An Evaluation Of Cultural Content In Senior English For China (Revised) (RSEFC)

Criteria for Senior High School English Curriculum was issued by the Chinese Ministry of Education in 2003. For the first time, cultural awareness is set as one of the five teaching goals at the senior middle school level, that is, language competence, language knowledge, affective aspects, learning strategy,cultural awareness; And the enhancement of cultural awareness is located in three aspects: cultural knowledge, cultural understanding, and intercultural communication. Consequently, the importance of culture in language teaching and learning is enhanced which establishes new target and direction for research in theoretical development as well as teaching practice in China. Therefore to clarify the questions that whether the cultural content in RSEFC books that are the most important elements, the basis and guarantee for English teaching is organized in a systematic and proper way, whether RSEFC books reflect the scientific view on language and culture and that whether RSEFC books can help the English teaching goals that formulated in Criteria for Senior High School English Curriculum is important. And the clarification may impose positive effect on the practice in language teaching and study, the revision of current textbooks as well as compilation of new textbooks, all of which will be helpful to cultivate the students'intercultural communicative competence.Referring to the requirements Criteria for Senior High School English Curriculum and Zhang's theory to evaluate English materials from the perspective of intercultural foreign language teaching, the thesis develops an analysis and evaluation on the culture-related materials in Senior English for China (Revised), (RSEFC is the short form) from these four facets: target culture, native culture, comparative culture and international culture. In order to strengthen the validity and reliability, the author adopts the quantitative and qualitative research methods, namely, the questionnaire for the teachers and students'ideas and statistic analysis for the proportion of each culture item with the help of SPSS13.0.Findings were summarized as follows. Although RSEFC books stick to the requirement of Curriculum Criteria displaying and interpreting different aspects of culture from different angles, which satisfy the needs of students and the demands of teaching for teachers and contribute to our country English teaching, there are still some insufficiencies. First, the cultural content in RSEFC books is not systematic. Second, the cultural content shows limited influence on improving the students'ability of intercultural communication for little input of Chinese culture. Third, too much information about western culture but little about international culture and native culture is not helpful in fostering the students'moral qualities. For these insufficiencies the author offers constructive suggestions for the teachers and students and the relevant personnel.