On Intercultural Authenticity In High School English Textbooks Adaptation

The 2017 Edition of English Curriculum Standards for General High School lists cultural awareness as one of the four core literacies and cultural knowledge as one of the six elements of High School English Curriculum.It also proposes that intercultural communication strategies and abilities should be actively developed.The important way to realize high school English intercultural education is to guarantee the intercultural authenticity.English textbooks adaptation is almost routine for teaching purposes.However,textbooks adaptation would bring damages to intercultural authenticity.Based on the concept and assessment criteria of intercultural authenticity,the study analyzes the adapted texts from the English Textbooks of 2020 by Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press(the English Textbooks)with NVivo12.0 from the five dimensions of intercultural authenticity analysis framework in quantitative and qualitative aspects of adaptation frequency and influence effect to provide suggestions for textbooks writers and front-line teachers.The conclusions of the study are as follows:(1)The adaptation frequency is generally moderate.The adaptation of foreign textbooks is significant,while that of blogs and Chinese classics translation is subtle.There are mainly three adaptation techniques of “Deletion”,“Substitution” and “Addition” and nine detailed adaptation methods of “Sentence Deletion”,“Word Substitution” and“Paragraph Deletion”;(2)The texts mainly use “Deletion”,“Substitution” and “Addition” to adapt image representations,“Deletion”,“Substitution” and “Addition” to adapt socio-economic,political and historical representations,“Deletion” to adapt cultural symbols representations,“Simplification” to adapt intercultural representations,“Deletion”,“Substitution” and “Addition” to adapt author’s intentions;(3)The texts’ sources are authentic and the frequency of adaptation is moderate,reflecting the intercultural authenticity to a certain extent.Adaptation process of the English Textbooks results in image representations described in a very vague way,socio-economic,political and historical representations weakened to some extent,cultural symbols ignored,intercultural representations simplified,and author’s intentions deviated at the same time as a result,which is detrimental to the cultivation of intercultural understanding.