Narratological Research On The Implied Culture Of SEFC

With the development of globalization, the transfer of cultural knowledge is givenmore importance in language teaching by emphasizing the development ofcomprehensive ability of intercultural communication, as is manifested in the NewCriteria for Senior High School Curriculum which considers the cultural consciousnessone of the major aspects of developing the students’ language competence. As theimportant carrier of knowledge and media of cultural transmission, textbooks occupy animportant position in the process of culture teaching. This thesis takes SHE, which iswidely used in Luoyang, as the object of the study to analyze the implied culture in thetextbooks in perspective of narratology to uncover the implied values and culturaltendency of the compilers. Then suggestions are offered to the compilers and teachers inorder to promote the reform of SEFC and the culture teaching. Suggestions are also givento teachers to better understand the role of culture teaching and to reasonably select andefficiently use textbooks to raise the level of culture teaching.Narratology examines how narrative reflect our understanding of cultural artifactsand reality around us. The research of narrative is of particular importance since theselection and arrangement of materials are the initial ways in which we develop meaningin communication. Since textbook compilers choose the content of textbooks, which is arestructuring of human knowledge and experience, in the restructuring process, the valueorientation of textbook compilers will be reflected in the textbooks. This research mainlyfocuses on the culture reflected in the process of the selection and arrangement of thenarrative materials in textbooks, by taking SHE as the sample. That is to say, thenarratological research method in this thesis aims at exploring the values and culturaltendency behind the structure and content of narrative materials. First of all, this thesisputs forward the hypothetical questions, trying to understand whether there is gender bias,omission of culture and ethnocentrism in SEFC and whether the narrative voice in narrative materials is liberal or with authority consciousness. To prove the hypothesis, thethesis focuses on the analysis of the images and written materials in SHE. The statistics ofrequired data is based on the scope of five compulsory modules.The negative influence of the implied culture can be found through the analysis of thedata and materials. The analysis points out that gender bias exist in the cultural content ofSHE; many of the images are stereotypes that has long been rejected by feminismcriticism or postcolonialism; the culture of ethnic minority and underdeveloped countriesis often ignored in SHE, and the narrative voice with subjective value orientation in thetextbook impresses the researcher to be flattering the mainstream western cultures. Theseimplied cultural values may affect learners’ thinking and cause students’ cognitivelimitations. For instance, gender bias will influence students’ career choices and distorttheir own gender image cognition as well as the understanding of the other sex, andultimately the evil result is that the female will be more rigidly confned to career field oflower psychological status, and patriarchy is consolidated; the omission of minoritycultures hinders the development ofimpartialcultural conceptions; thelearners’ cognitiveobjectivity is impacted under the influence of authoritive narrative voice in the textbooks.These problems in SEFC should be given serious attentions in the context of culturalteaching. In this thesis, suggestions are put forward to teachers and textbook compilersbased on result of the study. The quantity cultural content should be arranged reasonablyand the images should be selected carefully during the process of textbook writing whichis also the restructuring of experience, for example, the textbooks should try to avoidgender bias and the omission of minority cultures, to create a peaceful and diverseatmosphere. Teachers should correctly understand the relationship between teachers andtextbooks. And under the condition that the textbooks can not be changed in a short term,the teachers should make the best use of the textbooks, while adding reasonablesupplementing materials, and offering correct guiding opinions to help students learnculture in a comprehensive and fair way.