Comparative Analysis Of Cultural Orientation Between New Senior English For China And Advance With English(Jiangsu Edition)

In2003, the Ministry of Education of China promulgated the new National English Curriculum Standards (trial version)(Standards for short) in senior high schools. It clearly points out that developing students’ cross-cultural awareness and cross-cultural communicative competence is an important target. Therefore, culture teaching gets more attention in English teaching. Textbook is a main channel for the teachers to conduct culture teaching. Whether the selection and configuration of cultural contents in textbooks is reasonable exerts a significant influence on culture teaching. With the implementation of the new Standards, various versions of senior high school English textbooks appeared one after another. Since there are various versions of textbooks, it turns out particularly important to evaluate cultural contents in English textbooks.Considering the importance of cultural content evaluation, the thesis first reviews the research results achieved by previous scholars on cultural contents analysis of English textbooks and culture teaching. This research chooses New Senior English for China (NSEFC) published by People’s Education Press, which is most widely used in China and Advance with English (Jiangsu edition) to make a comparative analysis. Based on Risager’s model for cultural contents analysis in English textbooks, the author forms a model appropriate for this research after making some adjustments. Using the model, this research conducts a detailed comparative analysis of the cultural contents of the reading materials in the five core modules from the following three aspects:micro-culture, macro-culture and international culture. This research puts emphasis on the following aspects:first, what kinds of cultural contents are incorporated in the two sets of textbooks and are they in accord with the requirements of the new Standards? Second, what are the similarities and differences between the two sets of textbooks in cultural contents selection and configuration and what advantages and disadvantages do they have? Through the analysis, the study hopes to provide some implications for the teachers to better conduct culture teaching when using the textbooks and to offer the textbook compilers some suggestions to further improve the textbooks in the future.