Exploring the Teaching Pathways of Ideological and Political Education in English Majors through “Understanding Contemporary China” under the New Liberal Arts Context ()
1. Introduction
The construction of the new liberal arts is a national-level strategic initiative to renew China’s humanities and social sciences by breaking through the conventional disciplinary mindset and integrating new technologies, interdisciplinary perspectives and value leadership into teaching and research [1]. As an important part of this initiative, foreign language education is expected to serve the national strategy of cultural confidence and international communication, and to cultivate compound talents who can tell China’s stories well on the global stage [1] [2]. Under this requirement, the development of foreign language disciplines is no longer confined to language skill training; it is increasingly defined by the responsibility of safeguarding cultural security, spreading Chinese culture and participating in global governance [1].
Ideological and political education (IPE) is the key measure for implementing the fundamental task of moral cultivation in higher education. The Guidelines for the Construction of Curriculum-Based Ideological and Political Education in Institutions of Higher Education explicitly require that all courses shoulder the responsibility of educating students, and that value shaping, knowledge transmission and ability cultivation be integrated as a trinity1 [3]. For English majors, IPE is of special significance because English learning confronts learners directly with foreign cultures and ideologies, which requires a filtering process of ideological awareness and value judgment [3]. Without systematic value guidance, English majors may be vulnerable to the negative influence of foreign cultural trends while lacking a deep understanding of their own culture, a problem widely noted in the literature [1] [4].
The “Understanding Contemporary China” (UCC) textbook series provides a timely and valuable resource for addressing this problem. As an important part of the work of introducing our country’s president: The Governance of China into universities, textbooks and classrooms, the multilingual UCC series was published in 2022, and the UCC College English Integrated Course was released in March 2025, marking the deepening of the “three entries” work in college English teaching [5]. The series aims to help students understand contemporary China, tell the stories of their own lives and localities, spread the outstanding achievements of Chinese civilization, and improve their cross-cultural communication and international communication competence [5]. The UCC Chinese-English translation course, similarly, integrates IPE into translation teaching and guides students to master the principles of keeping China’s own position while connecting with the world in translating China’s political documents [2].
Despite the abundant research on IPE in foreign language education, most studies remain at the level of theoretical discussion rather than operable practice [4] [6]. Existing research has explored the epistemological basis and teaching pathways of IPE in English major courses from the perspective of intercultural learning [3], proposed task-based teaching models for English major courses [6], examined textbook task design for critical thinking [7], and explored the paths and strategies of AI-empowered textbook use [5]. However, few studies have systematically connected the UCC series with the teaching pathways of IPE in English major courses under the new liberal arts context. This paper aims to fill this gap by constructing a framework of teaching pathways for IPE in English majors through the UCC series and by discussing the corresponding implementation considerations. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 examines the theoretical grounding and current context. Section 3 proposes four teaching pathways. Section 4 discusses implementation considerations, and Section 5 concludes.
2. Theoretical Grounding and Current Context
2.1. The Connotations of the New Liberal Arts and the Mission of
English Major Education
The new liberal arts is a cross-disciplinary field formed by the integration of philosophy and social sciences with the new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation. Its essence lies in breaking through the traditional thinking mode of the liberal arts, integrating new technologies into philosophy, literature, linguistics and other courses, and realizing deep integration among disciplines so as to promote the renewal and upgrading of traditional humanities [8]. In terms of connotation, the new liberal arts is characterized by disciplinary crossover and deep integration, value leadership and cultural inheritance, problem orientation and social service, and digital-intelligence empowerment of the development of the humanities [1]. For foreign language disciplines, this means that English major education must go beyond the narrow view of language as a mere tool and highlight its humanistic nature, its scientific nature and its ideological attributes [1].
Under the new liberal arts context, English major education undertakes a dual mission. On the one hand, it serves as the “loudspeaker” for Chinese culture to go global, helping to tell China’s stories through academic translation and international communication; on the other hand, it acts as a “firewall” for national security, resisting cultural infiltration and cultural aggression through cultural security education [1]. Foreign language education has strong ideological attributes because it is an important field of multi-cultural exchange, interaction and confrontation [1]. English majors, who study English as their major and have the most direct and frequent contact with Western culture, are particularly in need of a solid value foundation. They must develop the ability to identify and judge different cultural values, adhere to the socialist core values while appreciating foreign cultures, and eventually become talents who can decode China’s stories and translate world civilizations [1] [3].
2.2. The Policy Foundation and Value Orientation of IPE in English
Major Courses
The policy foundation of IPE in English major courses has been established by a series of national documents. In 2018, the Ministry of Education issued the National Standard for the Quality of Undergraduate Teaching in Regular Institutions of Higher Education (Categories of Foreign Languages and Literatures), which set accurate goals for foreign language talent cultivation2; in 2020, the Teaching Guide for Undergraduate Foreign Language and Literature Majors in Regular Institutions of Higher Education (Trial) was issued3, followed by the Guidelines for the Construction of Curriculum-Based IPE in Institutions of Higher Education4. These documents take moral cultivation as the fundamental mission, emphasize the cultivation of international vision and Chinese feelings, and require the optimization of IPE content around political identification, family-country feelings, cultural literacy, constitutional and legal awareness, and moral cultivation [3].
The value orientation of IPE in English major courses can be understood from two perspectives. First, IPE aims to cultivate students’ national consciousness. National consciousness is a shared sense of national identity formed on the basis of individuals’ understanding of their country’s history, language, culture and basic national conditions, and it is embodied in the sense of ownership, pride and belonging to the country [4]. In the face of profound changes in the international order and global governance, cultivating English majors’ Chinese national consciousness is of special significance [4]. Second, IPE aims to achieve the organic integration of value education with professional teaching. IPE should not be simply superimposed on language teaching; rather, it should be integrated into the whole process of curriculum design, teaching activities and evaluation, so that value guidance runs through language knowledge transmission and ability cultivation [6]. In this sense, IPE in English major courses is both a value-oriented educational concept and an operable teaching practice that follows the inherent laws of English learning [3].
2.3. “Understanding Contemporary China” as a Pedagogical
Resource
The UCC series is a group of textbooks compiled under the guidance of our country’s president Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. The series covers multiple languages and multiple courses, including the College English Integrated Course and the Chinese-English translation course, and its overall goal is to help students understand contemporary China and tell China’s stories in foreign languages [2] [5]. The UCC College English Integrated Course, released in March 2025, marks a new chapter of the “three entries” work in college English teaching. The textbook is based in China and oriented to the world, guiding students to explore global issues in depth, understand the world better and narrate contemporary China [7]. It is designed with the concepts of IPE education, content-language integration and cross-cultural critical thinking cultivation, and it constructs a task chain from “Understanding China” and “Exploring the World” to “Communicating with the World” [7].
Two clarifications about scope should be made before the framework is presented. First, the UCC series comprises two lines of materials: the College English Integrated Course, which serves non-English majors in college English teaching, and the English-major textbooks such as Understanding Contemporary China: A Course in Chinese-English Translation, English Public Speaking, and English Reading and Writing. The pathways proposed in this paper target the English-major line, although the task-design principles can also inform college English teaching, where IPE has likewise attracted sustained scholarly attention [9]. Second, when tasks from the College English Integrated Course are adapted for English-major courses, teachers should adjust the cognitive depth, language difficulty and disciplinary orientation of the tasks: for example, translation tasks can be extended into stylistic and cultural analysis, and speaking tasks can be linked to the training of critical thinking and academic expression required by the English-major curriculum [2].
As a pedagogical resource, the UCC series has three outstanding features. First, it is content-rich: the units are organized around major contemporary themes such as poverty alleviation, education for a strong country, ecological civilization and new quality productive forces, providing authentic and meaningful content for language learning and value education [5] [7]. Second, it is value-embedded: the ideological and political elements are naturally integrated into texts, tasks and activities rather than externally attached, which reflects the ideal of “salt dissolved in water” in IPE [4] [7]. Third, it is internationally oriented: the textbook designs tasks with potential communicative authenticity in international communication, guiding students to deepen their understanding of contemporary China and the world through cross-cultural comparison and dialogue [7]. These features make the UCC series an ideal carrier for IPE in English major courses.
2.4. Existing Challenges: A Synthesis from Literature
A review of the related literature reveals three persistent challenges in the IPE of English major courses, which together constitute the practical problems that the teaching pathways must address.
The literature was identified through systematic searches of the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and Web of Science, using combinations of keywords such as “ideological and political education”, “English major courses”, “new liberal arts”, “Understanding Contemporary China” and “foreign language curriculum”. Peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2018 and 2026 were included, together with the national policy documents introduced in Section 2.2; conference abstracts and non-academic sources were excluded. The three challenges were derived by synthesizing the recurring problems reported across these sources: first, the risk of IPE becoming detached from language content; second, the difficulty of making value education observable and assessable; and third, the absence of a systematic pedagogical pathway that connects policy requirements with classroom practice. This synthesis procedure was designed to make the review replicable and to distinguish the present framework from a general narrative review.
The first challenge is the fragmentation of IPE elements and the imbalance between theoretical discussion and operable practice. Although research on IPE in English majors has achieved fruitful results, most of it remains at the level of theoretical construction, and the exploration of practical pathways needs to be strengthened [6]. Scholars have pointed out that existing studies provide many useful references but generally have more theoretical conjectures than practical operations [6], and that empirical research on foreign language curriculum-based IPE is insufficient [4]. In classroom practice, IPE elements are often scattered in individual courses without systematic and coherent design, making it difficult to form an educational synergy [1].
The second challenge is the separation of language teaching from cultural and value education. Under the influence of utilitarian orientation, foreign language education has long been simplified into language skill training, with more emphasis on skills than on humanistic values, and more attention to Western thought than to local culture [1]. Traditional English textbooks mostly select materials from foreign original literary works and periodicals, and a considerable part of the content imperceptibly disseminates Western cultural trends and values, which makes it difficult to meet the needs of China’s ideological and cultural security education [1]. Even when teachers intend to conduct IPE, they often fail to integrate value guidance with language teaching organically, resulting either in the weakening of language learning or in the superficial attachment of ideological elements [4].
The third challenge concerns the inadequate and risky integration of digital technologies. On the one hand, the digital transformation of education has opened up new possibilities for textbook use and classroom innovation: AI technologies can support the construction of immersive digital textbooks, provide intelligent learning feedback and enable adaptive content recommendation [5]. However, research on AI-empowered textbook use paths and strategies is still insufficient, and teachers’ digital and AI literacy has become a new challenge [5]. On the other hand, digital technology also brings risks. Foreign institutions may push cultural products to Chinese learners through social media and online platforms, and some audio-visual resources that appear to be ordinary learning materials actually imply Western political ideas and values [1]. Meanwhile, learners’ over-reliance on machine translation and homogenized content recommended by algorithms may lead to cultural misunderstanding and weakened critical awareness [1]. In addition, the innovation of foreign language classroom teaching itself has become a research focus, as reflected in reviews of classroom innovation research exemplified by English public speaking [10]. These challenges indicate that the teaching pathways of IPE in English major courses should integrate content, culture, tasks and technology in a coordinated way.
3. Teaching Pathways for IPE in English Majors through
“Understanding Contemporary China”
Based on the theoretical grounding and the analysis of challenges, this section proposes four interconnected teaching pathways for IPE in English major courses through the UCC series: the content-language-values integration pathway, the intercultural discovery-comparison-comprehension pathway, the task-driven TLR pathway, and the digital-intelligence-empowered pathway. These pathways correspond respectively to the content level, the cultural level, the activity level and the technological level of IPE teaching, and they are designed to be mutually reinforcing rather than isolated alternatives.
The originality of this framework lies in the way the four pathways are combined rather than in any single pathway being new. CLI [4], intercultural learning [3], the TLR model [6] and AI-empowered textbook use [5] have each been discussed separately in the literature; the contribution of the present paper is to integrate them into one coherent framework for English-major IPE. The integrating principle is a progressive one: content (Section 3.1) provides the foundation of value education, culture (Section 3.2) provides the perspective through which value conflicts and comparisons are engaged, activity (Section 3.3) provides the task structure through which values are practiced, and technology (Section 3.4) provides the tools that extend and personalize the previous three levels. The four pathways therefore form a ladder from knowing, to comparing, to acting and finally to creating, and each pathway presupposes and strengthens the others.
3.1. The Content-Language-Values Integration Pathway
The first pathway is to realize IPE through the organic integration of content, language and values, which corresponds to the core concept of Content and Language Integration (CLI). CLI is a localized educational concept proposed by Chinese scholars, which advocates using the target language to integrate content and language to the greatest extent and in the most appropriate way, so as to achieve multiple educational goals [4]. Its core is “language in content, and content knowledge in language” [4]. Action research has shown that, under the guidance of CLI, a traditional English class that only cultivates language skills can be transformed into a class that simultaneously improves students’ language competence, intercultural competence, critical thinking ability and learning ability, thus achieving the dual goals of cultivating language competence and Chinese national consciousness [4].
Under this pathway, the design chain is: the theme of the text determines the IPE theme; the IPE theme determines the IPE objectives; the IPE objectives determine the IPE content; and the IPE content determines the overall teaching activities [4]. Teachers should first identify the IPE elements implied in the text themes of the UCC series, then design IPE objectives and content around the themes, and finally organize integrated teaching activities in which language practice and value understanding promote each other. The key is to achieve the effect of “salt dissolved in water”: the IPE content should be integrated with the textbook content to perfect students’ knowledge system and improve their cultural awareness and thinking ability, and it should also be integrated with language so that students can tell China’s stories well in English [4]. In this process, explicit and implicit teaching should be balanced: the textbook content and language knowledge are the explicit objectives, while the cultivation of national consciousness is the implicit objective, and the explicit objectives do not have to be achieved through explicit teaching [4].
The UCC series provides an ideal material basis for this pathway, because its design concept of IPE education, content-language integration and cross-cultural critical thinking cultivation is highly consistent with the CLI philosophy [7]. For example, in the translation course, teachers can guide students to translate China’s political documents with the principle of keeping China’s own position while connecting with the world, so that students understand the characteristics of Chinese political discourse and improve their international expression ability while learning translation strategies [2]. In this sense, this paper characterizes the relationship among the three elements as content as the carrier, language as the medium, and values as the soul, which means that value education does not weaken language learning but rather deepens it.
3.2. The Intercultural Discovery-Comparison-Comprehension
Pathway
The second pathway is to realize IPE through intercultural learning, which constitutes the epistemological basis of IPE in English major courses. English learning is an intercultural learning process: learners understand and appreciate the special orientations of the “other” culture through the study of its language symbols, learn to identify and judge in the understanding of cultural inter-subjectivity, and construct cultural selfhood with socialist mainstream ideology [3]. Intercultural learning has three experiential characteristics: discovery, comparison and comprehension. Discovery means actively finding cross-cultural phenomena beyond the mere accumulation of cultural knowledge; comparison means comparing the internal mechanisms beneath the surface of different cultures and enriching one’s reference framework of cultural interpretation; and comprehension means reflecting on and reconstructing learning experiences in cross-cultural contexts, so as to move from cultural knowledge to cultural understanding and cultural identification [3].
In terms of content, the intercultural pathway decomposes the “cultural texts” in English textbooks into five dimensions of culture: language construction culture, which refers to the cultural features reflected in vocabulary, sentence and discourse structure; semantic culture, which refers to the connotative and culturally specific meanings of words; pragmatic culture, which refers to the rules connecting language use with social situations and interpersonal relations; stylistic culture, which refers to language variants serving special communicative purposes; and behavioral culture, which refers to the behavior patterns and norms reflecting cultural stereotypes [3]. Teachers can analyze the UCC texts from these five dimensions and guide students to discover the cultural differences beneath language forms, compare the value orientations of Chinese and Western cultures, and comprehend the contemporary value of Chinese culture and the socialist core values. For example, in the unit on poverty alleviation, students are guided to understand China’s strategies, measures and achievements in poverty alleviation and rural revitalization, then to explore and compare the poverty alleviation measures and achievements of other countries, and finally to tell China’s poverty alleviation stories to international audiences [7]. Through such activities, students not only improve their language skills and thinking ability, but also deepen their identification with China’s path, theories, institutions and culture [7]. This pathway is highly compatible with the UCC series’ emphasis on cross-cultural critical thinking and international communication [3] [7].
3.3. The Task-Driven TLR Pathway
The third pathway is to realize IPE through task-driven teaching, which provides an operable model at the level of classroom activities. The TLR teaching model, constructed on the basis of task-based language teaching, consists of three types of tasks: thematic inquiry tasks, linguistic analysis tasks and realistic consideration tasks [6]. The thematic inquiry task starts from revealing the theme of a text, deepens it through brainstorming and group discussion, and finally elevates it to a higher ideological level, so that students are educated in distinguishing right from wrong. The linguistic analysis task focuses on word discrimination, syntactic analysis and rhetoric appreciation, so that students are educated in language immersion and become aware that language use is inherently value-oriented. The realistic consideration task aims to help students understand the conditions of the Party and the country, survey the international situation and strengthen personal responsibility, so that students are educated in undertaking missions [6]. These three types of tasks are linked at three points and work together to improve the educational effect of IPE [6].
The TLR pathway is naturally connected with the task design of the UCC series. The series integrates IPE, content-language integration and cross-cultural critical thinking into instructional objectives, teaching activities and evaluation [7]. In terms of objectives, teachers can embed explicit and implicit thinking and value objectives into unit tasks, making students aware of the thinking skills and value orientations being trained. In terms of activities, teachers can design progressive task chains from basic understanding to high-order application and innovation, following the cognition-application-innovation development logic of the textbook [7]. For instance, in the “Communicating with the World” section, students complete situational communication tasks such as simulating interviews with foreign friends or participating in round-table discussions, which integrate language, thinking and international communication [7]. In terms of evaluation, the series sets up a self-reflection section at the end of each unit, guiding students to systematically reflect on and evaluate their own thinking processes, which promotes the development of meta-thinking ability [7]. By combining the TLR model with the UCC task system, teachers can translate the abstract requirements of IPE into concrete, operable classroom tasks, and realize the transformation of IPE from knowledge understanding to action and practice [6].
3.4. The Digital Intelligence-Empowered Pathway
The fourth pathway is to empower IPE with digital intelligence, which responds to the digital transformation of education under the new liberal arts context. The new liberal arts emphasizes the integration of technology with humanities, and digital-intelligence empowerment has become an important direction of foreign language teaching reform [1] [8]. Existing research has proposed an AI-empowered textbook use path based on the trinity teaching objectives of content, expression and thinking, with the overarching goal of telling China’s stories well in English [5]. In terms of content, AI can help teachers integrate and associate knowledge and explore core concepts in depth; in terms of expression, AI can help create and simulate situations and increase students’ language contact; in terms of thinking, AI can help activate cross-cultural critical thinking and shape an open, inclusive and mutually appreciative global value [5]. Correspondingly, the strategies can be organized around the three teaching stages. Before class, teachers can use AI to analyze teaching materials, establish knowledge and ability systems, and generate customized lesson plans; during class, teachers can use AI to create immersive cooperative learning situations and evaluate learning readiness and effects in real time; after class, teachers can use AI to assess learning outcomes, support the completion of unit communication projects and provide personalized feedback [5]. Such digital-intelligence integration is also observed in other educational stages, where digital-intelligence empowerment and liberal arts-specialty integration run in parallel to construct an intelligent teaching ecosystem [11].
At the same time, the digital pathway should be extended to the level of intelligent teaching interfaces. Under the new liberal arts background, the situational implantation (grounding) theory of cognitive grammar can be applied to foreign language intelligent teaching interfaces: with the help of virtual reality technology, abstract situational constructions in the mind can be presented on interfaces in visualized forms, and the subject model, behavior model, background model and reference model can be constructed to help learners lock and highlight the meaning of language in specific situations, thus improving the efficiency of language cognition [8]. For IPE in English major courses, intelligent interfaces can recreate the historical and cultural contexts of Chinese and Western texts, making value comparison and cultural analysis more intuitive and immersive.
However, the digital-intelligence-empowered pathway must adhere to two principles. The first is the principle of the teacher’s leading role. AI is a means rather than an end: teachers should give full play to their agency and decision-making power, strictly examine the accuracy of AI-generated content, its value orientation, cultural sensitivity and fairness, and ensure that the direction of teaching is correct [5]. The second is the principle of cultural security. In the process of using digital resources, teachers and students should maintain cultural security awareness and critical thinking, be able to identify the hidden value tendencies in foreign media content and translation platforms, and avoid cultural misunderstanding and ideological infiltration [1]. Only in this way can digital technology truly serve, rather than undermine, the IPE of English major courses.
To illustrate how the four pathways operate in practice, take a unit on poverty alleviation in Understanding Contemporary China: A Course in Chinese-English Translation. At the language level, the unit develops the vocabulary and sentence patterns needed to describe China’s poverty alleviation achievements; at the IPE level, it aims to help students recognize the people-centered orientation of China’s development and strengthen their confidence in the Chinese path. The intercultural activity follows the discovery-comparison-comprehension sequence: students first discover how poverty is narrated in different media, then compare Chinese and Western approaches to poverty reduction, and finally comprehend the institutional reasons behind China’s achievement. The TLR task asks students to translate an excerpt of a poverty alleviation report and then to reflect on the value choices involved in terminology such as “targeted poverty alleviation”. The assessment outcome is a presentation in which students introduce a poverty alleviation case in English and evaluate the translation choices they made, which simultaneously tests language accuracy, critical thinking and value identification. This example shows that the four pathways converge on a single unit rather than being applied separately.
4. Implementation Considerations
4.1. Teacher Capacity Building
The realization of the teaching pathways depends, first of all, on the improvement of teachers’ comprehensive capacity. Action research has shown that teaching reform based on enthusiasm and experience alone cannot achieve ideal results; teachers need to read literature seriously, find theoretical support and use theory to guide practice [4]. Under the new liberal arts context, English teachers should develop three kinds of literacy in a coordinated way. The first is political literacy: teachers should have a deep understanding of the major policies of the Party and the country, be able to interpret the value connotation of the UCC texts accurately, and transform themselves from knowledge transmitters to value leaders [1]. The second is academic literacy: teachers should continuously improve their professional level and academic quality, which is the premise for completing the design of IPE teaching [4]. The third is digital and AI literacy: teachers should be able to use AI tools to integrate textbook resources and reshape teaching processes, while at the same time improving their ability to distinguish the accuracy and value orientation of AI-generated information [5]. Regular training in the form of special lectures, case studies and teaching competitions can be organized to form a long-term mechanism of theoretical learning, case discussion and teaching practice for teacher development.
4.2. Evaluation and Feedback Mechanisms
The second consideration is to establish evaluation and feedback mechanisms that integrate language competence, thinking quality and value identification. IPE evaluation should not be independent of language competence evaluation; rather, it should be integrated into the assessment of listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating [7]. Teachers can provide evaluation criteria that include the thinking dimension, guide students to use these criteria for self-evaluation and peer evaluation, and help students develop thinking habits and finally externalize them into stable thinking ability [7]. The UCC series’ self-reflection section provides a structured tool for this purpose: it can serve as a learning guide before class, a self-testing tool during the learning process, and a basis for comprehensive judgment after the unit [7]. Meanwhile, evaluation should combine formative and summative assessment, and adopt multiple forms such as quizzes, classroom presentations, role plays, reports and rewriting tasks, so as to examine students’ value shaping while testing their knowledge and skills [4]. Through such evaluation, IPE can be verified and continuously improved rather than remaining an unmeasurable slogan.
To make value identification observable, the following indicators can be used in the evaluation of the UCC-based pathways: 1) the accuracy and appropriateness of value-laden terminology in students’ language output, such as correctly using and explaining expressions like “a community with a shared future for mankind”; 2) the depth of cultural comparison in students’ oral presentations and written reflections, measured by whether students can identify differences in value assumptions and justify their own positions; 3) the quality of critical evaluation in translation and interpreting tasks, such as detecting and correcting biased renderings of Chinese realities in source texts; and 4) the consistency between students’ stated values in questionnaires and their behavior in classroom discussions, group work and peer evaluation. These indicators are assessed through rubrics that combine teacher evaluation, peer evaluation and self-reflection, so that students’ agreement with a prescribed response is only one of several sources of evidence, not the only one.
4.3. Resource Integration and Institutional Support
The third consideration is to integrate resources and provide institutional support for the teaching pathways. At the level of resources, schools should integrate the UCC series with other teaching resources, including local cultural resources, current affairs materials and digital platforms, to construct a rich and targeted resource system for IPE [1]. Resource selection should balance Chinese and Western content and connect tradition with the present, so that students not only dig deeply into the essence of Chinese excellent traditional culture but also grasp the hot spots of China’s contemporary development. At the level of institutions, cross-disciplinary cooperation should be encouraged: for example, teams composed of foreign language experts, international relations scholars and data scientists can jointly develop cultural security evaluation models and multimodal discourse analysis databases, providing technical support for the cultural security review of teaching resources [1]. In addition, teachers should be encouraged to adapt and conduct secondary development of the textbook tasks according to the actual teaching situations, so as to enhance the adaptability and effectiveness of teaching implementation and truly transform the design value of the textbook into actual teaching effects [7].
5. Conclusions
Under the new liberal arts context, the IPE of English major courses is confronted with both strategic opportunities and practical challenges. This paper has examined the theoretical grounding of IPE in English major courses and proposed four interconnected teaching pathways through the UCC series: the content-language-values integration pathway, which realizes value education through the organic integration of textbook content, language practice and value guidance; the intercultural discovery-comparison-comprehension pathway, which realizes value education through cross-cultural learning and cultural comparison; the task-driven TLR pathway, which translates IPE requirements into operable classroom tasks; and the digital-intelligence-empowered pathway, which uses AI and intelligent interfaces to improve the efficiency and effect of IPE while adhering to cultural security. These pathways are not isolated alternatives but mutually reinforcing dimensions of a holistic framework, corresponding respectively to the content level, the cultural level, the activity level and the technological level of IPE teaching.
The main contribution of this paper is to connect the UCC textbook series with the teaching pathways of IPE in English major courses, providing an operable framework for transforming textbook resources into teaching practice. It should be acknowledged that the pathways proposed in this paper are based on the synthesis of existing literature and teaching experience, and their effectiveness still needs to be verified by classroom action research and empirical studies in the future [4] [5]. Future research can focus on how teachers adapt and conduct secondary development of the UCC tasks in specific teaching contexts [7], how to evaluate the effect of IPE quantitatively, and how to prevent the risks of digital technology in IPE. With the joint efforts of researchers, teachers and institutions, the UCC series can truly become a powerful carrier for cultivating English majors who are both linguistically competent and value-oriented, contributing to the fundamental task of moral cultivation and the construction of the new liberal arts.
Funding
2024 Qilu Normal University Undergraduate Education and Teaching Reform Research Incubation Project: “Exploring the Teaching Pathways of Ideological and Political Education in English Majors through ‘Understanding Contemporary China’ in the Context of the New Liberal Arts” (Project Number: XJG2024029).
Author Contributions
Yuchen Yang: Collected literature, gathered and analyzed data, drafted the original manuscript. Liwen Zhang: Designed the research structure, revised the manuscript.
NOTES
1http://www.moe.gov.cn/srcsite/A08/s7056/202006/t20200603_462437.html
2https://elt.hunnu.edu.cn/info/1005/1037.htm
3https://heep.fltrp.com/book/detail?id=3387
4Same as footnote 1.