| In the past two decades,curriculum changes have been gradually implemented in China,and the concept of English education is constantly updated.People have generally recognized the significance of culture in English teaching,and the discussion of the relationship between English language and culture has also become an important research field.The Senior High School English Curriculum standards（2017 edition,2020 Revision）lists "cultural awareness" as one of the four key competences for the English subject,aiming to help students acquire cultural knowledge,understand cultural connotation,compare cultural similarities and differences,and learn to spread Chinese culture.National Matriculation English Test（NMET）is one of the most important examinations in China,which has an obvious backwash effect on high school English teaching and learning.However,there are few studies on the culture elements of the items in NMET.Studying the culture elements of NMET can not only enrich our understanding of this field,but also help to improve the design of NMET in terms of cultural richness,so as to form a positive backwash effect on senior high school English education,to promote a good cultural learning atmosphere in the classroom,and to actively guide students’ cultural learning.This study mainly adopted the methods of text analysis and interviewing.By analyzing a total of 2341 test items from 16 Zhejiang test papers,20 New Curriculum Standards NMET test papers from 2010 to 2021,and 3 New NMET test papers from2020 to 2021,the research explored the similarities and differences of the culture elements in these three exams in terms of the category of the culture content,the region of the culture content and the culture competence involved in the items,and the changes over time.In addition,this study interviewed senior high school English teachers and Jiaoyanyuan in order to understand the teachers’ attitude towards culture teaching and their views and suggestions on adding culture test to NMET.The findings include that there were a variety of categories of culture content in all three types of NMET papers,but the distribution of the culture categories was not balanced;there were many differences in the culture categories between Zhejiang test papers and the NMET test papers over the years,and the New Curriculum Standard NMET test papers were more in line with the requirements of the New Curriculum Standards;significantly more single-region culture items were found than cross-region culture items;NMET test papers paid more attention to Chinese culture,while Zhejiang test papers prioritized inner circle cultures;very few items examined culture competence in all three exams,and Zhejiang test papers focused more on culture knowledge while the NMET test papers focused more on culture skills;senior high school English teachers have paid sufficient attention to culture teaching in the class,but they seldom analyze the NMET items from the perspective of culture;teachers generally support the introduction of cultural test into the NMET,but they prefer to integrate the culture test into the existing item types and do not support the establishment of a separate culture test section. |
