【正文】 ave prescribed the requirement of cultivating intercultural awareness and intercultural municative petence. Teaching materials have been changed year by year according to the development of English teaching and the ability of students. It has been improved better to suit to the enhancement of students’ ability. Teaching materials are always different from one area to another. Teaching material is the key factor influencing the practice and result of teaching and learning. Previously Our English textbooks often use the target language to describe the Chinese cultural things and activities that occur in our daily life. The newly piled teaching materials of junior and senior middle school involve some western culture, for example, greeting, western festivals, literature, music, body language and so on. Then culture bees an important part of English teaching. But most teachers incline to teach grammar point and sentence structure only without the cultural introduction before every lesson in order to save time. They haven’t realized the barriers in English learning sometimes e from the lack of cultural knowledge. They believe that so long as their students grasp the meaning of every word, every sentence, and every passage, they will have no difficulty in prehending the whole text. This idea is wrong. The English teacher should also pay much attention to the western culture in class. In this way, the students will have interest in the text and they will understand the meaning of the text very quickly.Most English reading materials unavoidably convey western culture. When we teach lessons about the western festivals, such as Christmas Day and Thanksgiving Day, some cultural background knowledge of these festivals can help students overe obstacles in the text and understand language knowledge better. In addition many words in the textbook have relations with cultural contexts, such as the words “old, dog, pork, beef, breakfast and color.” For example, in vocabulary list “blue” and “green” are not only the meaning of colors, each has its implied meanings. “Blue” in English often associates with unhappy feelings, “in a blue mood” or “having the blues” expresses a sad, gloomy or depressed mood. Also, in English, “green” is used to indicate a person who is a newer who is not familiar with current circumstance. Therefore teachers should incorporate cultural knowledge into teaching and cultivate cultural awareness of students by making use of teaching materials availably.5. The application of the principle of intercultural awareness cultivationAs middle school students, they spent much time in study. The most important time that they learn the English culture is in class. Teachers’ English teaching is the main approach for the students to learn the English culture. So it is important to incorporate culture into the English teaching. Then what principles shall we perform while cultivating culture? Based on the middle school students’ real situation and the characteristics of English culture, three main principles should be followed. The principle of gradingGrading principle means the English cultural information should be selected to teach step by step according to students’ language levels and ability. The cultural cultivation should not beyond students’ prehensive ability and should keep the same level. In writer’s class, there were some excellent students in English。 culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, and on the other as conditioning elements of further action. (Net. 2, . Kroeber)Culture, in a broad sense, is an integrated pattern of human behavior that includes thoughts, munications, languages, practices, beliefs, values, customs, courtesies, rituals and manners of interacting. As the culture is so multiplex, it pervades virtually every aspects of human life and influences people’s behavior, including linguistic behavior. It means that language is not only part of how we define culture, but it also reflects culture. The relationship between language and cultureLanguage is part of culture. Language is like a vehicle of cultural transmission. Different languages may reflect different cultures, and different cultures also influence different languages. For example, different languages may have different idioms owing to different living environments, social conventions and literature tradition, etc. The Chinese language is part of the Chinese culture and English is part of the English culture. There is no culture that has no language as its part. Language and culture are not separable. Human knowledge and experience are described and stored in language. Customs, habits and behavioral patterns can be described and analyzed in language. Social institutions, value systems, beliefs, world views can be described, analyzed and evaluated in language. In short, language can represent every aspect of culture. Language is the mirror of culture. “The close relationship between language and culture is easily shown by the fact that culture is transmitted from one generation to the next ing generation through language for the ing generation to learn. While children learn their native language, they also learn their native culture and are eventually accepted as members of their culture. Language learning and culture learning are not separable.” (Wang Zhenya,1999:21) In short language and culture are closely related, each influencing and shaping the other. As a foreign language teacher to teach a foreign language implies to teach the relative culture. A language can never be taught in a cultural vacuum.“There are many ways in which the phenomena of language and culture are intimately related. Both phenomena are unique to humans and have therefore been the subject of a great deal of anthropological, sociological, and even emetic study. Language, of course, is determined by culture, though the extent to which this is true is now under debate. The con