A Comparative Study On Cultural Contents Between Go For It (PEP) And New Standard(FLTRP) In Junior Middle School English Textbooks

With the development of globalization,English,as an international language,has become a link for international exchanges and cooperation,and cultural exchanges between countries around the world have become increasingly stronger.Cultural differences put forward new requirements for people's intercultural communication competence.In order to have more positive and equal interaction with countries around the world in cultural communication,foreign language teaching has paid more and more attention to developing students' intercultural communicative competence.Textbooks are the main tool for students to learn about culture.With the development of new curriculum standards,various versions of junior middle school English textbooks have come out one after another.The 2011 English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education incorporates cultural awareness into one of the five basic goals of English teaching and requires students who graduate from junior middle school to reach the level of cultural awareness at level 5,and the key to achieving this goal is whether the teaching material contains reasonable cultural content.Therefore,this thesis compares and analyzes the cultural content of two widely used in junior middle school English textbooks(PEP Edition and FLTRP Edition),and selects the reading part of each unit.They can be classified as the target language culture,source language culture,world culture,comparative culture and common culture.At the same time,each type of culture is subdivided into Big “C” and little “c”.The content analysis method is used to calculate the number and proportion of each culture in each set of teaching materials.Then,the method of combining qualitative analysis with quantitative analysis is used to compare and analyze the two versions of teaching materials,to sum up their differences and similarities,to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the two sets of teaching materials,to put forward practical opinions for the textbook editors,and to provide reference for teachers' cultural teaching.From the perspective of cultural types,this study finds that: 1)Both sets of textbooks pay more attention to the target language culture,while the source language culture is relatively small,and world culture is at the lowest position.2)The source language culture in PEP edition is slightly higher than that in the FLTRP version.3)The comparison between source language culture and world culture,the PEP edition is superior to the FLTRP edition.Although the FLTRP is dominant in the source language culture,the world culture is relatively small,in this respect,the PEP edition coordinates the proportion of the cultures of various countries,and the layout of the textbooks isrelatively reasonable.From the perspective of cultural themes,the major findings of this research are as follows: 1)The proportion of little “c” in the two sets of textbooks far exceeds that of Big “C”.2)In PEP,Big “C” in the source language culture accounts for the largest proportion,while little “c” in the target language culture dominates;and in the FLTRP edition,Big “C” and little “c” in the target language culture occupy the largest proportion.3)Lifestyles and values of little “c” account for a large proportion,and literature/art has a large proportion in Big “C”.Through a comparative analysis of the two sets of textbooks,it is suggested that textbook writers should pay attention to the diversity of cultural types,the diversity of cultural topics,and increase knowledge of world culture and geography and history.For English teachers,they should fully understand the culture in the textbooks,then properly integrate and supplement cultural contents in practical teaching,and cultivate students' cross-cultural communication skills.