An Analysis Of Cultural Orientation In Senior English For China

The New English Curriculum Standard was promulgated by the Chinese Ministry of Education in July, 2001. For the first time, cultural awareness is set as one of the five teaching goals at the senior middle school level. It stipulates that the main task of the English curriculum during the elementary educational period is to develop the students' ability to use the language in a comprehensive way. The students' ability to use the language is based on the integration of their language skills, language knowledge, their sentiment and attitude to the language, their learning strategies and cultural awareness. Their language skills and language knowledge are the foundation of the ability to use the language in a comprehensive way and the cultural awareness is the guarantee to use the language in proper ways.Culture and language are closely interrelated. The process to learn a language is also the process to learn the culture of the target language;to teach a language is to teach a kind of culture as well .We can not teach a language without teaching culture. Culture teaching should always go together with language teaching. Only by efficiently combining both teachings can we achieve good effects and help students acquire intercultural communication ability.Cultural awareness is set as one of the five clear teaching goals in the New English Curriculum Standard. The foreign language textbook is one of the most important parts of the language teaching and an important intermediary to pass on the cultural knowledge. The contents of the cultural awareness in the foreign language textbook should be arranged in a proper rate and the language and the culture should be mixed well. The cultural contents in the language textbook should be helpful in helping develop the students' cultural awareness and intercultural communication ability. Also the textbook can inform students about all other world cultures while learning English. A copy of good language textbooks for Chinese students can also further their understanding of Chinese culture to achieve the final goal of the foreign language teaching. A good language textbook for Chinese students itself reflects the scientific view on language and culture. It can also reflect the editors' train of thought. So it is very valuable to analyze the cultural orientation of the English textbook used most wildly in China which is published by the People's Education Press. This analysis will help us understand the present status of culture teaching and greatly help the teacher in finding the correct direction of cultural teaching.This thesis consists of five sections.The first chapter is a brief introduction.The second chapter addresses such issues as the concepts of culture and cultural structure, and the relationship between language and culture, as well as the relationship between culture and English teaching.The third chapter classifies the cultural demands in the Curriculum Standard for English Teaching, especially the cultural demands.The next chapter analyses the cultural contents of the textbook, Senior English for China, and presents the results.Thefourth chapter, Chapter 5, summarizes the whole thesis and makes suggestions for improving the cultural contents of the textbook..