【正文】 ts have improved their language knowledge, but their intercultural municative petence has not enhanced. What’s more, some teachers regard cultural teaching as their extra burden. Usually, the students get the knowledge about western culture in history class, but not in English class. Time limitationIn most middle school, one period just has 45 minutes. In order to save time, teachers only teach language knowledge and neglect the cultural introduction in the classroom. Barriers in English learning sometimes e from the lack of cultural knowledge. Some teachers have attributed their students’ poor reading and listening prehension to linguistic deficiencies. They believe that so long as their students grasp the meaning of every word, every sentence, and every text passage, they will have no difficulty in prehending the whole text. Teachers have many English lessons to take and have many examinations to correct in a week, so they are too busy and have no opportunity to learn and conduct research. Students have no enough time to learn western culture by themselves. Limited experienceTeachers in China are usually considered to have limited experience with the target culture, and in fact few teachers can offer some experience in foreign language classes. Most of them are not qualified to deal with cultural awareness effectively and confidently because they haven’t enough knowledge. On one hand, most English teaches are trained in the Chinese environment. On the other hand, they seldom read books on culture teaching theory. Therefore, it is not surprising that they are not capable of dealing with the western culture effectively. Under this circumstance, intercultural awareness cultivation cannot achieve the ideal effect. Overconfidence In modern society, some people still have the opinion that China is one of the four countries with an ancient civilization. We have rich culture and we are not necessary to learn other countries’ culture. This view causes a prevalent phenomenon in our country that a great number of English teachers tend to be overconfident about their petence and performance, arguing that they already have enough knowledge to teach English. These kinds of reasons make them neglect their development. The intercultural knowledge of English teachers cannot nearly meet the requirements of modern English teaching. We really have a very long way to go. 3. The importance of culture teaching in English reading teaching The requirements of modern societySince 2001, China has bee a formal member of WTO and plays an important role in the world new economic arena. International contacts have bee more and more frequent and many people go abroad to get a better job or get further education. In order to improve our daily life, we cannot simply by consuming all that we produce. Today, more and more foreign panies and international investors do business in China. The Chinese now find themselves peting for business amid a throng of new petitors from different countries we must understand their cultures, and with which we must municate effectively if we hope to be successful in this new world economy. The modern conditions of China require the English learners should have a good mand of knowledge and are able to municate with people from different countries. The requirements of modern syllabus and teaching materialThe new English Curriculum Standard for Middle School shows that students of Middle School should not only grasp English vocabularies, grammar, and its pronunciation, but also properly grasp the relationship between language learning and culture understanding. The newly organized teaching materials of junior and senior middle school involve some western cultures, for example, greeting, western festivals, literature, music, body language and so on. Then culture bees an important part of English teaching. For example, when we teach Christmas Day or Thanksgiving Day, some cultural background knowledge of these festivals can help students overe obstacles in the text and grasp language knowledge better. Language and culture evolve together and interact with each other. According to the New English Curriculum Standards, in middle school, teachers should not neglect the cultural factors existing in English teaching. Definitely the intercultural awareness can’t be neglected in English teaching at middle schools. The requirements of improving students’ munication abilitySome people believe that to learn English is just to learn sound, vocabulary and grammar, which makes us read and municate without barrier. This opinion is unilateral. There is no doubt that the basic skill of language is very important. However, we must realize that to learn a language is not only to memorize some words and grammatical rules. Language is the tool for munication. The purpose for people to learn language is to municate. So the municative ability has bee a scale to measure the English level to some extent. Therefore, in the everyday teaching, we must train students’ munication ability and make students have an understanding of the target culture. The students should use language properly according to the topics, contexts and cultural backgrounds. It is not only the mand of the principle of municative teaching of the present textbooks, but also the mand of international munication. The various countries have different custom. There are huge difference between China and the western. Therefore, to carry on effective munication properly with the foreigners, one should know about the cultural background of the western nation as exactly as possible, especially the differences with Chinese background knowledge. We know Chinese people like to ask these three questions: (1) What’s your name? (2) How old are you? (3) Are you married? Any one who knows a little English can ask these questions in English. But if a student asks a young lady from a western country the above questions, he h