An Analysis Of Cultural Elements In New Standard English

Language and culture are inseparable.At the background of economic globalization,cultural communication between countries becomes more and more frequent.It is a new requirement of the times to cultivate talents with intercultural awareness and communicative ability.Chinese Ministry of Education released The National English Curriculum Standards for High Schools(referred to as NECS)in 2017,setting cultural awareness as one of the four core competences of English discipline and cultural content as one of the six elements of high school English curriculum content.Textbook is the main learning source of students and a significant teaching tool of teachers.Cultural elements in the textbook directly influence the effect of students' cultural knowledge learning and cultural awareness development.This thesis chooses the three compulsory textbooks of New Standard English,published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press in 2019 as the research subject.According to the theory of Cheng Xiaotang,this thesis does internal and external evaluation of the textbook.Internal evaluation consists of three parts.Firstly,the topic and functions of each unit are divided into knowledge culture and communicative culture.Secondly,four sections are analyzed from the perspective of regions.Cultural elements in these sections are divided into target culture,native culture,world culture,comparative culture and other culture.Thirdly,this thesis explores whether the textbook meet the objectives of cultural content and cultural awareness required by NECS(2017).External evaluation is the interview with teachers surveying their attitudes towards the cultural elements in the textbook.Three questions will be settled in this thesis.(1)How is the distribution of different kinds of cultural elements in NSE(2019)?(2)Can the cultural elements in NSE(2019)satisfy the requirements of cultural knowledge and cultural awareness proposed by NECS(2017)?(3)What is teachers'evaluation of the cultural elements in the textbook?Several conclusions have been drawn that:(1)In terms of the topic and functions of each unit,the proportions of knowledge culture and communicative culture are even.The former serves as the basis while the latter is the key point and aim of teaching.(2)In terms of the four sections,this textbook strengthens target culture.However,attention should be paid to English countries other than the United Kingdom and America.The proportion of world culture and other culture are proper while native culture in the reading parts should be deeper.(3)This textbook basically meets the need of NECS(2017).Cultural knowledge in it covers a wide range of topics and enjoys contemporaneity.It's instrumental and humanistic.Considering the objectives of cultural awareness,this textbook shows the similarities and differences between Chinese and foreign cultures.But the presentation of intercultural communicative strategies is not enough.(4)Most teachers have basic understanding of the objectives of cultural awareness proposed by NECS(2017)and agree that the design of cultural elements in the textbook is proper.However,restricted by the examination pressure,cultural elements haven't been taught enough.Finally,suggestions are given to teachers.Teachers should develop their cultural awareness,realizing the importance of cultural elements in second language acquisition.In order to constantly improve their cultural quality,teachers must keep learning by various ways.And they could reprocess cultural elements in the textbook in line with teaching needs.They can expurgate unnecessary content and add up appropriate materials.Modern multimedia teaching facilities could be used for enriching the forms of teaching activities,which are helpful for innovative cultural teaching.