Research On English Textbook Cultural Content And Culture Teaching For Senior High Schools

The cultural content in English textbooks and culture teaching can directly affect students’ cross-cultural cognition,attitude and behavior.The National English Curriculum for Senior High School 2017 version(hereinafter referred to as NECS2017)clearly points out that cultural awareness is an important component of English subject core competencies,so it is of great necessity to analyze the cultural content of the English textbooks and strengthen culture teaching to cultivate high school students’ cultural awareness and intercultural communication skills.This study is based on the regional cultural classification,combined with cultural classification and the requirements of the cultural content in the NECS 2017 to classify the cultural content in the New Standard English(hereinafter referred to as NSE)textbooks.Taking high school English teachers as subjects,this study also probes into the current situation of culture teaching.This research tries to answer the following questions:(1)What cultural content is presented in the New Standard English textbooks for senior high schools? To what extent is the cultural content in the New Standard English textbooks consistent with the requirements in the National English Curriculum for Senior High Schools(2017 version)?(2)What are teachers’ perceptions of cultural content in the New Standard English textbooks?(3)What strategies do senior high school English teachers use in culture teaching? Are there any problems in culture teaching?By adopting text analysis,questionnaire,classroom observation and interview as research methods,this research obtained the following findings:(1)In terms of regional culture,the NSE textbooks focus on target culture,source culture,while the international target culture is less involved.In terms of cultural types,the NSE textbooks mainly focus on spiritual culture,among which literary and value-related cultures accounts for the large part.Whereas,material culture is not mentioned much;among spiritual culture,values and world views are more focused on and philosophy-related topics are less involved.(2)The majority of teachers adopt positive attitudes towards cultural content in the NSE textbooks.They believe that the cultural topics in the NSE textbooks are diverse and willing to practice culture teaching.(3)Culture teaching plays a marginal role in the teaching practice.And most of the teachers mainly impart cultural knowledge,a few teachers try to devise innovative activities such as project-based learning activities and skit shows in their practice.The practical teaching are far from satisfaction due to the national college entrance examination,teachers’ insufficient intercultural teaching competence and learners’ insufficient language proficiency.Based on the above results,the researcher puts forward the following suggestions:(1)In order to improve the cultural content of textbooks,textbook editors should take into account cultural diversity when compiling textbooks,adding a certain international target culture and philosophy-related topics.(2)English teachers should improve their cultural literacy in a comprehensive way,add certain cultural content on the basis of English textbooks and design innovative activities to fully improve students’ cultural awareness.This study analyses the cultural content of the NSE textbooks for senior high schools,which provides implications for English teachers appropriately using teaching materials to cultivate students’ cultural awareness.Due to the COVID-19 pandemic,this study still has limitations such as insufficient classroom observation and lacking of intensive research.Therefore,there are many aspects worthy of attention in this area.