A Study Of Cultural Contents In English Textbooks For Senior High School

With the development of globalization,China is rapidly integrating into the trend of the world economy.As the official language of the world,English is getting more and more attentions from people.Culture is an indispensable part of language,so it is a general trend to gradually increase the proportion of culture content in English teaching.The Ministry of Education issued the Curriculum Standard for Senior High School English which emphasizes that one of the specific goals of the senior high school English curriculum is to cultivate and develop students' cultural awareness.As an indispensable part of English teaching materials,the quality of cultural contents determines the quality of students' cultural learning to a great extent.At present,the textbooks of Beijing Normal University version are used in some middle schools in Henan Province.But few researches have been conducted to investigate whether the cultural contents in this set of textbooks can meet the requirements of the curriculum standard and English learning.To fill this gat,this study will examine the textbooks from this aspect.This thesis takes the English textbooks published by Beijing normal University Press and the senior school students from NO.11 Middle School of Jiaozuo as the major research subjects.It tries to answer three questions as follows:(1)What kinds of cultural contents are involved in the textbooks for senior high school students which are published by Beijing Normal University Press?(2)What are the characteristics of the distribution of the cultural contents in these textbooks?(3)What are the attitudes of students towards the cultural contents? The present thesis studies the compulsory part of the textbooks(Module 1-Module 5),sorts out the cultural contents in them and analyzes the result.A questionnaire is also applied to the students to obtain information about their understanding of the cultural contents and their attitudes towards culture teaching.The one hundred students who take part in the investigation are all selected randomly.The research findings are as follows:(1)The cultural topics in the textbooks cover a wide range,such as: science,traffic,economy,art,education,etc.They can meet most of the requirements of the curriculum standards.However,the religious traditions of English-speaking countries and the common sayings,allusions and legends which are commonly used in English communication are rarely involved.(2)The cultural contents in these textbooks include the native culture,the foreign culture,the contrastive cultureand other cultures.The distribution is quite balanced,while few contents of cultural contrast between China and foreign countries are included.(3)Senior high school students have positive attitudes towards the cultural contents which are included in the textbooks.Most of the students pay attention to the cultural contents in the process of English learning and realize the importance of cultural learning.At the same time,most students are willing to spend time to learn the culture of English and foreign countries.However,the lack of due attention to the culture teaching in English daily classroom,the effect and function of culture teaching in reality is not satisfactory.As a whole,the cultural contents of the textbooks published by Beijing Normal University Press do not seem to adequately meet all the standards required.And in the practical teaching,the time which teachers spend on culture is not enough.At the last chapter of the thesis,some suggestions have been offered to the textbooks writers and the senior high school teachers.