A Comparative Study On The Integration And Deficiency Of Native Culture In Chinese And Japanese Senior High School English Textbooks

Under the background of global integration in the new era,it is inevitable that various cultures blend and conflict with each other.In the face of multicultural agitation,how to occupy a place in the forest of world culture is a challenge we must face.In recent years,President Xi Jinping repeatedly stresses that “We should build stronger cultural confidence,share Chinese culture with other countries,strengthen China’s cultural soft power and the influence of the Chinese culture.” With the promulgate of the 2017 Edition of English Curriculum Criteria for Regular High School,it clearly points out that English courses should cultivate students’ cultural awareness,organically integrate socialist core values and other contents,so as to create good conditions for students to spread Chinese culture.It can be seen that culture-teaching plays a particularly important role in foreign language teaching,and it is of great significance to enhance students’ national identity and enhance students’ ability to spread their own culture.China and Japan are neighbor countries,and both in the face of the impact and penetration of the European and American cultural circles,so the ways in which they deal with the multicultural content in English textbooks are comparable and referential.Based on the perspective of culture teaching,this paper takes the mainstream high school English textbooks in China and Japan(New Senior English for China of 2019 Edition,All Aboard Series for Japan of 2020 Edition)as research objects.This study is based on the cultural classification standard of Niu Xinsheng and Cortazzi & Jin,and the analysis framework of cultural presentation in English teaching materials proposed by Zhang Hong and Li Xiaonan.The study conducts the research objects with literature method,text analysis method,quantitative research method,qualitative research method and comparison method,three questions are mainly discussed:(1)What are the differences of the status of native culture in NSEFC and All Aboard Series?(2)What are the similarities and differences in the types and the proportion of native cultural content in NSEFC and All Aboard Series?(3)What are the similarities and differences in the presentation ways of native cultural content in NSEFC and All Aboard Series?The research findings are as follows:(1)From the perspective of the status of native culture: NSEFC tries to balance the proportion of different regional cultures and pays more attention to the target culture,and native culture is in the second place,with stronger diversity and inclusiveness;All Aboard Series are oriented by native culture,with many native language and local elements integrated into the textbooks,with more emphasis on nationality.(2)From the perspective of the cultural form,both NSEFC and All Aboard Series cover various fields and elements of native culture,while their emphasis is different,and the distribution is not balanced enough.NSEFC pays more attention to behavioral culture while All Aboard Series pays more attention to spiritual culture,and both of them ignore ideological culture.In particular,the socialist culture and red revolution culture are not well integrated into NSEFC,and there is still a certain gap with the requirements of the New Senior English for China of 2019 Edition.(3)From the perspective of the presentation ways of native cultural content,NSEFC pays more attention to the co-occurrence of native culture,which is mainly composed of discourse and exercises,supplemented by pictures,and focusing on the understanding and expression of local culture,with strong logic;All Aboard Series pays more attention to the unique appearance of native culture,with less practice of exporting local culture,and it does well in penetrating native cultural content in the form of pictures,which is more intuitive.Finally,based on the findings and conclusions above,some suggestions on the compilation and use of Chinese high school English textbooks are put forward.Although the study has some limitations in the classification of culture and collection of data,it still expands the perspective of English curriculum,enriches the comparative theories of teaching materials and is of certain reference significance to further deepening our English curriculum reform,guiding teachers’ teaching practice and students’ learning.