Ananalysis On Cultural Content Of New Horizon College English Reading And Writing Course

The process of learning language means the process of learning a kindof culture, only if we learned this culture well, can we learn well aboutlanguage. As a carrier of culture, materials play a connection part indelivering culture. Our process of learning English language is equal toprocess of learning English culture, the process of teaching English is equalto the process of teaching culture. Language teaching can’t go on withoutculture teaching, to permeate culture teaching into language teaching willhelp us reach the finally goal, that is to cultivate our communicativecompetence.This thesis conducts a survey on English course book New HorizonCollege English Reading and Writing course used by the freshmen whostudy in Inner Mongolia Normal University. Two hundred and thirty-twostudents and twenty teachers were investigated by questionnaire andinterview, the main goal is to study the cultural content of material. Basedon Buttjes and Byrams’ material analysis theories, the thesis probes into twoquestions which are as follows: how do the materials reflect the culturalcontent and how do the users including both students and teachers evaluatethe cultural content of the materials.By analyzing and evaluating the materials, the author found that thecompiler of the book compiled the book from four perspectives, that ismicro culture, macro culture, internationalism and inter culture, and thecompiler’s values. Meanwhile, both teachers and students are holdingpositive attitudes toward the culture of the materials. They also believe thatthe cultural contents are related to the characters of times development; thecultural contents do also have a proper relation with grammar knowledgeand linguistic knowledge; and they can help cultivate the integrated abilities of students. However, in some aspects the materials still have some flaws.The native cultures and target cultures don’t have a close relationship witheach other; the material is lack of Chinese native culture; and there has alittle cultural content about European and America. Thus, the author wouldlike to offer some suggestions, firstly, with the development of times, oursociety changes continuously, the materials should be analyzed andevaluated regularly; some expectations of students and teachers should beintegrate into compiling the materials; more Chinese cultures should beadded in order to increase the relations between native cultures and targetlanguage cultures; finally materials should add some relations of Englishand other subjects, that will help us learning other knowledge.