A Comparative Study Of The Cultural Contents Of Reading Materials Between The Old And New PEP Edition Of Senior High School English Textbooks

English key competence is one of the major initiatives to deepen the English curriculum reform in basic education and includes language competence,cultural awareness,thinking quality and learning ability.Obviously,cultivating and developing students’ cultural awareness is clearly listed as one of the goals in the new curriculum standard.As the main tool for students to learn English,textbook is undoubtedly an important medium to achieve this goal.Many scholars have conducted studies on the distribution of cultural contents in different versions of high school English textbooks,but few studies focus on the cultural contents in the new PEP version.Therefore,a comparative analysis of the cultural contents of the old and new textbooks is particularly important.Based on Cheng Xiaotang’s textbook evaluation theory,and by means of the UAM Corpus Tool 3.0 and Excel software,this study intends to make an internal evaluation of the cultural contents in the reading materials of New Senior English for China(2007)(Compulsory Book 1-5)and Senior English for China(2019)(Compulsory Book 1-3)both issued by PEP.Through the analysis,it is found that the reading materials in both versions of the compulsory textbooks are rich in cultural contents,but the proportion of different cultural types varies.Based on cultural region,the old version is oriented towards target culture and other culture,while the new version is oriented towards source culture.In addition,both editions neglect the content of comparative culture.Based on cultural structure,NSEFC(2007)and SEFC(2019)are oriented towards C culture,but compared with the old version,c culture in the new version increases and it focuses on cultivating students’ virtues and right values.Based on cultural function,two editions of textbooks are oriented towards knowledge culture,but compared with the new version,the old version has a larger proportion of social communicative culture,and pays attention to both linguistic and non-linguistic culture which affects communication directly.In view of the findings,the study puts forward some suggestions for the editors and users of the new textbooks.Firstly,textbooks need to be written with a balanced proportion of different cultures to develop students’ good intercultural communication skills.Secondly,teachers need to raise awareness of cultural teaching,adopt flexible teaching methods,create a good cultural learning atmosphere,and supplement other supporting materials as appropriate.It is hoped that this study can provide reference for editors to compile cultural reading materials in textbooks,help teachers and students use textbooks in a proper way in the process of real teaching and learning English,so as to achieve the educational goal of broadening students’ horizons and developing students’ cultural awareness.