Comparative Analysis Of Cultural Orientation Between New Senior English For China And Oxford English (Shanghai Edition)

Teaching materials play an important role in English teaching. It is an important part of the implementation of English course. Selection and the use of appropriate materials are an important prerequisite condition to accomplish teaching objectives. Teaching materials play an active role for teachers, students, teaching process and teaching outcomes. Generally speaking, the fundamental goal of foreign language teaching is to develop students'language ability. Therefore, the choice and arrangement of teaching materials should also aim to develop students'language skills. And language skills are formed on the basis of the basic knowledge of language, basic language skills, cross-cultural awareness and intercultural communicative competence, and others. Therefore, foreign language teaching materials must include these aspects. Moreover, the curriculum standards in 2003, in the first time, put cultural consciousness as one of five goals of high school English curriculum. With the development of curriculum standards, the new version of senior English textbooks has been compiled. Since the new curriculum standards for students require developing students' cultural awareness, the corresponding textbooks should also include a certain language materials about cultural aspects. In addition, the new curriculum standards require developing students'cultural awareness and cross-cultural communication competence. Under this standard, the cultural content of English textbooks should include not only the target language culture but also the native language culture and the culture of other countries. This can help the students understand the culture of countries around the world, and develop students' cultural awareness and cross-cultural communicative competence.English has become the world's common language. We not only use English to communicate with people from English-speaking countries, but also with people from other non-English speaking countries. This also requires us to understand and grasp the cultural knowledge of different countries in the world. Materials are an important way to learn cultural knowledge.This thesis is going to compare NSEFC (PEP) with Oxford English (Shanghai Edition), then to analyze their cultural orientations and the rationales behind. And it can provide a reference for our country's compiling of English teaching materials in the future. It can also provide reference for materials evaluation. Besides, it has some implications for the practice of foreign language teaching.We mainly analyze the reading part in these two sets of textbooks, because it is the focus of textbooks, which includes the main points of language knowledge, and passes certain cultural information. In this thesis, the writer classifies the reading materials in terms of native language culture, target language culture, comparative culture and universal culture. Then the write calculates the proportion of different cultures in order to surmise the cultural orientation of these two sets of textbooks.The writer finds the following results. Firstly, both NSEFC (2007) and Oxford English (Shanghai Edition) are orientated toward target language culture. But the arrangement of cultural contents in NSEFC (2007) is more appropriate. It not only includes target language culture and native language culture, but also universal culture and comparative culture. Its cultural type is diversity. This will help to train students in cultural awareness and cross-cultural communicative competence. However, the cultural type in Oxford English is relatively less diversified. It mainly orients to daily life and ordinary common sense. It does not include comparative culture, and the ratio of native language culture and that of target language culture are unbalanced. Secondly, compared with NSEFC, the topics on culture in Oxford English are newer, and closer to students' life and modern life. Most of the topics are happened in students around and familiar and interesting to students. As soon as students read about these topics, they would like to learn. Therefore, the compilation of teaching materials should try to make topics much more new and interesting in the future.As is known to all, curriculum standards are the basis of the preparing of teaching materials. In April,2003, Ministry of Education promulgated the full-time compulsory education and general high school curriculum standards (Trial Version). It points out the direction of teaching materials preparing. It proposes that cultural awareness should be involved in the integrated language proficiency. It integrates cultural awareness together with language learning, which shows the integrity of language teaching and learning. Cultural awareness refers to cultural knowledge, cultural understanding, inter-cultural communication, awareness and ability. Therefore, teaching materials must involve some moderate and related cultural contents. Taken together, NSEFC textbook is more desirable in terms of cultural orientation. The arrangement of its cultural content is more in line with the new curriculum standards. However, when compiling teaching materials in the future, compilers should pay attention to the cultural contents so that they may be more specific. It should not only include science and technology, art, literature, daily life, etc, but also include some controversial content reflecting the social reality, such as:politics, economics, outlooks on world and life.