A Study of Fostering College English Students’ Awareness of Cultural Comparison in Chinese Classrooms

Abstract

The study examines the effectiveness of different culture-oriented approaches to foster college English students’ awareness of cultural comparison in Chinese classrooms. A survey about college students’ status quo in English learning indicates that they are poor in western cultural knowledge, especially lack cultural comparative sense and ability. Therefore, based on the second language acquisition theory and the constructivism theory, the study aims at exploring some effective culture-oriented approaches to develop Chinese college English students’ cross-cultural communication ability. After a term’s experimental teaching in the author’s two classes, and data collection and analysis, it is concluded that the following approaches are effective: duty report, various classroom activities, self-access study, hosting the online instruction, etc.