The Traditional Chinese Culture Elements Of Senior High School English Textbook (FLTRP)

With the promulgation of the General Senior High School English Curriculum Standards(2017)(GSHSECS),under the “one syllabus,multiple books” policy,high school English textbooks from different presses have been in use since 2019 in the country.Textbooks are one of the main way students can get in touch with traditional Chinese culture.It is important to cultivate students’ cultural awareness and build cultural selfconfidence.The GSHSECS(2017)pointed out that students should be able to acquire cultural knowledge,understand cultural connotations,compare cultural similarities and differences,take in cultural essence,form correct values,enhance cultural self-confidence,form good characters of self-esteem,self-confidence,and self-improvement,and develop skills for cross-cultural communication and the transmission of Chinese culture.Traditional Chinese culture is the soul and root of the country and nation.Cultural self-confidence,as a cultural judgment and choice,needs to be realized through the tool of education.Students in high school are at a critical stage of physical and mental development,and it is an important period for them to form their outlook,worldview and values.It is the obligation and responsibility of English textbooks to transmit cultural self-confidence to students by permeating them into the textbooks.In 2019,Foreign Language Education and Research Press published senior high school English textbooks,which are widely used in many places.Therefore,this study will analyze the three compulsory books of the new FLTRP and discuss the following three problems:(1)What is the distribution of traditional Chinese culture in FLTRP?(2)How do teachers view the cultivation of traditional Chinese culture and cultural self-confidence in practical teaching?(3)How do students view the cultivation of traditional Chinese culture and cultural self-confidence in practical teaching?This study mainly uses the textbook evaluation theory proposed by Cheng Xiaotang(2002),which contains internal and external evaluations.The internal evaluation is mainly organized through the main carriers of Chinese Excellent Traditional Culture into the Primary and High School Curriculum Guide.According to the carrier form in The Guide,the traditional Chinese culture in the textbook is divided into six parts: humanistic allusions,common sense,scientific and technological achievements,art and special skills,and other cultural heritage.NVivo software is used to encode the textbook,and the analysis of word frequency,classification and presentation forms of traditional Chinese culture in the new textbook are obtained.External evaluation is to conduct interviews and classroom observation on senior high school English teachers and students who used the new textbooks.The external evaluation wants to understand the specific situations and problems in using the textbooks and cultivating cultural self-confidence.Through the internal and external evaluation of the textbooks,it is found that the three compulsory high school English textbooks of FLTRP have different emphasis on the cultural teaching,showing particularity and inequality;teachers’ cultural teaching is mainly to tell,and they do not interpret traditional Chinese culture deeply enough;students have a strong cultural identity and cultural self-confidence,but they do not practice it well in real life;there are fewer activities to cultivate cultural self-confidence in a test-oriented environment.Therefore,based on the analysis of the traditional Chinese cultural elements in the textbook,relevant suggestions are put forward for textbook editors,teachers and students.This study argues that textbook editors should enrich the categories and presentation of traditional Chinese culture in textbooks;teachers should improve their own professional cultural literacy,pay attention to creating cultural situations and developing a cultural curriculum in English teaching while changing the tendency to be score-oriented;students should establish correct cultural values through different learning resources and actively practice it in order to develop the ability to tell Chinese stories in English.