Investigation And Analysis Of Cultural Items In Contemporary Chinese

Chinese textbooks, as the basis for teachers’teaching and students’learning, play a significant role in the practice of Chinese teaching activities. Overseas Chinese learners are detached from Chinese language and cultural environment. Their perception of Chinese social and cultural background mainly stems from the teaching material. Therefore, how to screen and treat the cultural factors in the overseas Chinese textbooks has a remarkable influence on the learners’understanding of the contents and actual use.This paper selects the distribution of culture points and approaches in Contemporary Chinese, volumes 1-3, as research target. Questionnaires and interviews will be employed on Chinese learners in Edinburgh. The aim is to figure out and summarize the cultural factors in textbooks, and then classify them into five categories. Meanwhile, by collecting the feedbacks from the students, this paper is going to have a comprehensive research on the learners’learning needs for different categories of cultural factors in the overseas Chinese textbook. After reflecting on the current approaches of textbooks, some amendments or writing methods for textbooks are supposed to be put forward to provide a reference for the revision of Chinese textbooks, and future writing of Chinese comprehensive textbooksThis paper is composed of five chapters:Chapter I:Introduction. It mainly introduces the reason for this topic and research value. Relevant concepts will be defined. Research objects, contents and methods will be expounded. A brief introduction of theoretical basis will be offered.Chapter Ⅱ:It will start from the relationship between language and culture, cultural factors involved and approaches adopted and the formulation of culture outline those three aspects in Chinese teaching. Then it will list related literature review, and present research status.Chapter Ⅲ:In this part, it is going to carry out quantitative analysis on the content of the cultural project and its classifications based on Contemporary Chinese, volume 1-3. A comparative analysis with cultural framework developed by Lu Wei will be conductedChapter Ⅳ:Through the concrete analysis of questionnaires and interviews. It’s intended to find out the cultural needs of different types of Chinese learners in Edinburgh and their needs for cultural projects in Contemporary Chinese.Chapter V:Based on the statistical result and survey analysis of the first two chapters, this paper will form an overall evaluation of the textbooks. What’s more, I will also put forward my own opinion on the revisions of textbook’s cultural projects from the supplement and adjustment aspects. In the end, I will make a systematic summary of the full text and point out the deficiencies existed in the article.