot of english speaking countri

21、es culture even though he knows every word and every grammar item. in that case he is not a successful reader. this can explain why readers have a difficult time comprehending a text on a subject they are not familiar with even if the person comprehends the meaning of the individual words in the pas

22、sage. therefore, efficient reading depends on the efficient interaction between linguistic knowledge and the knowledge of the world (silberstein 1994). all these show that as an english teacher, he or she should be fully aware of the necessity of instructing culture as an essential part in teaching

23、reading and developing students intercultural awareness (zhao lian, 2006).1.2 the requirement of syllabusit is known to all that reading is of decisive importance in english learning. the new english curriculum has taken english reading as the first priority of the four of the required skills. norma

24、lly, any english test paper in senior school contains the reading comprehension part, which is considered to be the most important one for it is assumed to possess the characteristics of rich knowledge, difficult language points and a large proportion in assessment (fang li, 2002).moreover, intercul

25、tural awareness has been prescribed into the new english curriculum standards. the newly organized teaching materials of senior middle school involve some western culture. it has been confirmed that proper intercultural awareness is of great importance to the comprehension of reading.hence, the stud

26、ents of senior middle school not only should grasp vocabularies, grammar, and pronunciation, but also properly grasp the relationship between english learning and culture understanding. the teacher should carry out cultural teaching and cultivate students intercultural awareness.2. survey of intercu

27、ltural awareness in english reading teaching2.1 design of the survey2.1.1 aims of the surveythis survey investigates the correlation between students reading ability and his intercultural awareness. meanwhile, the current practice of intercultural teaching in senior english reading will be examined.

28、 in this way, both achievements and potential problems would be found. teachers will be elicited to reflect their practices critically in reading teaching so as to increase their awareness of the significance of intercultural awareness. and the survey also intends to give some aids to well carrying

29、out the new curriculum standard about intercultural instruction. the instruments used in this survey are three questionnaires and two reading test papers. another method used in the data collection is a face-to-face interview with those who all took the two tests.2.1.2 participants of the survey the

30、 participants in this study were 50 senior students from a class in hangzhou changzheng senior middle school. after several years study of english, they have accumulated a certain amount of vocabulary examination; middle school teachers have to emphasize the learning of language structure. the stude

31、nts also concentrated on doing all kinds of exercises. the teachers are seeking to finish their huge textbooks within the limited period of time. thus both of them paid little attention to the intercultural awareness in reading process.2.1.3 design of the questionnairesin order to answer the survey

32、questions for the current study, there is a great need to have a review on senior middle school english teachers intercultural awareness in reading teaching so that we can see the impact on the students. it is also necessary to understand what the student intercultural awareness functions and how mu

33、ch has the students already learned about intercultural knowledge.at the beginning, the first questionnaire about english teachers intercultural awareness was applied to see how much attention the teachers have paid to the teaching of culture. the questionnaire was composed of 10 statements, each ha

34、ving five choices, ranging from “always” to “never” with three other more or less moderate scales in between. this questionnaire was designed with a reference to the relevant experiments. also students were ensured that their answers would be kept secret and were encouraged to give their answers hon

35、estly.the second questionnaire about students intercultural awareness was also designed. it was composed of 5 questions. from this results, we can clearly see the student intercultural awareness. it was of great help to the author when she came to the design of the new reading class later.the third

36、questionnaire was also designed for the purpose of learning about the students knowledge concerning cultural difference. from this one, information could be obtained which would help adapt the teaching methods to the students needs in reading and help students to improve their ability to obtain inte

37、rcultural knowledge through various sources. this questionnaire consists of 10 questions focusing on identifying their intercultural knowledge. also students were ensured their answers for the three questionnaires would be kept secret and were encouraged to answer forthrightly and outspokenly.2.1.4

38、design of the reading testabout the reading tests, one was taken at the beginning of the research. it was designed to show the prior level of the students, while the other test was given to the same group of students at the end of the research, used to show the result of survey conducted by the auth

39、or. the reading test paper has 5 texts, each with 5 questions. each question scores 4 points and the total is 100. in order to ensure that all the students take the test seriously, they were assured that their reading achievements of the test would be recorded in their grade book and be added to the

40、ir final exam scores.2.1.5 design of the interviewafter the post-test, an interview was conducted with 15 students picked out at random based on their english proficiency in order to get some feedback about this study. students of different proficiency were asked questions in a very informal and rel

41、axing way, and they were encouraged to talk frankly. these questions are designed to get to know the students intercultural awareness in reading and their improvement of reading comprehension after the study. also, the author expects to know from the interview what kind of opinion the students hold

42、for teaching culture in the reading class and what class activities are effective and interesting to them. 2.2 results and discussion2.2.1 analysis of the questionnaires the collected data from the questionnaires were analyzed and presented in the following table.choice percentage of the questionnai

43、re 1 by the studentsitemscontentalwaysvery oftensometimesseldomnever1when teaching reading, our teacher_distinguishes the words which are partly different from chinese in meaning.21%30%30%16%3%2our teacher_tells us the appropriate use of some english phrases which are partly different from chinese p

44、hrases.25%31%25%11%8%3our teacher_explains the meanings and the usage of some english idioms which are partly different from chinese idioms.28%25%23%16%10%4our teacher_tells us the origin of some english allusions.25%28%19%18%10%5in addition to the textbooks, our english teacher_recommends some read

45、ing materials about target culture to us.8%11%24%28%29%6our teacher_introduces some knowledge about the western culture to us.9%10%26%25%30%7our teacher_makes comparisons and contrasts between the properties of the chinese culture and the target culture.8%9%28%25%30%8our teacher_tells us the importa

46、ntce of intercultural awareness in reading.7%11%27%25%30%9when teaching reading, our teacher_translates every sentence, every word into chinese.30%32%20%12%6%10our teacher_emphasizes the accuracy of the reading comprehension exercise.32%31%22%9%6%this table and the statistics show the english teachi

47、ng situation in which the students are and the teachers awareness to teach culture in reading class. altogether 50s students took part in the survey and the 50 respondents were all valid without any missing case.item 1,2,3, and 4 were all related to the teaching of the specific cultural contents. lo

48、oking at the data we can see that those teachers pay more attention to the importance of the word, phrases, idioms and allusions when teach reading. on average, more than 50% of the teachers focus on specific linguistic points when teaching reading.item 5,6,7, and 8 were all related to identify the

49、extent of the teachers intercultural awareness in teaching reading. form the results, we can see less than 20% of the teachers realize the importance of the culture in reading teaching.item 9 and 10 were about teaching method and purpose of teaching reading comprehension. from the data we can see th

50、at most teachers were influenced by traditional ideas, they pay more attention to scores of the students instead of to the reading ability that the students should acquire.choice percentage of the questionnaire 2itemscontentalwaysvery oftensometimesseldomnever1i_take the target culture into consider

51、ation when i read.8%10%25%27%30%2i_think cultural background knowledge influence our reading comprehension.8%11%25%25%31%3in my spare time, i_read the english books about the western culture.10%12%27%23%28%4i_pay attention to cultural differences between china and the western countries and their imp

52、act on reading.9%14%27%34%14%5i_think i need some knowledge about the western culture for reading.8%12%27%33%20%this survey was meant to identify the students intercultural awareness in reading. from the data, we can see that less than 25% of the students realize the importance if the culture in rea

53、ding which meant that most students dont know that culture can have a direct impact on their reading comprehension and, as a result, seldom do they take culture into consideration when reading. they do not try to read english books about western culture, and they have little awareness of cultural di

54、fferences between china and the western countries. less still do they realize the influence the culture imposes on their reading comprehension.choice percentage of the questionnaire 3itemscontentknow know some know a littledo not know1do you know how to introduce western traditional festivals and ho

55、lidays in english?17%27%32%24%2do you know how western celebrate christmas day?19%21%35%25%3do you know how english-speaking people greet each other?19%21%32%27%4do you know that according to western tradition, a man should open doors, take coats for ladies?17%20%39%24%5do you know what color does a

56、 western bride usually wear at the wedding?22%24%34%20%6do you know what is the response of a westerner when he/she receives a gift from someone?20%23%31%26%7do you know what the english idiom “a judas kiss” means?13%20%21%46%8do you know in the west, is it appropriate for the host to pick food for the guest and push him/her to eat more?18%27%30%25%9do you know how westerns give and receive gift according to western tradition?21%24%34%21%10do you know something about christianity, the dom