A Study Of Senior High School English Textbooks From The Perspective Of Intercultural Communicative Competence: Cultural Contents And Their Teaching Strategies

Since the beginning of the 21 st century,English,as an international language,has become an important tool for worldwide communication.In today’ s multicultural context,English discipline should not only emphasize the teaching of language knowledge and skills,more importantly is to cultivate students’ cultural awareness and intercultural communicative ability and establish correct cultural values.At this stage,as the main basis of teaching and learning,also an important medium of cultural communication,senior high school English textbooks are the main channel to cultivate students’ cultural awareness and intercultural ability.Most studies on senior high school English textbooks are biased towards one aspect,either studying the culture of reading articles and traditional Chinese culture,lacking an overall grasp of the cultural content of the textbooks;or simply analyzing and studying the textbook,ignoring the views of users who are teachers and students and failing to observe cultural teaching in English classes,which is divorced from the teaching reality.Therefore,taking the 2019 Edition of Ordinary Senior High School English Textbook published by People’s Education Press(hereinafter referred to as“2019 Edition of Senior High School English Textbooks by PEP(1)”)as the research object,this study attempts to explore the cultural content of English textbooks and the cultural teaching strategies of English classroom teachers,mainly answering the following three questions:(1)What are the main types of cultural contents involved in 2019 Edition of Senior High School English Textbooks by PEP?(2)What do teachers and students think about the arrangement and the setting of cultural content in 2019 Edition of Senior High School English Textbooks by PEP?(3)How do excellent teachers deal with cultural content of the textbooks in classroom teaching? What do students think about teachers’ cultural teaching strategies?Based on this,taking 2019 Edition of Senior High School English Textbooks by PEP as the research object,this study firstly adopts text analysis method to analyze the cultural content in compulsory and optional compulsory textbooks from two dimensions of cultural region and cultural type.Then questionnaires survey are conducted to investigate teachers and students’ views on the arrangement and setting of the cultural content of the textbooks.Finally,classroom observations and interviews are used to explore the strategies of outstanding teachers in dealing with cultural content and the current situation of English classroom cultural teaching,so as to provide cultural teaching reference for front-line teachers.Results are as follows(1)2019 Edition of Senior High School English Textbooks by PEP cover a wide range of cultures.Its topics are close to the development of the times and students’ lives,which is conducive to cultivating students’ multicultural awareness and intercultural communication skills.However,there are also some shortcomings.For example,in terms of regional culture,textbooks focus on the target culture,while the international culture is relatively low.Chinese cultural content has yet to be added.Among the large and small cultural types,thinking mode and value culture are more involved,while political culture does not appear.(2)More than 80%teachers believe that 2019 Edition of Senior High School English Textbooks by PEP involves a lot of cultural content.And the cultural content is closely related to students’ lives,which can effectively help students to cultivate cultural awareness and improve their intercultural communication skills.Therefore,teachers have a positive evaluation of the textbook.In addition,teachers believe that the reading sections have the most cultural content,while the grammar and exercise sections have less cultural content.More than 80% students hold positive views on the teaching materials,support the teaching materials to add cultural content and attach importance to acquiring cultural knowledge.(3)Teachers are mostly inclined to use the cultural strategies of cultural discussion and cultural narration.Teachers often combine multimedia courseware to play videos and show pictures,and pay attention to infiltrating cultural background knowledge in the Lead-in part.This study has suggestions as follows(1)Textbook writers should properly increase the proportion of Chinese culture in textbooks,and balance the proportion of culture in different sections and balance the proportion of culture in different regions and types of countries.(2)English teachers should pay attention to the cultivation of students’ cultural awareness and intercultural communication ability,actively explore the cultural content of teaching materials,broaden the depth and breadth of cultural content.And pay attention to cultural contrast teaching,deepen students’ understanding of cultural differences.To sum up,the cultural content in this set of textbooks is relatively reasonable,and the cultural content is closely related to students’ lives and social background,which is conductive to stimulate students’ interest in learning and guide them to think,explore and construct cultural concepts.However,teachers’ attention to cultural teaching is far from enough,cultural teaching strategies have not yet formed a system,and students’ cultural awareness and intercultural communication ability still need to be improved.How to effectively carry out cultural teaching in foreign language education in China has attracted increasing attention from foreign language teaching experts and scholars,and further research needs to be carried out theoretically and practically.