A Study On The Cultivation Of Senior High School Students' Intercultural Communicative Awareness Based On Textbook Evaluation

Cultivating students' cultural awareness and intercultural communicative competence has been explicitly required as one of five English teaching objectives in the National English Curriculum Standards for Senior High Schools(2003)(NECS).The cultural awareness has been considered as one of key competences of English language teaching in the latest English Curriculum Standards for Senior High Schools(2017),which strengthens the cultivation of students' cultural awareness.In order to follow the requirements of the NECS and decrease the failure of intercultural communication,emphasizing the cultivation of students' intercultural communicative awareness becomes particularly important.Additionally,textbooks are regarded as one of the significant components in English language teaching and the crucial medium to pass on various cultural information.Textbooks are not only helpful in cultivating students' intercultural communicative awareness and intercultural communicative competence,but also can deepen students' understanding of the excellent Chinese traditional cultures through contrastive learning between Chinese cultures and cultures from English-speaking countries.The textbooks of the New Standard English in senior high school,published by the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press(FLTRP),are taken as an example.Based on the Seven-Level Requirements of Cultural Awareness Objectives in the NECS,the textbooks evaluation criteria of Cunningsworth,McDonough & Shaw,Litz,Yasemin et al,are taken as references.The topics,activities,genres,language skills and layout are chosen as five evaluation criteria to analyze the cultural contents in the textbooks.Two research questions are raised for the study:(1)What cultural information is provided in New Standard English for cultivating senior high school students' intercultural communicative awareness?(2)Can and how can the cultural information provided help teachers with the cultivation of senior high school students' intercultural communicative awareness?To answer the research questions,the author also selected 200 students and 4 teachers in senior two from a senior high school in Chengdu,Sichuan province as the objects of study,and the questionnaire and interview are used to collect data.Synthesizing the evaluation and survey,the findings are as follows:(1)Abundant cultural information closed to students' life is presented in New Standard English,which is conformed to the requirements of the NECS.Different kinds of Chinese and exotic cultural information,and contrastive study of cultural differences,have been provided in the textbooks.(2)The arrangement of cultural information is helpful for the teachers to develop students' intercultural communicative awareness,but the cultural information and contents related to intercultural communication may not be comprehensive enough.(3)Some cultural information is out-of-date,which is lack of distinct contrast between Chinese cultures and cultures from English-speaking countries.Meanwhile,teachers are also confronted with quite a few difficulties in the process of cultural teaching,e.g.insufficient reference material and a lack of cultural knowledge.Based on the results of the study,it is hoped that the study can provide some references for the improvement of the textbooks in relation to the cultivation of students' intercultural communicative awareness.Recommendations on how to develop students' intercultural communicative awareness are also provided.