Comparative Analysis Of Cultural Orientation Between Advance With English (Jiangsu Edition) And Senior High English (Beijing Normal University Press)

In2003,the Ministry of Education of China promulgated the new National English Curriculum Standards(trial version) of English teaching in senior high schools.The new Standards 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. Nowadays,teaching material is still the main channel for high school students to gain cultural knowledge.As the main resource and tool for students’learning,the cultural content of it has a significant effect on culture teaching.With the promulgating of the new National English Curriculum Standards,many kinds of high school English teaching materials appeared one by one.They all contain some cultural content but have a little difference in selection and configuration.Considering all these factors,the author selects two wide-spread used versions of high school English teaching materials:Advance with English (Jiangsu edition) and Senior High English which published by Beijing Normal University Press,to make a comparative analysis.The author first review the previous research outcomes in culture teaching and textbook evaluation.Based on Risager’s model for cultural contents analysis in English teaching materials, the author forms a model appropriate for this research after making some adjustments. Using the model, this research conducts a detailed comparative analysis on the cultural contents of the reading materials in the five core modules from the following three aspects:micro-culture, macro-culture and international culture.Then the author classifies the topics of the reading into five categories:target culture,native culture,constractive culture,universal culture and common culture and calculates the percentage of each culture of each book.This research puts emphasis on the following aspects:First, what kinds of cultural contents are incorporated in the two sets of teaching materials and are they in accord with the requirements of new Standards? Second, what are the similarities or differences between the two sets of teaching materials in cultural contents selection and configuration and what advantages and disadvantages do they have? Third,what implications can provide for teachers and textbook compilers?In a word,the two teaching materials encompass cultural contents in terms of international culture.macro-culture and micro-culture,so both teaching materials conform to the requirements of New Standards in this regard. In addition to the similarities the two textbooks share, there also exist some differences.Advance with English(Jiangsu edition) selects some characters whose age is similar to the students,while Senior High English (Beijing Normal University Press) designs "culture corner".Through the analysis, the study hopes to provide some implications for the teachers to better conduct culture teaching when using the teaching materials and to give the textbook compilers some suggestions to further improve the teaching materials in the future.