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It is obvious that the teaching situation and teaching methods used in English Language Teaching (ELT) in China need to be changed to involve culture instead of language knowledge only. Language Teaching is Cultural Teaching. Teaching culture has been considered important in foreign language instruction for almost a century.
In addition, such education can also promote cultural integration and student academic achievement, increase international understanding and make the fight against discrimination possible, so as to develop from the understanding of the culture of each nationality to the appreciation of adjacent ethnic culture, and eventually to the appreciation of world culture.
So this paper aims at exploring the significance of the intercultural education in the Junior English teaching, which is made up of four parts. The first part is the introduction. The second part introduces the current situation and significance of the intercultural education in the Junior Middle English teaching. The next part focuses on the methods and the strategies to implement intercultural education. Conclusion is the final part, which advocates the introduction of the English culture in the teaching to lay a sound foundation for fostering excellent English talents.
II. The Relationship Between Intercultural Education and Junior Middle School English Teaching
2.1 Definition of Intercultural Education
Intercultural Education in Junior Middle English Teaching refers to introducing the teaching about the foreign countries of history, geography, traditions and customs, lifestyle, literature and art, behavioral norms and values, etc, to the students. By understanding and mastering the knowledge and cultural characteristics the teachers describe in the classroom, middle school students can not only learn more knowledge, but improve their English literacy.
Broadly speaking, intercultural education is defined as one carried on between two cultures. In this sense, the practice of intercultural education has a long history, and where there are two or more than two cultures, there exists the practice of intercultural education. Over a long period of time, the practice of intercultural education is often manifested in teaching and learning of a particular culture.
Simply speaking, intercultural education is to help students know about English-speaking country’s culture and have students understand the similarities or differences between East and West. It helps students to expand their vision and to contact foreign culture gradually. At the same time, it improves their sensitivity and resolution capability of culture between East and West. That is a good way to improve students’ communicative competence.
2.2 The Current Situation of English Teaching in Junior Middle School
For a long time, Junior English teaching has accepted and practiced the teaching method which is based on the theory of structuralism. It emphasizes the cognition in the structure. Knowledge such as vocabulary, phrases, grammatical rules and so on is paid too much attention to. While the cultural background of the target is ignored. As a result, the students who have learned English for many years often made mistakes in the communication because of the lack of culture differences between two language.
For quite a long time, teachers of English in junior middle schools in China spend much time on pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. In some teachers’ view, junior middle schools are on the stage of foundation, so it is important to acquire correct pronunciation and grammar than to learn cultural background. This leads to many problems caused by cultural misunderstanding in language teaching.
It even occurs in a testing paper. In teaching practice, teachers only care whether students can write the sentences appropriately, ignoring the factors of culture when they are used. Therefore, students think the above dialogue commonly used in China can also be used casually in any western countries, not knowing such a dialogue dealing with privacy is prevented in western culture.