A corpus-based analysis of CCW distribution in the College English textbooks

Abstract：Based on a self-constructed corpus consisting of eight sets of College English textbooks which are being widely used by the college students in Mainland China, this paper carries out a statistical analysis of the China-related Cultural Words (CCW) in these textbooks. The major findings are as follows: the overall frequency of CCW in the corpus is quite low; there exist significant differences among diffe-rent sets of textbooks in the distribution of CCW; most of the CCW appearing in the corpus belong to the institutional-behavioral culture and material culture, but few of them touch upon the spiritual-mental culture, such as the Chinese traditional spiritual culture and modern values which are expected to be introduced to foreign countries more urgently; the cultural categories represented by the CCW are not typical and representative enough; Chinese culture has been severely marginalized, fragmented and partialized in the textbooks. In order to improve English learners' ability to express Chinese culture in English, we need to increase the number of CCW in the textbooks, select cultural themes that can represent the core content of Chinese culture, and conduct in-depth discussions and comparisons on these themes.

Keyword：College English;corpus of textbooks;China-related cultural words;