A Comparative Study Of Cultural Content In Reading Materials Of Old And New Yilin Editions Of Senior High School English Textbooks

The past years have witnessed an increase in demand for cross-cultural communication talents in our country because of the continuous advancement of globalization and increasingly frequent international exchanges.English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School(2017)has made it clear that cultural awareness is one of the core competences of English subject,which strengthens the importance of cultural learning.As the carrier of culture,languages have rich cultural content.English teaching materials are the main tools for students to learn language,and the arrangement of the cultural content in materials plays a prominent role in students’ cultural learning.Yilin Press issued a new edition of senior high school English textbook in 2019 in light of the guidelines in English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School(2017),and this edition of English textbook has been put into use in Jiangsu Province.In recent years,many scholars have studied the cultural content in English textbooks,but there are few comparative studies on cultural content in reading materials of English textbooks published by the same press.Basing on Cheng Xiaotang’s theory of textbook evaluation,this paper makes a comparative study of cultural content in reading materials of the old and new Yilin edition of senior high school English textbooks by using the methods of internal and external evaluation in order to answer the following questions:(1)What is the overall distribution of cultural content in reading materials of the new and old Yilin editions of senior high school English textbooks? What are the similarities and differences?(2)Do the reading materials in the new Yilin edition of senior high school English textbooks meet the requirements of cultural knowledge in the new curriculum standard? Compared with the old edition,what changes have been made?(3)What are senior high school English teachers’ evaluations on the cultural content in reading materials of the old and new editions of senior high school English textbooks?The results of the study are as follows.Firstly,the reading materials in both the old and new Yilin editions of senior high school English textbooks are rich in the cultural content.Based on cultural region,the reading materials in both editions of English textbooks are oriented towards other culture.Compared with the old edition,the new edition increases the amount of native culture in reading materials,but still ignores the input of comparative culture.Based on cultural type,the proportion of spiritual culture in reading materials of the old and new Yilin editions of senior high school English textbooks is larger than that of material culture,aiming to develop students’ correct personal values.However,the distribution of different cultural types is unbalanced.Compared with the old edition,cultural content in reading materials of the new edition covers more cultural types in that more topics related to literature are introduced.Secondly,the reading materials in the new edition of English textbook basically meet the requirements of cultural knowledge’s content in the new curriculum standard.Compared with the old edition,reading materials in the new edition introduces more Chinese traditional culture.Thirdly,most of the senior high school English teachers hold the opinion that cultural content in the reading materials of the new edition is better for the reason that more Chinese culture,novel topics and colorful cultural types can be found in reading materials of the new Yilin edition of English textbooks.According to the above research findings,the author suggests that textbook compilers should add more diverse cultural types,increase the input of comparative culture in the reading materials,and take students’ interests into account in selecting cultural content.Meanwhile,in the process of English language teaching,English teachers should constantly improve their own cultural literacy and flexibly use the cultural content in teaching materials.