An Analysis Of Cultural Contents In Junior English Textbooks Published By The PEP From Cross-cultural Perspective

English is an important communication tool for international exchange and cooperation.The Compulsory Education English curriculum embodies the unity of instrumental and humanistic nature.The core literacy of English curriculum includes language ability,cultural awareness,quality of thinking and learning ability,and English teaching is an important in cultivating students’ cultural awareness and developing cross-cultural communicative competence.Teaching material is an important resource for teaching.Teaching material analysis is the premise and foundation for teachers to teach well,and also the key for students to learn well.The cultural content and its presentation in English textbooks are closely related to the cultivation of students’ cultural awareness and cross-cultural communicative competence.In 2022,the Ministry of Education published the English curriculum standards for compulsory education(hereinafter referred to as the curriculum standard(2022)),which establishes curriculum objectives around core literacy and emphasizes that cultural awareness embodies the value orientation of core competencies.This shows the importance of culture teaching in English teaching.Based on the cross-cultural communication theory and the evaluation theory of English textbooks,this study adopts text Analysis Method and questionnaire survey method to analyze the junior middle school English textbooks published by People’s Education Press(GFI),with focus on three questions: 1.What cultural contents are selected and presented in the textbooks? 2.Do these cultural contents in the textbooks match the three levels of cultural knowledge content in the curriculum standard(2022)? 3.Can the cultural contents in the textbooks effectively develop students’ cross-cultural communicative competence?Findings of this study are as follows: 1.According to the regional statistics,the cultural contents of the whole set of junior middle school English textbooks published by the People’s Education Press show an increasing trend of classification by grade and step-by-step,the four regional cultures of mother tongue culture,inner circle national culture,international culture and common culture are all involved,but the ratio and content distribution are not balanced among the four regions,Chinese culture and American culture make up most of the cultural contents in the textbooks.2.The teaching materials cover all the 13 cultural knowledge content requirements in the curriculum standard(2022),and the cultural contents are rich and diverse in material selection and types,which conforms to the three-level standards of cultural knowledge contents in the curriculum standard(2022),but the content of each item is unevenly distributed.3.By means of questionnaire survey and analysis,the majority of students are satisfied with the arrangement of the cultural contents in the junior English textbooks published by the PEP,it improves their cultural awareness and cross-cultural communication ability.Based on the results of the study,the author suggests that: for textbook editors,according to the curriculum standard(2022),the cultural content of textbooks should be updated and adjusted in time;for students,they should learn the cultural knowledge as well as the language knowledge,as a teacher or educator,we should first improve our own cultural awareness and cross-cultural communication ability,teaching students in accordance with their aptitude,flexibly handling the cultural content in the teaching materials,and consciously cultivating students’ cultural awareness and cross-cultural communication ability.