An Evaluation Of Cultural Contents In PEP New Senior English For China From The Perspective Of Intercultural Communication

The currently-used PEP New Senior English for China was compiled according to the requirements of the Curriculum Standard(2003).It was first approved in 2004 and has had a history of sixteen years.Researchers have conducted a lot of study on it from different perspectives,but mostly based on the Curriculum Standard(2003).Now the newest edition of the Curriculum Standard-Curriculum Standard(2017)has come into effect,with teaching objectives and teaching contents being adjusted and updated a lot.In particular,the Curriculum Standard(2017)has made some new requirements in terms of cultural knowledge in teaching materials.It lays more emphasis on the cultivation of cultural awareness and intercultural communicative competence.In this situation,it is pretty necessary to carry out a new evaluation,based on the latest Curriculum Standard(2017),of the cultural contents in PEP New Senior English for China.This study focuses on two questions:(1)Do the cultural contents fulfill the requirements of the Curriculum Standard(2017)?(2)Is it helpful to improve students' intercultural communicative competence? To answer these two questions,a text analysis and a questionnaire survey were conducted.The text analysis involves Book1-5,covering 175 reading and listening texts in total.ll the cultural contents are divided into eight categories according to the Curriculum Standard(2017),and analyzed one by one to evaluate if they match the corresponding requirements of Curriculum Standard(2017).questionnaire survey was conducted to investigate whether the PEP New Senior English for China is conducive to the development of students' intercultural communicative competence.Designed under the guidance of Byram's ICC model,the questionnaire involves four dimensions: knowledge,attitude,skills and critical cultural awareness.total of 270 freshmen from a university in Lijiang,Yunnan Province participated in this survey.The findings are as follows:(1)The cultural contents in PEP New Senior English for China can't fully meet the requirements of the Curriculum Standard(2017).It fails to provide enough contents related to the mainstream sports in English-speaking countries and traditional Chinese culture,which are the two new requirements in Curriculum Standard(2017),and also shows a lack of knowledge about social customs and taboos both in China and English-speaking countries.(2)The PEP New Senior English for China helps to promote students' cross-cultural communicative competence,but to different extents in terms of different dimensions.It has a remarkable effect on improving students' intercultural attitude and critical cultural awareness,but slightly less powerful in improving intercultural knowledge and skills.The researcher puts forward two suggestions based on the findings.First,the PEP New Senior English for China should be revised as soon as possible to satisfy the latest requirements of the Curriculum Standard(2017).Secondly,teachers should make a flexible adaptation of the textbook as needed to ensure full compliance with the Curriculum Standard(2017).