Cultural Representations In EFL Textbooks

As the world becomes increasingly interconnected,cultural awareness is to be fostered.Cultural awareness refers to the understanding and identification of Chinese and alien excellent cultures,specifically related to cross-cultural awareness,attitude,and behavior orientation against the background of globalization(Ministry of Education,2020).In English Curriculum Standards for General Senior High School(henceforth ECS)released by the Ministry of Education in 2017,cultural awareness was identified as one of the four core competence of the English discipline.ECS(Ministry of Education,2017,2020)states that cultural awareness embodies the value orientation of the core competence of the discipline of English,consisting of cultural knowledge,cultural understanding,and intercultural communication awareness and competence.Through learning and accumulating cultural knowledge,students can learn about the excellent cultures of other countries in the world and human civilization,respect and understand different cultures,enhance national identity and family sentiment while cultivating an international outlook,care about the development of the shared future of the human community,and eventually have certain awareness and ability of cross-cultural communication.The cultivation of cultural awareness is based on the cultural content in textbooks,so the representation and distribution of cultural content in textbooks are of great significance in the cultivation of learners’ cultural awareness.A review of previous research reveals that most existing literature simply analyzed the cultural contents in one set of textbooks or compared two sets of textbooks.Research on three and more sets of textbooks that explores general representations and distributions of cultural contents in authoritative senior high school English textbooks remains few.Nevertheless,research along this line is essential in that it provides a general picture of the field,providing an opportunity to explore how the objectives of cultural awareness set by curriculum standards are achieved in the textbooks.Besides,after ECS,the newest curriculum standards,was released,there have been few studies exploring cultural contents in Chinese senior high school EFL textbooks.Therefore,to bridge the research gap,this study was conducted.English textbooks for senior high school students published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press,Beijing Normal University Publishing Group,and People’s Education Press were compiled following ECS.They have been certified by the Ministry of Education of People’s Republic of China and are the most extensively used textbooks in China.Therefore,the cultural contents in these three textbooks deserve to be analyzed.This study investigated the three textbooks,with a focus on cultural contents,which refers to the three components of cultural awareness proposed by ECS:cultural knowledge,cultural understanding,and awareness and competence of cross-cultural communication.Content analysis and inductive analysis were adopted to analyze cultural content in three textbooks.Cultural knowledge was analyzed in terms of the types and themes of texts.Cultural understanding was analyzed in terms of the sources of culture.Awareness and competence of cross-cultural communication were analyzed in terms of the dimensions of competence embedded in activities.Following a bottom-up approach,this study has two major findings.In terms of reading passages,cultural content was abundant in the three textbooks,and about 80%of the reading texts included the content of cultural awareness cultivation.Among the types of cultural knowledge,spiritual culture appeared most frequently,followed by material culture and discourses incorporating both spiritual and material culture.In terms of the discourse theme,humans and society accounted for the greatest percentage,followed by humans and nature,and humans and self.In terms of source of culture,target culture accounted for the biggest amount at over 40%,followed by Chinese culture accounting at about 25%,and international culture and shared culture at around 12%.In terms of activities,over 90%of the exercises in the three textbooks developed learners’ intercultural communication competence,with over 90%focusing on communication competence and 15%on intercultural competence.Exercises targeting the development of intercultural attitude and awareness were few,and there were no exercises that targeted sociolinguistic competence.Results and findings suggest that textbook writers can further optimize the cultural contents in textbooks.A balanced distribution of knowledge types and discourse themes should be ensured,and sources of culture should distribute in as many discourse themes and knowledge types as possible.Besides,in addition to the target culture,other sources of culture(i.e.,source culture,international culture,shared culture)should also be emphasized.When introducing the culture of a country,as many perspectives as possible should be provided.In terms of exercise design,the weight of exercises on sociolinguistic competence,strategic competence,skill,awareness,and attitude should be increased.English teachers who use the three textbooks should fully explore the explicit and implicit cultural knowledge and elements in the discourses in the teaching process,based on the discourse themes and cultural background of the texts,so as to deepen students’ cultural cognition and enable them to have a comprehensive and objective comprehension and evaluation of different cultures,thus forming correct cultural judgment,noble cultural character,and decent cultural behavior orientation.Teachers who are currently using other senior high school English textbooks in China should develop a comprehensive understanding of their textbooks.Based on the comprehension of their textbooks,teachers should take these three textbooks as a standard and add supplemental resources depending on their contexts to better foster learners’ cultural awareness.In the future,researchers could expand the numbers and types of teaching materials,and address other input materials such as the Listening Sections.Also,they could investigate the opinions of textbook users on cultural awareness cultivation contents in textbooks.