A Comparison Of The Roles Of Chinese And British English Textbooks In Critical Intercultural Language Pedagogy

Critical intercultural pedagogy(CILP)is defined as the teaching methods and practice that enhance students' intercultural communicative competence and encourages students to shoulder intercultural responsibility by taking actions to transform the society and world into a better one.There are many studies on evaluating culture contents in English teaching materials.However,there is little research on comparing the roles of Chinese and British English textbooks in conducting CILP.Therefore,in order to fill this research gap this study adopts external evaluation method by investigating teachers' perspectives.The aim is to compare the roles of Chinese and British English textbooks in conducting CILP by taking New Standard English(NSE)which is published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press and English in Mind(EIM)which is published by Cambridge University Press as examples.This research investigates teachers' perspectives on six behavioral objectives and on whether topics,contents and exercises in textbooks can help to achieve the six objectives in order to investigate whether there are significant differences among roles of Chinese and British English textbooks in conducting CILP.CILP has six behavioral objectives.The first one is attitudes which include curiosity and openness to otherness,readiness to suspend disbelief about other cultures and belief about one's own,respect freedom,seek justice and equality,and recognize pluralism and cooperation.The second objective is knowledge which includes knowledge of self,other,and individual and societal interactions.The third objective is skills of interpreting and relating which means the ability to interpret and explain another culture's documents or events and relate them to those of one's own.The fourth objective is skills of discovery and interaction which means the ability to acquire and operate knowledge of a culture under the constraints of real-time communication.The fifth objective is critical cultural awareness/political education which means the ability to critically evaluate the cultural practices of one's own and other cultures from rational and explicit perspectives.The sixth objective is intercultural communication action which means taking actions to transform the society and the world.In terms of the categorization of topics and contents,based on Risager's framework there are topics and contents at the micro level,the macro level,and international and intercultural level.As for the categorization of exercises,based on Zhou et al's categorization there are three types of exercises which include reading comprehension exercises,language knowledge and skills exercises,and intercultural and intercultural communication action exercises.A mix-method approach including questionnaire and afterwards semi-structured interviews was used in this research.Book 5 and 6 of NSE and Book 4 of EIM are commonly used in the second year of high school in China and were chosen as examples.There are two groups of participants: 33 teachers who teach NSE and 37 teachers who teach EIM and NSE.Among these participants,six teachers were selected to participate in the interviews.Tools of data collection for the study were online questionnaires and interview questions.Descriptive analysis,independent-samples T test and Friedman test were utilized on quantitative data,and thematic analysis was used on the qualitative data.The results revealed that most teachers understand CILP in a way which is roughly aligned with the objectives of CILP in the literature,and teachers have highly recognition of the six objectives.These suggest that two groups of teachers have much relevant background knowledge and cognition,and have conducted CILP to a different extent.Topics,contents and exercises in Chinese and British English textbooks can achieve the six objectives to different degrees,but topics,contents and exercises about international and intercultural issues can best help to achieve the six objectives.Intercultural and intercultural communication action exercises in British English textbooks can better help to achieve the six objectives.Chinese English textbooks have less topics at international and intercultural level,less intercultural and intercultural communication action exercises,and are less authentic than British English textbooks.There are some common challenges to using Chinese and British English textbooks in conducting CILP.These challenges include teachers' pressure to supplement materials,mismatch between assessment and CILP,and overemphasis on exam scores.Corresponding solutions include cooperation of lesson plan groups,alignment between assessment and CILP,and a balance between exam-oriented education and CILP.Relevant implications for policymakers of English language assessment,textbook designers,schools and teachers are also suggested.