The Western Culture In Middle School English Textbooks And Its Evaluation Based On "Zone Of Proximal Development"

With the development of society and education,cross-cultural communication is increasing.Intercultural communication with western countries is more frequent,which requires people to have a deeper understanding of the cultural differences between different countries.More educators focus on the study of western culture in English textbooks.The present study aims to investigate the choice and arrangement of western culture in middle school English textbooks published by People's Education Press(PEP)and evaluate the choice and arrangement from the perspective of 'Zone of Proximal Development' in the hope of facilitating culture teaching and textbook writing.Four principles are formulated from 'Zone of Proximal Development': principle of classroom revolution and guiding teaching,principle of linking given and new knowledge,principle of advancing internalization of externalized knowledge to produce value-laden effect,and principle of collaborating teaching contents and students' cognition.A full examination of western culture in PEP makes us to put western culture into 8 subcategories: leisure and entertainment culture,travel culture,outstanding person culture,non-material culture,science and technology culture,festival culture,body language culture and classroom culture.In addition,the paper also presents the distribution and organization of these 8 subcategories.The western culture in PEP English textbooks is assessed and evaluated on the part of the choice of content,the distribution and organization,and task design by using the above 4 principles as criteria.The conclusions are drawn as follows:1)On the whole,the choice of content,the distribution and organization,and task design in relation to western culture conform to the cognitive and psychological development of middle school students.2)The ways and forms of task design concerning western culture can facilitate classroom innovation and guide teachers,can motivate education by activating the given and furthering the unknown,can visualize and externalize the teaching design to produce value-laden effect through the interaction between one students' thought and another one's though.The major contribution lies in that 4 principles are abstracted from 'Zone of Proximal Development' and make the theory more operable in evaluating textbook writings.However,the broad applicability of the 4 principles need to be further checked by more studies.