An Empirical Research On The Cultural Contents In New Horizon English Course

Nowadays, culture teaching has played an increasingly important role in collegeEnglish teaching. In2007, the Requirements for College English Curriculum was issued;intercultural communication competence is considered to be one of the importantobjectives for language teaching. Emphasis on culture teaching provides a novel targetand direction for English education in both theoretical development and teaching practice.This research analyzed and examined cultural contents in New Horizon English Course(Reading and Writing, Second Edition,2009; will be written as NHEC in the followingpart), hoping that the research findings could shed some lights on English textbooksediting and college English teaching in terms of culture aspects.Based on the textbook evaluation proposed by Byram (1993), a survey on theinternal and external evaluation is conducted.116students and35teachers participated inthe present research. The internal evaluation is designed from the following aspects: socialidentity and social group, social interaction, belief and behavior, social and politicalinstitutions, socialization and the life cycle, national history, national geography,stereotypes and national identity. The external evaluation questionnaire is based on thequestionnaires made by Liu Yan (2009) and Wei Xingxing (2012). Two questionnaireswere used to collect the views of the teachers and students about culture teaching andcultural contents in NHEC. Then all the data are coded and analyzed by SPSS16.0.The findings of the internal evaluation of NHEC indicate (Research Question1):NHEC does not cover all the eight cultural themes listed in Byram’s cultural classification(1993); Both national geography and social and political institutions are not mentioned inany texts. However, there is also cultural diversity in NHEC because some cultural themesare repeated throughout the whole textbooks, which display and interpret different facetsof culture from different angles and with varied degrees. And this set of textbooks is American-culture-oriented and lacks the native cultural contents.The findings of the external evaluation of NHEC indicate (Research Question2,3,4):Most teachers and students are not satisfied with the cultural contents in NHEC; both ofthem attach more importance to linguistic objectives than cultural objectives; and theyview cultural learning just in knowledge dimension, neglecting cultural learning in termsof behavioral dimension and attitudinal dimension.