Comparative Analysis Of Cultural Orientation In Junior Middle School English Textbooks Between China And Korea

In 2011,the Ministry of Education of China promulgated Compulsory Education English Curriculum Standards(the new English curriculum).A much more feasible goal that students should learn to introduce Chinese traditional festivals and archetypal cultural customs in English is added in it.As we all know,English textbooks are the concomitants of English curriculum standards.So the new edition of English textbooks is bound to make changes in cultural contents.China and Republic of Korea belong to East Asian countries,and they have a similar cultural background.Recently the strong sense of protecting traditional culture in Korea has impressed us deeply.English is also a major foreign language taught in Republic of Korea,so it faces the same problem of how to deal with the relationship between native culture and foreign cultures in English language teaching(ELT).Teaching materials play an important role in culture teaching.They are media of cultural heritage and also typical input materials for students to learn English.Therefore,cultural orientation of Korean English textbooks and the methods to deal with different cultures in them can be used for reference.In this thesis,the author chooses Go for it(PEP)which is most widely used in China and Middle School English(Doosan Dong-A)which takes the highest market share in Korea to make a comparative analysis.The author forms an analytical model for this research on the basis of Risager's model for cultural contents analysis with necessary adaptation.Using this model,the author carries out a detailed comparative analysis of cultural contents included in the reading materials of the two series of textbooks through qualitative and quantitative research from the following three aspects: micro-culture,macro-culture and international culture.Thus the following three questions of the research can be tackled.1.What are the similarities and differences between the two sets of textbooks in the selection and presentation of cultural contents?2.Is there anything we can learn from Middle School English to improve the cultural contents in Go for it?3.Are the cultural contents in Go for it in accordance with the requirements of the new English curriculum?By and large,the two sets of English textbooks encompass cultural contents in terms of micro-culture,macro-culture and international culture,so reading materials in both of them conform to the requirements of English curriculum standards in the aspect of cultural diversity.In addition to the similarity the two series of textbooks share,there also exist some differences in the selection and presentation of cultural contents.With respect to international culture,Go for it for China takes common culture as the guidance and the proportion of native culture is similar to target culture,while Middle School English for Korea is guided by target culture and the presentation of cultural contents is more diversified.Through comparative analysis,the author hopes to provide some suggestions for the teachers to conduct culture teaching better when using the teaching material and for textbook compilers to further improve teaching materials in the future.