An Analysis Of The Cultural Factors In English Textbooks For High School

The importance and necessity of culture teaching has been widely acknowledged by experts and educators. Curriculum Standards for Senior English (2003) issued by the Ministry of Education considered the cultivation of the students’cultural awareness as one of the objectives in senior English teaching. The aim of English teaching in high school is to develop students’comprehensive ability of using language, cultivate their intercultural awareness and improve their intercultural communicative competence.Textbooks are regarded as an important resource in the implementation of culture teaching and they should contain sufficient cultural contents to cultivate students’ cultural awareness and improve their intercultural communicative competence. The study analyzes and evaluates New Standard English published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press in order to explore the cultivation of cultural awareness based on the cultural contents. The study tries to answer the following questions:(1) What are the cultural factors in NSE?(2) What are the students’and teachers’attitude to culture teaching?(3) What is the influence of NSE on cultural awareness?The author analyzes the cultural factors in the first five volumes and classifies them into groups. In addition to textbook analysis, the research also employs three methods in the research. Classroom observation is designed to know the present situation of culture teaching in English teaching. With the permission of5English teachers at Grade2, the author attend20classes in all. Culture teaching methods that the teachers employ in class are paid special attention to in the observation. Whether students like their teachers’method of teaching culture and how they interact with the teachers are also the tasks of the observation.13English teachers are interviewed in the research for the author wants to know teachers’attitude towards culture teaching and the difficulty that they meet. The questionnaire is designed to collect information about students’attitudes towards learning foreign cultures in English class and the methods of teaching culture.100randomly selected students are involved in the research.The results indicate that:(1) The situation and the results of culture teaching are far from satisfactory and the requirements in the curriculum standards seem almost to have been ignored in practice. Although85%of the teachers admit cultivation of students’cultural awareness is of great importance, they still adopt their traditional teaching methods in English teaching;(2)71%of the students hope to know about cultures in English-speaking countries and they are interested in foreign cultures;(3) The textbooks cover a wide range of topics, such as education, economy, politics, art, literature etc. Foreign culture and Chinese culture are all included in the textbooks, which meets the requirements of intercultural knowledge development at Level7and8in the curriculum. However, the effect of the cultural factors on language learning and communication is limited.Based on the conclusions above, the improvement of culture teaching and textbook design is discussed. First, textbooks should contain some information about religion, politics and popular mass media. Second, teachers should be equipped with education knowledge as well as professional knowledge. English teachers need to know some knowledge of pedagogy and psychology. Third, teachers should assist students in forming the habit of learning by themselves. Students’learning autonomy need to be encouraged and assisted by teachers. Fourth, teachers should use the textbook flexibly and creatively, besides, variety of culture teaching methods need to be employed. At last, according to the theory of testing, tests are designed as devices to reinforce what students have learned and to motivate the students to study more. Therefore, items about cultural knowledge should be added to the test. Finally, as is suggested in the curriculum, teachers need to make supplements and adjustments to the contents. The author puts forward the limitations of the present research and makes some suggestions for further research at the end of the thesis.