Analysis of Chinese and Foreign Cultures in Junior High School English Textbooks under the New Curriculum Standards

Under the perspective of the new curriculum standards' goal of cultivating cultural awareness as a core competency, this study focuses on the People's Education Press junior high school English textbook for the eighth grade, first volume. It conducts a multidimensional analysis and discussion of the Chinese and foreign cultural elements within this textbook. The research specifically explores the frequency of appearance, degree of presentation, cultural distribution range, and cultural fields of both Chinese and foreign cultures across Units 1 to 10. A variety of research methods are employed in the study to investigate the cultural elements in the English textbook. The study posits that the inclusion of Chinese and foreign cultural elements in English textbooks has a significant impact on achieving the goal of cultural awareness, making the study of these elements necessary and valuable. However, it also notes that there are still some issues with the representation of Chinese and foreign cultures in current English textbooks, such as imbalances that warrant further discussion. Therefore, at the level of cultural awareness cultivation under the new curriculum standards, this research provides evaluations and data references for English curriculum teaching and textbook compilation. It suggests that future textbook writing and research should strengthen the comparison and integration of various aspects of Chinese and foreign cultural elements to enhance the value orientation, quality, and practicality of the textbooks.