III. Methods to Implement Intercultural Education

For many years, English teaching in junior middle schools has always adopted the same curriculum as that in middle schools. The new Standard of English curriculum has taken cultural awareness as one of the teaching goals. It requires students to note the English-Chinese customs’ differences in their daily life and communication and requires to expand the scope of exposure to foreign cultures at the higher stages of learning in order to help students broaden horizons, to enable them to increase the sensitivity and identification capabilities of cultural differences, and at last to enhance their competence of intercultural communication.
Based on the requirement of the new curriculum standard, this thesis tries to explore a persified English-teaching mode through combining with the five methods: supplemental method, incorporation method, interaction method, practice method and experience method in the practice of intercultural teaching.
3.1 Supplemental Method
Supplemental method is to systematically add or supplement some intercultural contents, as an additional part of the foreign language teaching materials, to foreign language teaching in secondary schools. The concrete forms may be to specifically set up intercultural education column in teaching materials, to hold intercultural lectures for students, to organize students to visit intercultural exhibitions, to organize intercultural discussions, or to arrange students to enjoy intercultural performances, etc.
 Let’s take a look at one of the forms mentioned above. To hold intercultural lectures, in which English teacher systematically imparts English culture, such as its politics, human geography, history, etc. is a practical and helpful intercultural teaching method. This method enables students to form an overall view of English culture, and helps them to set up a proper attitude towards it. Many teachers favor this method, because it is easy for them to control their teaching: the time, content and way to learn, and it costs students’ bit of time and energy to acquire lots of English culture knowledge. Whether teachers apply this method, it mainly depends on the contents to be presented as well as students’ capability. The greatest advantage is that teacher has the freedom to choose any topics to lecture.
In fact, a successful intercultural lecture may adopt interaction, which means the students’ active participation and teachers’ open lecture. To be specific, English lecturers should keep a close watch on students’ responses to their lectures. And they may present several questions before the lectures to attract students’ attention. Also they may raise some questions to make students think about in the process of lecturing. As far as the students are concerned, they shall focus on the contents of the lectures to answer the presented questions and be prepared to question the concerned contents of the lecture at any time when they have any puzzles. After the lecture, the lecturer may leave some time for students and the lecturer to communicate with each other on the concerned contents.
3.2 Incorporation Method
Incorporating method means incorporating the knowledge goal, attitude goal and competence goal of intercultural education into secondary English teaching so that students can involuntarily receive intercultural education in language learning. The concrete approaches can be to gather cultural materials into textbooks, or to carry on class English teaching by using such means as cultural dialogue, cultural cooperation, cultural performances, and cultural exchanges. Here’re some examples for this method.
3.2.1 Through Classroom English Teaching
Through classroom teaching, teachers may impart some cultural information to students or make cultural comparisons in interesting and easily understood ways. Teachers can take any chance to introduce some relevant cultural facts to students whenever it is necessary. For example, when the teaching materials are involved with manners, teachers can explain the differences between Chinese and western manners by cultural performances. Thus, students will get a direct impression on that point of knowledge. Besides, teachers can help students understand cultural differences such as making a call, greetings, etc. by practicing cultural dialogues. With this accumulation over a long period, students will be more interested in learning English and will be successful in practical communication with foreigners. 初中英语教学中的跨文化教育(4):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_5538.html