A Text-based Analysis Of Culture Representation In English Testing Materials

With the development of globalization,intercultural communication is becoming increasingly important and English teaching in China faces new challenges.So English education should focus not only on students' English knowledge and skills,but also on their cultural awareness which can enable them to communicate effectively with people from various cultural backgrounds and become the new generation of talented Chinese citizens internationally.National Matriculation English Test(NMET)plays an significant role in English teaching in China.Therefore,the text-based analysis of cultural representation in NMET materials can enable us to explore the current situation as well as the problems in English culture teaching.The references of speical studies in this field are very rare and existing researches generally use one or several NMET materials as objects,lack of representativeness.This paper therefore uses NMET materials of four coastal provinces(Liaoning,Zhejiang,Fujian and Guangdong)as the objects of the present study and adopts the research methods of text analysis and statistics to explore cultural texts from three aspects: general situation of culture representation,culture content categories and culture region categories.This paper also discusses the washback effect that culture representation in NMET materials may have on future NMET,English culture teaching and learning.The research questions of this paper are as follows:1)What is the status quo of culture representation of text materials of NMET?2)How are the types of culture content embodied in text materials of NMET?3)How are the culture regions distributed in text materials of NMET?4)Does the distribution of cultural representation have any problems? What are the problems? How should cultural materials be selected according to these problems? Does the outcome of the study have any washback effect on NMET,English culture teaching and learning?The research fingdings are summarized below:1)The status quo of culture representation of text materialsThe NMET materials of four coastal provinces involve culture texts,most of them distributing in English reading materials while few of them in listening materials.In comparison,NMET materials of Guangdong have the biggest proportion of cultural representation texts.2)The distribution of culture content typesThe NMET materials of four coastal province involve all culture content types mentioned in this paper,but their distribution is out of balance.Concept and Consciousness and Code of Behavior of culture content types have the biggest proportion in the NMET materials of four coastal provinces.The NMET materials of four provinces relatively focus less on Material,Arts and Literature,History and Geography.3)The distribution of culture region typesThe NMET materials of four coastal province pay more attention to Inner Circle Culture,than Chinese Culture and focus less on Outer Circle Culture.4)Washback effects on culture representationCulture representation in English testing materials has certain washback effects on the selection of NMET texts,English culture teaching and learning.Based on the findings above,I put forward some advice in aspects of the distribution in culture content and culture region types,hoping to improve the development of English culture testing,teaching and learning.