Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Research Background
The English curriculum standards pointed out cultivating students’ culturalawareness is one of the five basic objectives in English course and also proposeddeveloping students’ ability of utilizing language in a comprehensive way. And thedevelopment of the ability is based on the student’s language skills, languageknowledge, affection and attitude, learning strategies and cultural awareness. Languageknowledge and language skills are the basis of the ability of utilizing language in acomprehensive way and cultural awareness is the guarantee of utilizing languageappropriately. The English curriculum standards presented the sixth to the ninth level isthe requirements of ordinary senior high school, and the seventh level is the basicrequirements for senior high school graduates. The seventh level requires that studentsshould understand cultural differences in the language communication and developintercultural communication awareness gradually.The relationship between language and culture is close. The process of learning alanguage is also the process of learning the culture of target language and teaching alanguage is also teaching a culture. Language teaching can’t separate from cultureteaching so teachers should infiltrate culture teaching into the whole process oflanguage teaching, and the final goal of foreign language teaching can be achieved,namely, cultivating students’ intercultural communicative competence. (Brown, 1994)Only if the foreign language teaching combines the language teaching as well asculture teaching effectively, can students get a good culture teaching, which can helpthem to develop English communicative competence.The foreign language textbook is not only an important carrier of foreignlanguage teaching but also an important media of conveying the cultural knowledge.Its compilation must contain proper proportion of cultural contents to achieve theintegration of language and culture, which can foster the students’ interculturalawareness and intercultural communicative competence. (Robinson, 1988) Bycontrasting Chinese and foreign culture, students can deepen the understanding ofChinese culture and achieve the ultimate goal of foreign language teaching. A goodteaching material itself embodies the scientific value of language and culture, andreflects the overall thinking of the designers. In China, the researches who research the English teaching and learning in senior high school focus on cultivating students’cultural awareness and intercultural communicative competence in English teaching.
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1.2 Significance of the Study
Kramsch (1993:11) said, “Language teaching is also cultural teaching.” “Culturalteaching” means cultivating students’ intercultural communication awareness inactivities and guiding students to acquire abundant cultural knowledge and improve therespective, tolerant, equal, open and intercultural mentality and objective, unbiasedintercultural awareness and finally develop intercultural communicative competence.In English teaching activities, the importance of developing basic language skillsis the same as developing cultural awareness and competence. Therefore, culturalteaching should be penetrated into the whole process of foreign language teaching inorder to achieve the ultimate goal of foreign language teaching, that is, Englishteaching can cultivate new talents with comprehensive quality, innovative awarenessand intercultural communicative competence.In addition, due to the lack of cultural contrast awareness, there is thephenomenon that some students blindly worship foreign culture and they almost do notconcern about the profound Chinese culture, that is the “Chinese culture aphasia.”Although people have realized the importance of culture teaching, but there are still many problems in English teaching in senior high school.Therefore, the analysis of the cultural contents of high school English textbooksis of great practical significance. It is also of great significance to analyze the culturalcontents of New Senior English for China. Firstly, it helps to find out whether culturalcontents meet the requirements of the New Curriculum Standards; Secondly, the authorwill make relatively objective and scientific evaluation for the textbook so as to findout its advantages and disadvantages, and offer some suggestions for editors to perfectcultural content of the textbook and make the compilation of textbook morecomprehensive. The last but not the least, by the questionnaire survey, the author learnsabout how teachers apply the textbook for cultural teaching and also learns about thecurrent situation of cultural teaching on the whole. In the actual teaching process, theauthor provides some references and teaching strategies for English teachers onselection and adjustment of cultural materials, thus teachers can carry out cultureteaching more efficiently.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 English Textbook Evaluation Abroad
Many achievements have been made on textbook evaluation at abroad. In the mid19th century, some experts from Europe and the United States have evaluated varioustextbooks. At the beginning of the 20th century, some scholars have studied thetheories of textbook evaluation. The evaluation content of the researches includes theconcepts, scope, content, function, subjects, process, methods and principles. At theend of 1980’s and at the beginning of the 1990's, European and American’ theoreticalresearches on the evaluation of teaching materials have become more and more matureand also have brought a large number of influential scholars and research results.Foreign scholars have a lot of researches on evaluating foreign language teachingmaterials in senior high school. The history of the evaluation of English teachingmaterials can be traced back to the 1960s, at that time, its subjects of evaluation isabout the audio-lingual method and the grammar translation method. In the 1970’s,some foreign experts and scholars have noticed the importance of the analysis andevaluation of the teaching materials. Many scholars have put forward their owndiscussions. Brian (1982) is one of the early scholars who began to study theevaluation of English teaching materials and he lists about ten contents of evaluation,but they are too small, relatively cumbersome and difficult to operate.David (1984) published the first monograph Evaluating and selecting EFLteaching materials, which presents some important principles of evaluating teachingmaterials. Van Ells（1984）pointed out evaluating textbook should be based on the fouraspects, that is, utilizing syllabus or evaluation criterion list to evaluate a textbook,researchers also can use questionnaires or interviews to learn about the views ofteachers and students and compare the characteristics of a variety of textbooks.
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2.2 English Textbook Evaluation at Home
In China, the evaluation of English teaching materials has attracted the attentionof some scholars and they also discuss the opinions of foreign scholars. ChengXiaotang (2002) introduce specifically three questions about the choice of the teachingmaterials proposed by Grant. That is, the textbook is whether suitable for students,teachers or syllabus and tests or not. These introductions promote domestic scholars tostudy the evaluation of English teaching materials.Hu Zhuanglin (1990) also expressed that the comprehensive evaluation ofteaching materials may be considered from the following two aspects. Firstly, it is theconsistency between textbook and syllabus. Secondly, it is the teaching effect.However, with the growing number of teaching materials, the renewal of knowledge,the continuous development of linguistic research, and the continuous increase ofsocial demand, the syllabus should also be amended and innovated immediately.Shu Dingfang & Zhuang Zhixiang (1996) put forward some principles ofevaluating teaching material, of which two principles mentioned the choice of teachingmaterials should be interesting and various and the teaching materials can help thestudents be relaxed and happy in class. A variety of topics of teaching materials canmeet the needs of students.Wang Qiang (2003) specifically introduces the evaluation standard of textbookand the specific items of evaluation proposed by Tomlinson (2012). After that, somedomestic scholars put forward a better and deeper study about the evaluation of theforeign teaching materials in the senior high school.Zhou Xuelin (1996:61-65) argued that foreign language teaching materialsshould reflect the latest research results of contemporary teaching theory, and meet theneeds of learners. The contents of the teaching materials should be consistent with therequirements of the teaching syllabus, and the teaching syllabus is the main basis forthe compilation of the teaching materials. The contents of the teaching material shouldhave interesting character, authenticity, universality and practicability.
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Chapter 3 Theoretical Basis........ 14
3.1 Textbook Evaluation Theory ............ 14
3.2 Textbook Evaluation Theory Concerned with Cultural Content ........ 15
3.3 Intercultural Communication Theory ...... 15
3.4 Requirements of the Cultural Awareness Objectives in New Curriculum Standards........ 17
Chapter 4 Methodology ........ 19
4.1 Research Questions.......... 19
4.2 Subjects ......... 19
4.3 Instruments ............. 20
4.4 Procedure ....... 20
Chapter 5 Results and Discussion ............. 22
5.1 Cultural Types and Cultural Contents of Reading Materials in the NSEC ......... 22
5.2 Questionnaire Analysis of the Cultural Contents in the NSEC ........... 35
5.3 Implications for Textbook Editors............. 45
5.4 Implications for English Teachers ............. 50
Chapter 5 Results and Discussion
5.1 Cultural Types and Cultural Contents of Reading Materialsin the NSEC
The cultivation of students’ cultural awareness is mainly through English teachers’cultural teaching. First of all, the author pides cultural types and cultural contentsbased on the New Curriculum Standards. In addition, the author count the data ofcultural types and cultural contents and evaluate the cultural types and cultural contentsof reading materials in the NSEC. The results are summarized in the following tables:From the statistical results of the reading materials in the Student’s Book 1, theproportion of Chinese culture, British and American Culture, world culture andcontrast culture stands at 40%, 20%, 40% and 0%. Compared Chinese culture withBritish and American Culture, the number of Chinese culture is two times higher thanthat of British and American culture, which shows that the editor considers culturalcontents of the target language and native language and design abundant cultural types.But the reading materials don’t involve local manner and customs, traditions andcustoms, literature and art and values, which means the setting of cultural types is notrich enough. According to the internal evaluation of textbook evaluation theory, therationality of the teaching material design needs to be improved.From the composition of various cultural types, from high to low followed bygeography, history, lifestyle, behavior norms. Owning to culture is often presented inthe form of reading materials. Therefore, the mass culture such as history andgeography takes up more proportion than others’ in the reading materials. Whilebehavioral norms are difficult to be reflected in reading material. Reading is aneffective way for students to acquire language knowledge and cultural knowledge, andthe design of reading materials in the textbook is the maximal parts. It is worththinking about how to design cultural content such as behavior norms and values as thetheme of reading materials.
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Conclusion
This chapter is a summary of the previous chapters. First of all, based on theanalysis of the research results in the fifth chapter, the main findings of the researchwill be presented. At last, the limitations of the study will be showed in this chapter.The research findings are pided into two parts. The first part is the combinationof the research results of cultural types and cultural contents of reading materials in theNSEC, the author will analyze whether the cultural types and cultural contents of thereading materials meet the requirements of the seventh level of cultural awarenessobjectives in the New Curriculum Standards. The second part is about thequestionnaire of teachers and students so as to learn about how the teaching materialsinfluence teachers' culture teaching.This study aims to explore the cultural types and cultural contents of readingmaterials in compulsory textbooks of New Senior English for China. Based on therequirements of the seventh level of cultural awareness objectives in the NewCurriculum Standards, the author has classified and evaluated the cultural types andcultural contents of the textbooks.The advantages of textbooks: the findings based on the distribution of the culturaltypes and cultural contents in the reading materials, the cultural types of fivecompulsory textbooks is complementary. What’s more, the Students’ Book 4 is theonly volume which involves contrast culture. There is same proportion between targetculture and Chinese culture, that is to say, editor has considered the target culture andnative culture. And the lack of cultural types of Chinese culture is just supplied by theBritish and American culture. What’s more, the reading materials focus on theintroduction of world culture. In addition, the study also found that the arrangement ofthe cultural contents of reading materials in compulsory textbooks is verycomprehensive because it involves all kinds of cultural types in accordance with therequirements of the New Curriculum Standards. And the five compulsory textbooks areequipped with strong humanities and the social significance and also reflects thecultural background of target language comprehensively, which has achieved the goalto improve students’ intercultural communicative awareness and develop students’intercultural communicative competence.
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References (abbreviated)