A Contrastive Study Of Cultural Contents In Two Sets Of College English Extensive Reading Textbooks

Culture and language are closely related,depending on and affecting each other.The development of culture benefits from the development of language,and the progress of language lies in the development of culture.Language is the carrier of culture and also the main way to reflect and disseminate culture.Therefore,the process of learning a language is to learn a kind of culture.Learning the system of linguistic knowledge symbols without appreciation of target culture can not be regarded as real language learning.Only by mastering the culture that the language carries can we truly master a language.That is to say,the process of learning a foreign language is the process of learning a kind of foreign culture.In order to cultivate students' intercultural communicative competence and achieve teaching objectives,language teaching and cultural teaching should be combined in foreign language teaching.As the carrier of teaching,foreign language textbooks are the main materials for students to acquire systematic knowledge in university.Textbooks are important media for learning and transmitting culture as well as an important source of learning foreign culture.With the deepening of China's reform and opening up and the improvement of its international status,China has much closer contacts with other countries and the demand for intercultural communication talents has increased.Therefore,it is quite crucial for colleges and universities to pay more attention to cultivating students' cross-cultural awareness and intercultural communicative competence to meet the needs of the times and the needs of the talent market.Scholars both at home and abroad,such as Cunningsworth,Hutchinson,Williams,Buttjes,Byram,Hu Zhuanglin,Shu Dingfang and Luo Ruguo,have conducted a lot of researches on the analysis and evaluation of textbooks from different perspectives using various research methods.They have also made important theoretical contributions to the analysis and evaluation of textbooks.Cunningsworth(1995),a foreign scholar,has put forward an analysis and evaluation system of cultural contents in textbooks.In order to improve the analysis and evaluation system of textbooks,he has put forward two methods of overall impression evaluation and in-depth evaluation.Based on Buttjes&Byram's Textbook Analysis and Evaluation Theory,this thesis makes a contrastive analysis of the native and western cultural contents of the Extensive Reading Course Volume I to IV of New Horizon College English(Third Edition)and Volume I to IV of New Concept College English by means of text analysis and comparative study method.In this study,the reason for choosing Extensive Reading Course instead of Intensive Reading Course is that Extensive Reading Course provides a wider and more systematic learning materials in college English textbooks,which contains rich cultural contents.In addition,compared with Intensive Reading Course and Reading and Writing Course,Extensive Reading Course chooses a wider range of subjects,which enables students to acquire knowledge and interesting language materials.The two volumes of Extensive Reading Course embody the individualized teaching needs in the teaching objectives,and the gradual teaching design.Through comprehensive training of language skills,students can further improve their basic language skills.But the two volumes of Extensive Reading Course also have some limitations.For example,the exercises attached to the article mainly focus on vocabulary,translation and other basic language training,while the extended exercises and discussions on cultural contents are less.In addition,the annotations related to cultural contents are relatively short and concise,which can not fundamentally eradicate students' cultural blind areas.Buttjes&Byram's Textbook Analysis and Evaluation Theory provides the corresponding theoretical basis and research inspirations for the related researches on the cultural contents of textbooks.Buttjes&Byram believe that the cultural contents in textbooks should be analyzed and evaluated from the micro-cultural level,macro-cultural level,international and cross-cultural level,as well as the author's own views and styles.Based on Buttjes&Byram's Textbook Analysis and Evaluation,this thesis makes a comparative analysis of the native and western cultural contents in Volume I to IV of New Horizon College English Extensive Reading Course and Volume I to IV of New Concept College English Extensive Reading Course from the macro level.This thesis tries to answer the following questions: Firstly,based on the existing theoretical basis of this thesis,how does the cultural contents of the two volumes of Extensive Reading Course textbooks reflect? Secondly,what is the proportion of native and western cultural contents in the two volumes of textbooks? Third,if there is imbalance of the proportion of native and western cultural contents,how to effectively solve the imbalance of the proportion of native and western cultural contents in college English textbooks? Through the comparative analysis of the cultural contents in the two volumes of textbooks,the research findings can be summarized as five points.First,the proportion of western cultural contents in the two volumes of textbooks is higher than that of native cultural contents;Second,the proportion of western cultural contents in the two volumes of textbooks is mainly British and American culture;Third,the proportion of other national cultural contents is relatively low in the two volumes of textbooks;Fourth,in the two volumes of the textbooks,there is imbalance of the proportion of native cultural contents and that of western cultural contents.Fifth,in Volume I to IV of New Horizon College English Extensive Reading Course and Volume I to IV of New Concept College English Extensive Reading Course,the proportion of social cultural contents is higher than that of political cultural contents,the proportion of historical cultural contents and other aspects cultural contents.In response to the above problems found in this study,the author has offered corresponding solutions.First,adjust the proportion of cultural contents in textbooks,increase the proportion of native cultural contents appropriately,and then play a positive role in the transfer of native culture,because only by mastering the native culture can we correctly understand the target language culture.Second,while studying the British and American culture,the introduction of other national cultures is essential aimed at understanding other national cultures,enriching students' foreign cultural knowledge,and conducting comprehensive cultural studies.Third,in order to solve the deficiency of native cultural contents and other national cultural contents in language teaching,we should first integrate language teaching and cultural teaching,so that this teaching strategy can be widely applied to college English teaching.Only in this way can we achieve our teaching goal and ideal teaching effects;then,we should strengthen students' cultural awareness and improve their cultural learning competence so that they can participate in cultural learning more actively;third,we should optimize the settings of curriculum and arrange the teaching courses reasonably so as to achieve the best teaching effect and students' learning effect.Finally,we should try to improve teachers' native cultural literacy,as teachers' position in language teaching is of great importance.With the strengthening of the international exchanges,it is also our inevitable requirement for teachers to have a high native cultural literacy.Only by improving the teachers' native cultural literacy can teachers play a leading role in the teaching process.This thesis makes a contrastive analysis on the cultural contents of the two sets of Extensive Reading textbooks,which provides some ideas and inspiration for the related research of the cultural contents of the textbooks,and it also has an important practical significance.