An Analysis Of Cultural Elements In Senior High School English Textbooks And The Implications For English Teaching

In the global background, English teaching in our country faces new challenges. Throughseveral teaching reforms, the teaching standard has been modified several times. In2003, theNew English Curriculum Standard was issued and it proposed new requirements to Englishteaching. The whole aim in the Standard is described like this: English Curriculum aim inbasic education is to cultivate students’ comprehensive application capability of language. Thecapability must be based on the overall developments of language skills, language knowledge,emotional attitude, learning strategies and cultural consciousness. Language skills andlanguage knowledge are the foundations, and cultural consciousness is the guarantee of usinglanguage appropriately. Only after learning about the traditions and customs, ways of life andmoral standards of English countries will students learn properly in order to practice.Simultaneously, the aims and requirements of the cultivation of cultural consciousness arealso showed in the level7and8of the Standard.According to the cultural aims and requirements, the senior high school Englishtextbooks published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press are chosen as myresearch objectives. And I make analyses of cultural elements in four parts of the eighttextbooks-----Topic, Reading, Listening and Speaking, Cultural Corner and also give theirproportional tables. Here the cultural elements can be divided into two categories. The firstcategory involves knowledge culture and communicative culture. The second one includestarget language culture, native language culture, international target language culture,comparative culture and other culture. By virtue of cultural elements analyses, there are tworesearch purposes. Firstly, the thesis makes an objective and fair judgment to the culturalelements of the textbooks including their merits and shortcomings. Secondly, these analyticresults give some thoughts and implications for the cultivation of students’ interculturalcommunicative competence and the forms and contents of English test paper incollege-entrance examination.The thesis adopts literature analyses method and text analyses method, with the help ofqualitative research and quantitative research to analyze cultural elements of the four parts inthe textbooks. Finally my thesis must have some shortcomings, and I hope that teachers andscholars can put forward their valuable suggestions.