Evaluating Cultural Contents In RSEFC From The Perspective Of Intercultural Foreign Language Teaching

In2003, Chinese Ministry of Education issued Criteria for Senior High SchoolEnglish Curriculum. For the first time, cultural awareness is deemed as one of the fiveteaching objectives at the senior middle school level, namely, language competence,language knowledge, affective aspects, learning strategy, and cultural awareness.Consequently, the status of Culture has been acknowledged in the process of foreignlanguage teaching and learning. In order to cultivate students’ interculturalcommunicative competence, teachers and students need a mutual platform to conducta better communication. Textbooks play an absolutely essential role in this process.The ultimate goal of foreign language teaching is to develop students’ ability ofutilizing language in a comprehensive way, and it is also true to the selection anddesign of textbooks. From this point of view, Textbook evaluation may play a vitalrole in the reform of current teaching system of senior high school English teachingfrom the perspective of culture teaching.To keep pace with the trend of intercultural foreign language teaching, andaccording to the guidance of the new syllabus, the author embarks on an endeavor toevaluate the cultural content in Senior English for China (Revised)(henceforthRSEFC) published by People’s Education Press under the criteria of Byram(1993),which focuses on textbook evaluation. The author listed the cultural content in thetextbook, trying to categorize and quantifies the distribution of different types ofculture in RSEFC. Finally, an attempt was made to reveal the advantages anddisadvantages of RSEFC in terms of cultural content. Responses to both teacher andstudent questionnaires were statistically analyzed through SPSS statistical package(19.0).The results of the study indicate that:1) The cultural contents of RSEFC are put into eight categories according tocriteria of Byram: social identity and social groups, social interaction, belief andbehavior, social and political institutions, socialization and the life cycle, nationalhistory, national geography, stereotypes and national identity. The reading materials inRSEFC mostly depict history and geography of European countries while tend toneglect the belief, behavior, social interaction of culture.2) Strengthens and weaknesses: firstly, most of the cultural themes and activities in RSEFC are presented from the perspective of tourists. While it is absolutelyconducive to familiarize the use and scope of language forms for students, however,learner understanding of the target culture is sure to be limited if they are onlyexposed to such kinds of cultural contents. Secondly, RSEFC mostly chooses subtledaily routines as culture teaching materials, but seldom covers the evils and thecontroversial topics in the society. Depriving them of the right to get to know socialevils and problems is to take away their optimal opportunity of learning from thestandpoint of cultivating learners’ comprehensive skills and ability.3) As for the perception of teachers and learners to cultural contents in RSEFC,First, culture related content in RSEFC can not meet the need of both teachers andstudents. They are more inclined to be exposed to international culture and contrastiveculture between different countries.