| The landscape of Chinese L2 education has been changing all the time. China has shifted to a great enthusiasm to learn English after the policy of reform and opening was adopted. It is a long way from following passively foreign education theories and practices to combining these theories with Chinese situation in a comprehensive way. This marks that Chinese foreign language education has become more and more mature. In particular, at present, a craze for studying English has been found, to some extent, due to China's entry into WTO and its success in hosting 2008 Olympic Games. As for Chinese L2 education, culture learning becomes an essential part, since, to a great extent, communication depends on cultural awareness. Along with this transformation is the changing scene of teaching approaches. In order to keep up with this rapid pace of development in the practical field and concurrent with the socio-economic development, a new syllabus was made in 1999, which emphasized culture learning. New College English was produced based on the learner-centered curriculum, and was concurrent with the syllabus. Since its production, New College English has been adopted by many colleges and universities as their teaching material. It came to play an important role in guiding learners to understand the culture of the target language, improving their culturalawareness and culture learning and enabling them to participate in the future social life with foreign culture as well, so it is of some importance to make an analysis of the passages in New College English at culture level. First of all, the thesis states the background for study. The relation among culture, language and thought is illustrated here. Among various foreign language study models, Gao (1999)'s "1+1>2" model is preferred to others. Then some curriculum components, including need analysis, materials development and language teaching, are mentioned here. In this thesis, materials development, especially the significance of textbook, textbook content, and criteria for adopting textbook is emphasized. The learner-centered curriculum, which places emphasis on the role of the learner rather than that of the teacher is mentioned with attention, for New College English is based on this curriculum. The passages contained in New College English are examined at three culture levels: the physical culture at the surface level, the interpersonal culture at the intermediate level, and the psychological culture at the deep level. A table is correspondingly drawn to illustrate this point. Critical pedagogy emphasizes the sphere of popular culture. Popular culture represents an important pedagogical site that raises important questions about the elements that organize the basis of learner subjectivity and experience. Therefore, a particular form of teaching and learning is to regard popular culture as its essential part. Textbook for foreign language education is without exception. Judged from this point, New College English does well in adopting passages on everyday life, but the passages are a little difficult to understand, and passages at the psychological level occupies a larger space. Then an overview of cultural studies in foreign language teaching both at home and abroad is made. Although considerable significance is given at different stages and to differing extents in various countries, the realization of that significance is less satisfactory, in particular in China. It is fortunate that more and more importance is attached to culture learning in foreign language teaching at the present time. In addition, some aspects of cultural studies. including four enquiries of cultural studies and methods of teaching culture are mentioned carefully. The relation between the design, culture learning and foreign language learning is also made clear by means of a diagram. Consequently, some suggestions are made. At the present time, more and more teachers are ordering magazines and newspapers forclassroom use. In spite of its journalistic jargon, magazine and n...
|
PDF Full Text Request