A Study On The Cultural Orientation In PEP New Senior English For China

Cultural awareness is one of the core literacy for English subject(MOE,2018).As a significant carrier,the textbook plays an important role in cultivating cultural awareness.This study is focused on the analysis of cultural orientation in the elective modules of PEP New Senior English for China,which is to evaluate the cultural contents and survey the users' opinions so that the future compilation and use of the textbooks can be improved.To be specific,the research is to answer the following questions:(1)How are the cultural contents designed in the elective modules of New Senior English for China in terms of cultural contents selection and arrangement? What are the advantages and disadvantages in the compilation of cultural contents?(2)How do teachers and students evaluate the cultural contents in elective modules?(3)What impacts does the effective use of cultural contents in elective modules have on teaching and learning on the basis of the cultural orientation in the textbooks? Why does it have such impacts?To answer these questions,the researcher combines the static study and dynamic study.The cultural orientation is analyzed from three aspects: macro-culture,microculture and internationality of culture.And the study conducts the questionnaires on 400 senior students and 27 English teachers and the interviews with six students and two teachers in a senior high school in Fujian Province.Besides,the classroom observation is also involved.The research findings are as follows:Firstly,the compilation of macro-culture and micro-culture is reasonable,but the proportion of different cultures is apparently uneven.The cultural topics cover a wide range,which helps students learn target language and its culture;however,the proportion of different cultural contents varies so greatly that the students cannot develop clear understanding of cultural uniqueness and diversity.Secondly,most students take notice of the diversity of cultural topics,but they point out the cultural contents are out of date and not interesting enough.Teachers also consider it important to cultivate cultural awareness,but they admit they encounter some contradictions in practical teaching.Students want the contents to be updated and be closer to life,and teachers indicate that language teaching and culture teaching complement each other,and the latter should be a habit from the very beginning.Thirdly,the effective use of cultural contents in class can provide students with happiness and effectiveness in learning,and teachers can also obtain sense of achievement from the teaching,which helps to form a virtuous circle in teaching and learning.This is because the cultural orientation and features of the textbooks are identified and analyzed,and the teachers can use diverse teaching methods and aids to carry out teaching activities based on the students' psychological situation and learning condition so that textbooks' superiority can be brought into full play.At the end,the researcher puts up several suggestions for textbook compilers and teachers.On one hand,the compilers should balance the proportion of different cultures to help students improve intercultural communication ability.The tacit and explicit culture can also be taken into account.The cultural contents should follow students' cognitive development and be updated timely.On the other hand,teachers should enhance culture teaching awareness,use teaching methods flexibly,create a fertile cultural learning environment and look for other learning materials as supplementary.There are still some limitations in this study,such as a single textbook evaluation model and the small sample size.In the future research,more evaluation models can be combined and the studies can be conducted in different areas to enlarge the sample size.