A Comparative Study On Attitudinal Resources In Cultural Content In China’s And Japan’s Senior High School English Textbooks

With the ongoing expansion of cultural exchanges among many countries,the value of culture teaching is further highlighted in subject teaching,and English,as a cross-cultural and communicative language,plays an important role in education.Newly issued Senior High School English Curriculum 2017 lists cultural awareness as one of the key competencies of students,and requirements are proposed for the cultivation of students’ cultural awareness.The cultivation of students’ cultural awareness is inseparably linked with the establishment of students’ attitude towards cultures,which further confirms the importance of cultivating students’ correct and objective attitudes towards cultures.Textbook is an important medium for students’ learning and teachers’ teaching.Attitudes towards cultures conveyed by the cultural reading materials selected by textbook compilers affect the establishment of students’ correct attitudes towards cultures.Both Japan and China are countries that belong to the East Asian cultural circle and Japan also put forward requirements for textbooks in guiding learners’ cognition and understanding of cultures in its programmatic document The National Curriculum Standards.Based on the Appraisal Theory,this study adopts the methods of literature research,text analysis,comparative study and interview to analyze the cultural reading materials in China’s senior high school textbooks（People’s Education edition 2019）1 to 3 and Japan’s high school English textbooks All Aboard! English Communication Ⅰ,Ⅱ,Ⅲ.The study conducts a comparative analysis on the uses of attitudinal resources in the cultural reading materials in these two sets of textbooks,analyzes attitudinal meanings of cultural content so as to provide relevant suggestions for the compilation of cultural reading materials in English textbooks and English culture teaching in senior high schools.The results show that on the whole,the cultural reading materials of two sets of books use different kinds of attitudinal resources of three subsystems,and both highlight the use of appreciation resources and emphasize the objectivity of language;two sets of textbooks show positive attitudes towards most cultures.Though there are a certain number of negative attitudinal resources in two sets of textbooks,the functions of some are different;there are inscribed and invoked attitudes in both sets of textbooks,and both sets of textbooks focus more on the use of invoked attitudes,while there are differences in the degree of using invoked attitudes.By analyzing the attitudinal resources in different kinds of cultural reading materials in details,it is found that the two sets of textbooks basically hold a positive attitude,but both show negative attitudes towards some appraised cultures;two sets of textbooks put different emphasis on the uses of attitudinal resources;on the whole,attitudinal resources of sub-systems in cultural reading materials in China’s senior high school textbooks are relatively more comprehensive than those in All Aboard! English Communication;two sets of textbooks put different emphasis on the uses of sub-level attitudinal resources of three sub-systems.Based on these research results,suggestions are put forward from the aspects of both the compilation of cultural reading materials in English textbooks and English culture teaching in senior high schools,in order to strengthen the awareness of cultivating students’ correct attitudes towards cultures in English cultural teaching in senior high schools and promote the cultivation of students’ cultural awareness.