An Analysis Of Cultural Contents In Reading Materials From The Perspective Of The New Curriculum Standards

With the rapid development of globalization,the cultural communication has become more and more frequent in the world and the opportunities of intercultural communication are gradually increasing.With the rapid development of foreign language teaching and learning,more and more scholars and educators have realized the importance of cultural knowledge in English learning.In recent years,there are so many scholars who have studied the cultural elements of different textbooks' versions.However,there is no research on the study of cultural contents of reading materials in compulsory textbooks of New Senior English for China.Therefore,from the perspective,author will make an internal and external evaluation for cultural contents of reading materials in the compulsory textbooks of New Senior English for China.The thesis mainly solves two questions as follows:(1)Do the cultural types and cultural contents of the reading materials meet the requirements of the seventh level of cultural awareness objectives in the New Curriculum Standards?(2)How does the textbook influence English teacher to carry out culture teaching?In this thesis,the author will select New Senior English for China,Students' Book 1-5(shortened as the NSEC)which are widely used,and makes an internal evaluation of the cultural types and cultural contents of the reading materials.(1)According to the requirements of cultural awareness objectives in New Curriculum Standards for Senior English(2013)(shortened as the “New Curriculum Standards”),the author will classify the cultural types of reading materials into two parts including the history,geography,local manner and customs,traditions and customs,lifestyle,literature and art,behavior norms and values and four types of regional culture including Chinese culture,British and American culture,world culture and contrast culture.(2)Based on the requirements of the seventh level of cultural awareness objectives in New Curriculum Standards,the author will categorize and evaluate the cultural contents of the reading materials.Finally,combined with Byram's theory of textbook evaluation concerned with cultural content,the author qualitatively analyzes the cultural contents in the reading materials,trying to categorize and quantify the distribution of different types of culture in NSEC.The author will study whether the cultural types and cultural contents of the reading materials meet the requirements of the seventh level of cultural awareness objectives in the New Curriculum Standards or not.For external evaluation of teaching materials,according to the questionnaire designed by Paloma Castro,the author made two questionnaires for the senior high school English teachers and students who use the textbook in order to learn about how the textbook influences teachers' cultural teaching.The main findings are as follows:(1)These reading materials are relatively reasonable and complementary in the NSEC Students' Book 1-5.The textbook focuses on the world culture.However,there are less articles which are concerned with local manner and customs,and contrast culture.In addition,the proportion of Chinese culture is relatively small.(2)The cultural contents of reading materials are comprehensive and close to students' life,which basically meets requirements of the seventh level of cultural awareness objectives in the New Curriculum Standards.But there are some limitations.For example,there are little cultural contents concerned with the main mass media,religious traditions in the English-speaking countries and the similarities and differences among Westerners as well as Chinese in terms of lifestyle,interpersonal behavior,behavior and so on.(3)From the survey,the author finds that the insufficient contrast culture in the textbook will cause some teachers not to teach contrast cultural knowledge or some teachers can take teaching progress and examination into consideration and they just simply mention some cultural knowledge designed in the teaching material.Sometimes,they can't even teach cultural knowledge in class.But a small part of the teachers attach great importance to cultural teaching,not only will they teach the cultural knowledge listed in the textbook but also they supply more cultural knowledge.It can be seen that the cultural setting of the textbook and the cultural awareness of the teachers play an important guiding role in the culture teaching.According to the internal and external evaluation of the textbook,the author puts forward the following suggestions:(1)Textbook editors should add multicultural content such as Chinese traditional culture,culture concerned with local manner and customs,religious culture and contrast culture between China and English-speaking countries.What's more,the editor should understand the feedback and needs of the textbook among the teachers and students.(2)Teachers should improve their own cultural quality,select and add cultural contents reasonably and carry out regularly culture test for students so as to improve students' intercultural awareness and intercultural communicative competence.