Representation of Chinese Culture in China's College English Textbooks—Case Study of New Progressive College English Integrated Coursebook

Abstract

: Against the national initiative of cultural confidence building in China, college English textbooks function as dual pedagogical carriers for linguistic competence cultivation and cross-cultural communication practice. Adopting a mixed-methods research design, this study takes Byram’s cultural dimension theory, Shin’s cultural classification model and China’s official intercultural competence framework as theoretical underpinnings, to explore the embodied forms, distribution features and teaching effectiveness of Chinese cultural elements in New Progressive College English Integrated Coursebook. Drawing on textual content analysis, questionnaire data collected from 102 non-English major freshmen, and semi-structured interview materials from 5 frontline college English instructors, this research conducts systematic quantitative coding and qualitative interpretation. The findings indicate that the textbook prioritizes modern achievement-oriented Chinese culture, while traditional culture, folk customs and indigenous philosophical values remain underrepresented. Furthermore, native cultural content is dominantly presented via explicit reading texts, with insufficient multimodal and interactive cultural tasks. Participants show moderate overall satisfaction with embedded cultural materials, and demand more life-oriented, diversified cultural teaching resources. This study validates the textbook’s positive value in fostering students’ cross-cultural awareness and national identity, and puts forward targeted optimization strategies for college English textbook compilation and culture-oriented foreign language teaching.