| The Senior High School English Curriculum Standard was released in 2017,which specifies the importance to develop students' cross-cultural awareness and communication,laying emphasis on English literacy as well as language ability,learning capacity,thinking quality and cultural orientation.It is evident that culture is receiving more attention in English teaching.Course books serve as important tools of foreign language teaching and the major media of cultural transmission.They are supposed to be compiled in accordance with the categorized requirements of The Senior High School English Curriculum Standard for cultural awareness so as to integrate language with culture,develop students' cross-cultural awareness and communication and thus achieve the ultimate goal of foreign language teaching.This thesis is written on the basis of The Senior High School English Curriculum Standard(2017)and combines related theories on course book evaluation and culture teaching.It first analyses the cultural orientation of the topics and functions in each unit from module 1 to 5 in terms of knowledge culture and communicative culture,and then a further analysis is made of the cultural orientation in Reading and Listening of the same unit in aspects of world culture,target culture,native culture,comparative culture as well as other cultures,aiming at figuring out the compiling features of the culture orientation in Senior High English by Beijing Normal University Publishing House and how the set of course books is used and evaluated so that constructive suggestions can be offered on future course book revision as well as how teachers impart culture effectively in classroom teaching.The following questions will be settled in this thesis.(1)How is cultural orientation in Senior High English designed?(2)What is students' and teachers'evaluation of the design of cultural orientation?How are cultural materials used in actual teaching?What are the problems or difficulties in learning and teaching this course book?(3)What are the advantages and disadvantages of the design of cultural orientation in Senior High English?After rigorous analysis and laborious research,the following conclusions have been drawn,(1)The design of culture items is generally topic-centered,which is close to students' daily life,arousing their interest in learning the language.This topic-centered design is also in accordance with requirement of The Senior High School English Curriculum Standard(2017)that language teaching should improve the overall development of students and help them know much about the world.(2)Both the teachers and students hold the view that the arrangement of the course books can satisfy the need in teaching and learning.Generally speaking,the culture items are presented diversely in some units,showing various cultures,which helps cultivate students' comprehension of the culture items in different ways.On the other hand,the design of culture items also has some drawbacks.Owing to the topic-centered design,the arrangement of culture items is not very diverse and coherent,causing some difficulty in cultivating students' cross-cultural awareness.(2)Enough practice is of great importance in culture learning.But most of the culture materials are out of date.The nation culture and other cultures are not sufficient,causing students improper attitudes towards our own national culture,which cannot enhance their communicative competence.(3)Besides,according to the survey,some teachers hold the belief that the design is not good enough for them to use the course book effectively and efficiently and they can't get any professional help on how to use English to convey culture properly.So in this thesis,on the basis of the above conclusion,combined with relative cultural theories,a series of cross-cultural teaching strategies and methods will be put forward to cultivate students' ability of cross-cultural communication effectively,meanwhile some advice for compilers of the course books will be given. |
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