A Comparative Study On Chinese Cultural Contents And Foreign Cultural Contents In New Senior English For China

With the fast-growing advancement of economic globalization and educational globalization,intercultural language learning(IcLL)has become extremely important in modern language teaching and learning,and there is an increasing need to integrate language and culture for intercultural communication.Moreover,English Curriculum Criteria has put much more emphasis on the development of students' cultural awareness.Under such situation,culture teaching gradually becomes an essential component of language teaching and learning.During the process of culture teaching,textbooks play a vital role in students' culture learning.After reading various literatures and thesis,the author finds that there is a vacancy in the comparative research on Chinese cultural contents and foreign cultural contents of both compulsory and optional textbooks.Hence,the author chooses to conduct a comparative research on this aspect in order to figure out the following three questions:1)What is the exact constitution of both foreign and source culture?Does the percentage of source culture conform to the standard of 15%?20%?2)How do students and teachers perceive the cultural contents of the chosen textbooks?3)For foreign culture and source culture,what are the strengths and weaknesses of the compilation?To deal with the above three questions,the author applies both quantitative research and qualitative research.Documentary analysis is employed to evaluate the Chinese cultural contents and foreign cultural contents of the eleven textbooks(B1-B5:compulsory;B6-B11:optional).And then a questionnaire is conducted to make it clear how students perceive the cultural contents in NSEC(New Senior English for China).The questionnaire is randomly distributed to the students from four senior high schools.At the same time,an interview with eight senior high English teachers is carried out to obtain teachers' assessment and suggestions on the cultural contents in NSEC.After all the data have been collected and analyzed,the findings of this research are listed as follows:First,foreign cultural contents in NSEC are systematically arranged and distributed with affluent topics,and their categories are in accord with Byram's evaluation checklist.By contrast,Chinese cultural contents have no adequate categories and are not so systematically distributed in NSEC.But the percentage of Chinese cultural contents is surprisingly 18.9%which is between the standard range from 15%-20%.It suggests that the category of Chinese cultural contents needs to be enriched.Second,both teachers and students hold a positive attitude towards the overall cultural contents in NSEC.They acknowledge the importance of culture teaching to language teaching and students have an interest in the learning of both foreign culture and source culture.For foreign cultural contents,both teachers and students give a positive assessment;while for Chinese cultural contents,there are several critical opinions on its insufficient categories and contents.Third,based on Byram's checklist and the results of content analysis,questionnaire and interview,the weaknesses and strengths of both foreign cultural contents and Chinese cultural contents are listed as follows:for one thing,Chinese cultural contents have inadequate cultural information and are lack of abundant cultural categories.Also,the extreme imbalance of distribution hinders students understanding of their source culture.However,the English version of some Chinese traditional words should be commended.For another,foreign cultural contents are systematically arranged and have abundant categories.Sufficient cultural information also makes it easier for the development of students' intercultural competence.Nevertheless,the weaknesses of the compilation of foreign cultural contents lie on the imbalanced distribution of cultural categories and insufficient cultural activities.Based on the results and its discussion,this thesis has both theoretical and practical significance.Theoretically,it can fill the vacancy in comparative study of foreign cultural contents and Chinese cultural contents,intriguing scholars to figure out an appropriate percentage of Chinese cultural contents in textbooks.Practically,the thesis benefits both teachers and textbook compilers.Knowing the weaknesses and strengths of cultural contents in NSEC,teachers would adopt different measures to foster culture teaching in language teaching.Textbook compilers will as well strike a balance between different cultures in the textbooks.