There are three textbooks in NSEFC compulsory course, each with five units that include eight parts respectively: Listening and Speaking, Reading and Thinking, Discovering Useful Structures, Listening and Talking, Reading for Writing, Assessing Your Progress, Project and Video Time. Based on Byram’s classification, this paper analyzes cultural contents in Reading and Thinking and Reading for Writing of NSEFC Compulsory Book 3. The results are summarized in the following table and charts:
As shown in
Secondly, the cultural content of social interaction involved in Compulsory
| Themes | Unit | Topic | Section | Culture Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A. Social identity and social group | Unit 1 | Festivals and celebrations | Reading for Writing | Mongolian |
| Unit 2 | Morals and virtues | Reading and Thinking | doctor | |
| Unit 5 | The value of money | Reading and Thinking | servant | |
| Reading for Writing | tailor | |||
| B. Social interaction | Unit 2 | Morals and virtues | Reading for Writing | the test of the king |
| C. Socialization and the life cycle | Unit 1 | Festivals and celebrations | Reading and Thinking | the celebrations to the festival |
| Unit 5 | The value of money | Reading and Thinking | The million pound bank note (ACT 1, SCENE 3) | |
| Reading for Writing | The million pound bank note (ACT 2, SCENE 1) | |||
| D. Stereotype and national identity | Unit 3 | Diverse cultures | Reading for Writing | Chinatown |
| Unit 4 | Space exploration | Reading and Thinking | the progress in space exploration made by China | |
| E. Belief and behaviour | Unit 1 | Festivals and celebrations | Reading and Thinking | the significance of celebrating the festival |
| F. Social and political institutions | / | / | / | / |
| G. National geography | Unit 3 | Diverse cultures | Reading and Thinking | the map of America |
| H. National history | Unit 2 | Morals and virtues | Reading and Thinking | the introduction to Lin Qiaozhi |
Chart 1. The proportion of cultural themes in the reading materials.
Book 3 is vivid and interesting. In the part Reading for Writing of Unit 2, students need to write a review after reading a fable, and the fable selected in the textbook named The Stone in the Road is about a king’s test. It is favorable for students to experience the opportunities and difficulties existing in the intercultural communication, and consciously cultivate their intercultural communicative competence in their future life.
Thirdly, the cultural themes of socialization and life circle and belief and behaviour are close to students’ real life. For example, the reading passage in the part Reading and Thinking of Unit 1 discusses the importance of festival. Students need to talk about which festivals they celebrate and why people celebrate different festivals. That making students think about the meaning of the festival before reading and read with questions can activate students’ enthusiasm for reading.
Fourthly, the Chinese cultural contents selected in the materials contain not only the traditional Chinese culture, but also the modern culture. In Reading and Thinking of Unit 4, the article first makes an introduction to the development of the world space exploration, and then focuses on the great success of the development of China’s space exploration so far. Although China’s space exploration started late, it has made great progress in a very short time. Reading such articles can make students give birth to a strong sense of pride for the motherland and identity of Chinese culture.
Fifthly, the cultural contents display the role of Chinese women in national history, which balances the gender culture to a certain extent. In Reading and Thinking of Unit 2, the article is about the story of Lin Qiaozhi, an outstanding Chinese female doctor. She never gets married and cares for many women and children selflessly. She believes that doctor’s duty is to help patients and treat them as her family. Learning from the life experiences of outstanding women can help students know their great life and learn from their tenacious, brave and selfless dedication, and better avoid the gender discrimination.
Finally, there are some shortcomings. One is that the cultural content of national geography focuses on Western countries but lacks the geographical culture of other nations. Secondly, as shown in Chart 1, the content of Social identity and social group accounts for the largest proportion, while social and political institutions is obviously absent. Furthermore, according to Chart 2, although all the units involve culture, there exists uneven frequency of cultural contents in each unit.
To sum up, although there are some weaknesses in the textbook, the cultural contents are relatively rich on the whole, especially in the selection of materials that reflects the concept of education. By learning the cultural knowledge, students can form correct attitudes, values and behavior tendencies in the intercultural communication.
Through the analysis of reading materials in NSEFC Compulsory Book 3, it can be found that the compulsory textbooks contain rich Chinese cultural contents and adopt the real language materials. However, there are also some problems, such as uneven cultural theme distribution and lack of cultural contrast content. In order to promote a better use and the improvement of reading materials, relevant suggestions are put forward to English teachers and textbook editors.
First of all, English teachers are supposed to improve their own cultural quality. For becoming an excellent language teacher, they should not only have solid language skills, but also have rich Chinese and Western cultural knowledge. For instance, teachers can spare some time every day to read English newspapers and magazines or browse relevant websites. Secondly, with the development of e-education, teachers should try to conduct e-teaching to expand some cultural knowledge [
Chart 2. The frequency of cultural contents involved in each unit.
and master the presented cultural knowledge. Finally, in order to cultivate students’ cultural awareness, teachers are encouraged to use the ways of exploring, experiencing, comparing, contrasting to guide students to learn Chinese and foreign cultural knowledge, so as to internalize cultural knowledge into cognition, behavior and character with correct value orientation. At the same time, teachers can also carry out some cultural activities, such as debate contest, speech contest, English poetry recitation contest, so that students can participate in them actively.
For editors, if they can design more contrasting cultural contents in the reading materials, it will help to enhance teachers’ awareness of cultural contrast teaching, and then cultivate students’ awareness of cultural contrast. Moreover, editors should add some contents in the future textbook compilation, such as social and political institutions, which are absent in Book 3.