Analysis Of The Methods And Effects Of High School English Textbooks Incorporating Chinese Culture

In the field of the study of English textbooks,a hot topic is how to integrate local culture into the textbooks so as to better develop students’ capacity to transmit local culture and intercultural communication skills.The current research has several major limitations: the selected textbooks are from an earlier time period;high school English textbooks have received a smaller amount of attention;there is not a rigorous research framework;and there are not many parallel studies on the methods and effects of local culture representation in textbooks.This study takes the high school English textbooks of the new edition published by the People’s Education Publishing House and conducts a textbook evaluation survey on high school teachers who use the series.The purpose of the research is to analyze the methods and effects of the incorporation of Chinese culture into high school English textbooks and to provide insights into the research,writing,and use of English textbooks incorporating Chinese culture.The following three research questions will be specifically answered by this study: 1)What methods are taken in the new English textbooks for high schools in order to incorporate Chinese culture? 2)What are the real effects of incorporating Chinese culture into the new English textbooks? 3)What are the shortcomings of incorporating Chinese culture into the new English textbooks?This study uses the electronic versions of seven high school English textbooks from the PEP edition to build a small corpus.It uses grounded theory as an analytical framework for the study of cultural representation in English textbooks.It uses Nvivo to do statistics on the frequency,form,and intensity of Chinese cultural representation in the seven English textbooks,and it triangulates the results with the statistics.Besides,a questionnaire is used to ask high school teachers who use the textbooks their evaluation of the textbooks’ incorporation with Chinese culture.The results of the study show that: 1)The integration of Chinese culture into the new textbooks conforms to the curriculum standards.In terms of content representation,the textbooks represent Chinese culture with considerable cultural intensity,diverse cultural content and dominant traditional Chinese culture.In terms of form,Chinese culture is mainly explicitly represented,and less represented in implicit form.2)Most of high school teachers keep positive attitude toward the current Chinese cultural representation in the new textbooks,especially traditional Chinese culture and modern Chinese culture.However,there is a certain discrepancy with the desired effect when Chinese culture is spread through practical teaching.Therefore,teachers think that Chinese culture can be taught through channels like movies and films,and they hope that future textbooks will have better panel layouts and make Chinese culture more useful and acceptable.3)When the textbooks represent Chinese culture,there are some overlapping themes;there are few exchanges and comparisons between Chinese culture and the cultures of countries that are not British and American;the intensity of link to Chinese culture in each English textbook is still to be improved;the Chinese revolutionary culture involves less space,which is limited to the revolutionary hero;the implicit representation of Chinese culture can be further improved.The study also provides suggestions for these shortcomings.