本文是一篇英语论文，一方面，本研究证明了跨文化教学和语言教学的整合可以通过使用教科书在课堂上进行，并达到预期的跨文化教育效果。跨文化阅读教学更具实用性和适用性，便于教师操作，有效的跨文化阅读活动不仅可以激发学生积极参与课堂学习，而且可以提高他们的英语成绩和跨文化能力。
CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
1.1 Research Background
With the remarkable increasing number of people engaging in interculturalcommunication,intercultural competence has become a necessity for college as wellas middle school students.This complex social context presents both opportunitiesand challenges to them.To coexist and interact with culturally different others,students must acquire the requisite knowledge and skills in order to reach mutualunderstanding,as well as appreciate and benefit from the cultural differences.UNESCO(2013)describes Intercultural Competencies as the“Conceptual andOperational Framework”providing a comprehensive discussion on the importance ofdeveloping all of the citizens’intercultural competence.Similarly,interculturalcompetence has also been emphasized by Chinese Ministry of Education,whichhighlights the need to develop students’intercultural competence.
Scholars of communication,education,linguistics and business managementhave long studied the concept of intercultural competence since the 1960s,amongwhich,language education scholars have paid particularly close attention to theconstruct.King and Baxter(2005)pointed that“the top priority of education is todevelop citizens with intercultural competence,who can make wise and ethicaldecisions when facing problems with intercultural perspectives”.As Zhao Weiliang(2016)wrote“there is a huge lack of international talents with international outlookand rules in China,causing directly the lack of China’s institutional voice in theincreasingly diverse and interdependent global society”.Developing a global andintercultural outlook is a process-a lifelong process that education can shape(Barrettet al.2014;Boix and Jackson 2011;Deardorff 2009;UNESCO 2013,2014a,2016).
1.2 Research Purpose
The necessity of offering intercultural courses for students has caused heateddiscussion among researchers and educators.They have put forward some theoreticalbasis to develop students’intercultural competence.However,many empiricalresearches on how to cultivate students’intercultural competence in English teachingfocus on college and senior high school students,junior high school studentsespecially in English reading teaching,are rarely examined.This thesis investigatesthe current situation of students’intercultural competence in junior high school,andexplores whether the intercultural approach is effective to facilitate their interculturalcompetence and reading ability,and what specific teaching activities are helpful tocultivate their intercultural competence?
CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Culture and Intercultural Competence
2.1.1 Definition of Culture and Intercultural Competence
2.1.1.1 Definition of Culture
“Culture is arguably the most elusive term in the generally rather fluidvocabulary of the social sciences”(Gustav 1984:140).There is no exact definitionbecause of“its complexity,diversity,vagueness and uncertainty”(Zhang 2007:123).Different people define it from different perspectives.Tyler,in the book The SilentLanguage,defined culture from the anthropological perspective as“that complexwhole which includes knowledge,belief,art,morals,law,custom and othercapabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”(Tyler 1871:1).Hall(1959)claimed“culture itself is communication”.Franz Boas defined culture as“what a society does and thinks”.Hofstede(1991:4)defined culture as the“softwareof the mind”.As defined by Kramsch,culture referred to“the worldviews shared bythe communities in which the students were raised and the familial,social andacademic environment reflecting them”(Kramsch 1995,quoted in Devora 2016:325).Guan Shijie(1995:15)held that“culture in a broad sense refers to the sum of allmaterial and spiritual products created by mankind”.According to UNESCO(2001),“Culture is that set of distinctive spiritual,material,intellectual and emotional featuresof a society or social group,encompassing all the ways of being in that society;at aminimum,including art and literature,lifestyles,ways of living together,value systems,traditions,and beliefs”(UNESCO 2001,quoted in Dearoff 2020:4).ZhangHongling(2007)defined culture as“a way of thinking,beliefs,behaviors andemotions shared by a group,it is not only the basis for the group to understand theworld,but also the behavior mode and lifestyle of the group,it is the meaning systemof the group”.
2.2 English Reading within the Framework of InterculturalApproach to Foreign Language Teaching
This part is about the concept of intercultural approach to foreign languageteaching,the teaching goals and the relationship between reading and thedevelopment of intercultural competence.
2.2.1 Development of Intercultural Approach to ForeignLanguage Teaching
Byram’s(1997)book named Teaching and Assessing InterculturalCommunicative Competence is generally regarded as the beginning of interculturalforeign language teaching(Sun et al.2020:32).He noticed the close relationshipbetween foreign language teaching and the development of intercultural competence.As Belz(2007),citing Bredella,pointed out,“Byram is one of the very few scholars...who extensively operationalises the notion of intercultural competence in instructedforeign language learning”(P.136).Corbett(2003)introduced the term“anintercultural approach to English language teaching”in 2003.The concept of“intercultural approach to foreign language teaching”was clearly put forward byZhang Hongling(2007)systematically in China,who clearly pointed out“the goal ofintercultural foreign language teaching is to cultivate learners’intercultural awarenessand intercultural competence while improving their communicative ability in foreignlanguages,so as to cultivate their multiple perspectives and thinking ability”(Zhang2007:322).Yang Ying and Zhuang Enping(2008)also proposed to adopt“background knowledge introduction,cultural exploration,case analysis,role playand plot imitation,and case collection”to improve students'intercultural awarenessand thinking ability in order to achieve the goal of intercultural competence training.Intercultural approach to foreign language teaching is the reform and development of traditional cultural teaching and a new attempt of College English Teaching(ChangXiaomei and Zhao Yushan 2012:34),which aims at the cultivation of interculturalcommunicative competence.Zhang Hongling(2012)advocated foreign languagescholars to explore effective ways to apply the ideas of intercultural education toforeign language teaching practices.Wen Qiufang(2016)encouraged English learnersto learn English and non-English cultures and develop the ability to spread Chineseculture in English.Sun Youzhong(2016,2017)proposed that the goal of foreignlanguage teaching has changed from simple skill training to the cultivation ofintercultural competence.
CHAPTER THREE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY.......................................24
3.1 Research Questions..................................24
3.2 Research Participants..........................................24
3.3 Research Methods......................................25
CHAPTER FOUR RESULTS AND DISCUSSION..................................37
4.1 Research Results...........................................37
4.1.1 The Result of Students’Questionnaire....................................37
4.1.2 The Result of Teachers’Interviews.................................41
CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION................................................56
5.1 Major Findings..........................................56
5.2 Pedagogical Implications....................................57
5.3 Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research.......................58
CHAPTER FOUR RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
4.1 Results of Research Questions
4.1.1 The Result of Students’Questionnaire
In order to figure out the genuine situation and ensure data collection effectivelyand properly,students were clearly informed that the results of the ICC assessmentscale would not have any relationship with their final examinations and were just foracademic research only before the implementation of the intercultural readingteaching model.The questionnaires were filled in in the classroom with the guidanceof the author and their English teacher within 20 minutes.During the process of dataanalysis,the author calculated the mean score,standard deviation,and independentsamples T-Test and paired samples T-Test of the with the assistance of SPSS 28.0 andMicrosoft Excel.
rom the table 4-1,we can see that the overall IC of the students whoparticipated in the questionnaires is at an inferior level(M=2.90).The highestassessment is intercultural attitude(3.56),then intercultural knowledge(2.72),intercultural skill(2.64)and awareness(2.66)are very low.This result is a littledifferent from the results of Fan(2013),Gao(2016)and Liao(2017),they founduniversity students’intercultural awareness is highest,and intercultural knowledge isthe lowest.This questionnaire gave us indications that junior school students shouldbe given due emphasis on intercultural skill and awareness,intercultural knowledgeneeds to be improved,they display best development in intercultural attitude.
CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION
5.1 Major Findings
Based on the Schema theory,intercultural teaching principles and framework,the research was conducted to investigate the current situation of junior schoolstudents’intercultural competence through quantitative and qualitative research,meanwhile aiming at explore whether intercultural reading teaching is effective toimprove students’intercultural competence and facilitating their reading ability.Datawere mainly collected through questionnaires,semi-structured interviews.Majorfindings are as follows:
1.Current situation of junior high school students’intercultural competence isunsatisfactory on the whole.First,their mastery of intercultural knowledge is not ideal,especially lacking knowledge of foreign culture.Second,most junior high schoolstudents displayed positive intercultural attitudes except some of them lack positiveattitude towards self-learning.Third,their intercultural skills are very weak,skills likediscovery,comparison and analysis require to be improved.Fourth,they haveinadequate intercultural awareness,especially the awareness of identifying thecultural differences and similarities.
2.In terms of intercultural reading teaching with the orientation towardsintercultural competence development,the experiment shows the effectiveness whichcan be concluded from students’performance after the teaching experiment.Althoughthe mean value of intercultural skill and awareness is still low among the fourdimensions,it has increased to a moderate level after the experiment from a lower level before the experiment,indicating intercultural reading teaching has a positiveinfluence on improving students’intercultural skill and awareness.
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