| Textbooks used for English courses in compulsory education are important contents and means for students’ learning and teachers’ teaching(Ministry of Education of PRC,2012).Reasonable arrangement of cultural contents in textbooks is helpful to cultivate students’ cultural consciousness,strengthen their sense of community of human destiny and improve their intercultural communication competence.This study selects the widely-used GFI and NSE as the research objects.It has been 10 years since the two sets of textbooks were revised and compiled according to the Curriculum Standard(2011)in 2012.And this year,the newly revised curriculum standards for compulsory education will be released,which means new textbooks need to be revised accordingly.This study aims to analyze and compare the cultural types and cultural source regions of the two sets of textbooks from the following three questions:(1)Do the two sets of textbooks meet the level 5 requirements of cultural awareness in the Curriculum Standard(2011)?(2)What are the distribution,similarities and differences of knowledge culture and communication culture in the two sets of textbooks?(3)What are the distribution,the ratio of cultural input and cultural output,similarities and differences of different regional cultures(TL,MT,N-ES,VS,C)in the two sets of textbooks? Thus,the advantages and disadvantages of the cultural contents of the two sets of textbooks in terms of ideological level,scientific level,interesting design,flexibility,diversity and input and output are obtained.Finally,some suggestions are put forward for further revision of the two sets of textbooks and cultural teaching.Through data collection and analysis,it is found that the cultural contents of the two sets of textbooks basically conform to the principles of ideological,scientific,interesting,flexible and diverse.Both textbooks basically meet the level 5 requirements of cultural awareness in the Curriculum Standard(2011)and reflect ideological and political education,focusing on improving students’ humanistic qualities.Both GFI and NSE embody interdisciplinary design.However,GFI is more scientific than NSE,because GFI pays more attention to communication culture which is closer to students’ reality.In the aspect of interesting design,both of the two sets of textbooks cover 18 types of knowledge culture points and 12 types of communication culture points.However,there are cultural gaps in the geographical location items of English speaking countries in GFI.At the same time,both sets of textbooks need to add cultural materials full of spirit of the times.In terms of flexibility,both sets of textbooks have activities or sections that can be expanded or reduced according to the situation of the class,providing free choice and space for teachers during cultural teaching.In the aspect of diversity,five regional cultures are covered in both GFI and NSE,the distribution ratio of them from more to less is TL,MT,N-ES,C and VS.The target language culture is mainly British and American culture,not paying enough attention to the culture of other English speaking countries.Chinese culture appears more frequently than any other countries’ culture.There is more input than output in the two sets of textbooks of regional culture,which shows they attach more importance to cultural input,especially NSE.The input and output of regional culture in GFI generally show an increasing trend with the grade,while the law of NSE is not obvious.Based on the comparative analysis of the cultural contents of the two sets of textbooks,some suggestions are put forward for textbook editors and English teachers of junior high school.This study can be used as a reference for English textbook editors to revise and adapt textbooks.At the same time,the study puts forward suggestions for English teachers in junior middle schools on how to use textbooks,so as to better integrate English culture teaching into language teaching. |
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