An Evaluation Of English Textbooks From The Perspective Of Intercultural Communicative Communication

In 2017,the latest edition of the General Senior High School English Curriculum Standard(hereinafter referred to as the new "Curriculum Standard")was promulgated by the Ministry of Education.The new Curriculum Standard defines four core competences of English subject: language ability,thinking quality,learning ability and cultural awareness.Among them,"Cultural awareness refers to the understanding of Chinese and foreign cultures and the recognition of excellent cultures.It is the cross-cultural cognition,attitude and behavior orientation of students in the context of globalization." Cultural awareness includes cultural knowledge,cultural understanding,intercultural communication awareness and ability.The cultivation of Cross-cultural Communicative Competence is directly related to the overall objectives of the new "Curriculum Standard".In this context,more and more attention has been paid to cross-cultural teaching.In the foreign language teaching of senior high school in our country,the teaching material is not only the main basis of teaching,but also the important carrier of teaching content,which guides the teaching of teachers and the learning of students.A good set of English teaching materials can ensure the effective implementation of the syllabus,but also make the teaching quality get a unified guarantee.Based on the theories of textbook evaluation and cultural teaching,this paper first analyzes the reading and listening input materials from the two dimensions of cultural types and cultural regions,from the Book 1 to the Book 5 of New Senior English for China(hereinafter referred to as NSEFC),aiming to learn about the cultural features of this part of NSEFC.Then it investigates and studies the actual use of NSEFC by the users and their evaluations on NSEFC,and puts forward some suggestions on the future teaching materials revision and how to effectively use the teaching materials for cultural teaching.The questions to be answered in this paper are as follows:(1)What is the cultural content of the reading and listening input materials of NSEFC and how do they distribute?(2)Do the teaching material users(teachers and students)have the awareness to cultivate students' Cross-cultural Communicative Competence? What are their suggestions on the use and arrangement of reading and listening input materials in NSEFC?The findings are as follows:(1)According to the theories of Byram's cultural types and Cortazzi & Jin' cultural regions,the distribution of cultural types and cultural regions in the reading and listening input materials of NSEFC are unbalanced.(2)Based on the results of questionnaires and interviews,although the users of teaching materials have a certain awareness of the cultivation of Cross-cultural Communicative Competence,they have not yet implemented this awareness into daily teaching.In the practical teaching,the importance of the cultivation of Cross-cultural Communicative Competence has not been truly valued,the teaching of Cross-cultural Communicative Competence has not been promoted,and the development of students' intercultural competence is still lack of the realities.Teachers and students generally think that they just need to follow the teaching materials,and do not have their own ideas about choosing the teaching content.For the cultural content of reading and listening input materials in NSEFC,teachers and students generally think that it is a little difficult beyond students' abilities.And its novelty and interest need to be strengthened.Therefore,when it comes to the cultural distribution characteristics of the reading and listening input materials of the textbook,and the suggestions put forward by the users of the textbook,the author believes that,on the one hand,the editor should hold an open mind.While ensuring the amount of culture in the target language and increasing the content of cultural contrast,the textbook should contain the representative of the world's excellent culture as wide a space-time span as possible.On the other hand,according to the requirements of the new "curriculum standard",the content of native culture should be appropriately increased,so as to balance the proportion of native culture,target culture and world culture in the teaching materials,and enhance students' national self-confidence and pride.It is also necessary to strengthen the cross-cultural context of materials and cultivatecultural literacy,be good at using teaching materials,flexibly adopt a variety of teaching methods,and promote the continuous development of students' language use ability in cross-cultural communication.While learning the language knowledge of teaching materials,students should know how to draw inferences,fully accumulate relevant cultural knowledge,and improve their cross-cultural communication knowledge.