The Evaluation of the Cultural Contents in the English Textbook for Non-English Major Students:A Case Study at Independent College in China

This study investigates the existing General English textbook focusing on the cultural contents to enhance the intercultural awareness cultivation of Non-English major students in China.The findings of this study can provide the valuable information of cultural contents adaptation in the textbook.It also can reveal teachers’expectation and their awareness of teaching General English together with integrating cultural contents.Apart from the textbook analysis,10 English teachers participated in the study.Data were collected using New Century College English Zooming In:An Integrated English Course,checklist,and in-depth interview.The findings from the checklist verified that the cultural contents of the existing textbook are insufficient.Moreover,the in-depth interview uncovered that though the cultural contents appear in the textbooks,however,they are somewhat minimal expressions that deficient to support the effective intercultural cultivating.Based on the results of the analysis and exploration,this study provides a guidance on the types of intercultural content to be adapted in this course.The findings of this study can be beneficial to the intercultural textbook adaptation for academic institutes and individuals interested in the field of English language teaching and learning.

What’ s the Context? Speech Acts Presentation in Oral English Textbooks

In this study,an evaluation of the presentation of speech acts in six oral English textbooks is conducted from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives to see how speech acts are presented and whether enough and explicit meta-pragmatic and contextual information are provided.Results show that 1)there is a paucity of speech acts and the average percentage of the six textbooks including speech acts is only 28.3%.And some speech acts like‘threatening’,‘warning’,‘declaring’,‘welcoming’are not presented at all.2)Meta-pragmatic and contextual information is too general and far from enough.Among all the six textbooks,from Book 1 to Book 5,contextual information is deduced by learners through reading conversations.Only in Book 6,a contextual description is provided before the conversation begins.Contextual information such as the age,gender and social status of Speaker and Hearer is never presented.Contextual information like the relationship between Speaker and Hearer and the place where the conversation happens is inferred from reading the conversations.Meta-pragmatic information like the degree of formality,politeness strategy,indirect speech act strategy,and social norms are not at all involved.Only in Book 1,a cultural tip is provided.Since oral English textbooks are one of the main sources for Chinese EFL learners to enhance their pragmatic competence,it is much expected that they should present a wide variety of popularly-used speech acts with rich contextual information as appropriate language input.

EVALUATING AN EFL TEXTBOOK—A NEW ENGLISH COURSE

The necessity of the textbook can not be neglectedalthough problems do exist with our teaching materi-als.As teachers it is important for us to evaluate,se-lect and adapt teaching materials to meet our teachingand students’ learning needs in order to maximizelearning potentials.The case study of one particularEFL textbook provides us with more insights into theunderstanding of our teaching materials.The processof evaluating the teaching materials helps us make de-cisions in selecting textbooks,as well as allowing us toreflect on our teaching and learning experience.