LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 21:7 July 2021
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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An Evaluation of Culture in
the Contemporary College English Textbook Used in China:
An Intercultural Perspective

Yuan Yuan, M.A. ELT

Abstract

Cultural literacy is becoming a part of the goals of different educational institutions; therefore, an intercultural communication competence (ICC) of different learners should be developed especially in a country where English is spoken as a foreign language. Textbooks are one of the basic elements of teaching and learning. These play an essential role in disseminating knowledge to students and mostly the tools teachers used to carry out their lessons and teaching activities. Therefore, it is crucial to evaluate the teaching tools to know whether these provide knowledge it promised especially in cultivating and developing learners’ intercultural knowledge and communicative competence.

This study has two questions that support the evaluation of the cultural representation in the current intensive reading textbook, Contemporary College English, in China. This used Cortazzi and Jin’s (1999) framework and Byram’s Intercultural Communicative Competence Model (1997) for the evaluation. The findings of the different questions indicated that the different cultures found in the Contemporary College English were dominated by the target culture such as the U.S.A., United Kingdom, and New Zealand but there was no source culture, Chinese, mentioned. Accordingly, these are manifested through the social, geographical, economic, and entertainment factors. While the teaching tasks/exercise are more on for cultivating learners’ intercultural attitudes, knowledge while very few on skills for interpreting and relating, critical cultural awareness but a skill for discovery and interaction were not found.

The recommendation, therefore, is that there is a need for modification for the current English textbooks used by Chinese students. For example, a more diverse text that represents global cultures for reading should be added. As language and culture could not be separated, thus, the representation of culture should not only focus on the target language culture, British and Americans, but different cultures around the world who speak English. Thus, to cultivate Chinese students’ ICC, the English textbooks should include texts that represent the global cultures, and this should include the source culture which is Chinese. By doing so, cultivating learners’ ICC can be more objective as this allows them to reflect on their own culture to understand others.

Keywords: Chinese Intensive Reading Textbook, Contemporary College English, Culture Content, Teaching Tasks, Intercultural Communicative Competence.

Introduction

Globalization has opened up an unlimited space for communication in today’s world. People from different cultural groups face regional and global problems, such as religious conflicts, terrorism, and environmental pollution. In order to solve these problems and live in harmony, intercultural awareness which is necessary for communication becomes more important. Furthermore, the aspects of communication are becoming important areas in contemporary social studies. UNESCO pointed out that the concept of intercultural education should be reflected in school education, especially in foreign language teaching (UNESCO, 2007). Similarly, the Chinese University English Teaching Guide has also clearly pointed out that college English should not only focus on the development of students’ general language ability, but also enhances the student’s intercultural competence that can be used in different contexts, thus help students to communicate effectively in English, such as daily life, professional learning, and vocational post (University English Teaching Guide, 2016).

To proceed with intercultural education, culture has made great contributions to teaching and learning in terms of English teaching and learning, this might help learners to grasp the basic language knowledge and also learn different cultures' ways of thinking, language and social norm of the target language. In other words, this helps students might be able to raise intercultural awareness and fosters intercultural communicative competence among Chinese students. As learning a language is also learning a culture this allows learners better understand an appropriate communication to be used in the context of situations regardless of the cultural background of different people. Therefore, intercultural content in textbooks that are used in teaching has become an important part of English teaching and learning.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Yuan Yuan, M.A. ELT
Department of English, Graduate School of Human Sciences
Assumption University, Thailand
skyeyuan123@gmail.com
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