An Analysis Of Cultural Contents In High School English Textbooks Published By People’s Education Press

With the increase of international communication,the communication of people from different cultural backgrounds has also become increasingly closer.In the process of international communication,international vision and intercultural communicative competence are becoming increasingly important.The fundamental purpose of foreign language teaching is to achieve intercultural communication,which is to enable students to effectively communicate with people from different cultural backgrounds.Therefore,this paper analyzes and evaluates the cultural content contained in high school English textbooks published by People’s Education Press,and studies the specific effects and shortcomings of this version of the textbook on the cultivation of students’ intercultural communication competence,in order to provide some reference for the use of this version of high English textbooks.What is the classification and distribution of cultural content in the compulsory textbooks of high school English textbooks published People’s Education Press? How effective is this version of high school English textbooks in cultivating students’ intercultural communication competence? To address the above issues,the research selected cultural content classification theory,intercultural communication competence theory and English textbook evaluation theory as the theoretical basis by reviewing relevant literatures on the cultural content of English textbooks.The research subjects are the compulsory textbooks of high school English textbooks published by People’s Education Press in 2019 and students who used this version of high school English textbooks.Firstly,guided by The English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School(2017 Edition,2020 Revision)and the classification requirements for cultural content by Zhang Gecheng and Zhang Hongyan,the first step is to conduct internal evaluation of textbook using text analysis.Secondly,guided by Byram’s theory of intercultural communication ability,the second step is to conduct external evaluation by making a questionnaire survey on students to investigate their intercultural communication competence after learning this version of high school English textbooks.Finally,draw some corresponding conclusions and propose some targeted suggestions according to the results of text analysis and questionnaire survey.Through the above research,the author concludes that the cultural contents of high school English textbooks published by People’s Education Press are rich and diverse,providing rich material and spiritual culture,including five regional cultures: target language culture,native language culture,world culture,comparative culture,and other culture.However,the distribution of cultural content is not balanced enough,and textbooks attach importance to the input of spiritual culture and source culture,with a slight lack of material culture and target culture.At the same time,the author concludes that the high school English textbooks published by People’s Education Press are generally beneficial for cultivating students’ intercultural communication competence,but the effects in different dimensions are not balanced.Students have gained rich intercultural knowledge,and their intercultural attitudes and awareness have also been improved.However,their intercultural skills still need to be improved.In addition,there is a lack of knowledge about Chinese and foreign taboo cultures in the textbooks.Based on the above conclusions,the author suggests that the cultural content of English textbooks should be reasonably arranged,English teachers should flexibly use the cultural content of the textbooks and increase students’ intercultural communication practice in the process of teaching.