1 Introduction

Emphasis was placed on the importance of telling China's story well, under the advocacy of General Secretary Xi Jinping, in shaping the country's image, enhancing cultural soft power, and international discourse power. The article points out that new requirements have been put forward for the cultivation of foreign language skills and international communication abilities of college students under the new situation. Scholars have conducted research on how to cultivate college students to tell Chinese stories in English, and have put forward suggestions for innovative teaching materials, activity design, and content modes. However, existing research lacks depth, comprehensiveness, and empirical evidence, especially in exploring cross-cultural communication elements such as storytellers and audience relationships. Although there have been studies investigating the Chinese cultural English expression ability of college students, there is a lack of empirical research specifically targeting college students telling Chinese stories in English. This study adopts a qualitative method to collect and analyze English essays and in-depth interviews on Chinese stories from college students, aiming to understand their theme choices and reasons when telling Chinese stories in English.

2. Social Constructivist Cultural Identity Concept

Explored cultural identity from the perspective of social constructivism, emphasizing that an individual's understanding of the world is a product of the historical and cultural nature of social life. Cultural identity is closely related to the way individuals present themselves. Through specific presentation methods, individuals can understand, implement, or resist specific identity, and construct cultural identity in cross-cultural communication. Discourse plays a crucial role in the construction of cultural identity, as individuals demonstrate their group membership by mastering and using specific discourse. In addition, the presence of others is crucial for the construction of one's cultural identity, and the differences between oneself and others promote self-awareness and understanding of the surrounding world. To study how college students use English to tell Chinese stories, it is necessary to pay attention to their judgments and choices of "Chinese discourse", as well as their cognition of "others".

3 Research Design

Introduced the research design, including corpus collection and analysis. The research subjects are 22 first-year undergraduate students majoring in international law from a university in Beijing, of whom 8 participated in in-depth interviews. The corpus collection is divided into two stages: the first stage requires participants to write English essays about Chinese stories, and the second stage invites some students to conduct in-depth interviews. The interview adopts a semi-structured open-ended format, conducted in Chinese, recorded and transcribed. The corpus analysis adopts the theme analysis method, which extracts themes through coding and induction, and focuses on the respondents' opinions and process of choosing themes for Chinese stories.

4 Analysis results

The analysis results show that respondents believe that "Chinese history and traditional culture" and "achievements and national conditions of contemporary China" are worthwhile themes for telling Chinese stories. They emphasize the importance and uniqueness of these themes, while reflecting a negative perception of the Western world. The interviewee mentioned that Chinese stories should showcase China's history, traditional culture, economic development, technological innovation, poverty alleviation achievements, as well as the socialist economic and political system with Chinese characteristics. They believe that this will help change the negative stereotypes of China in the international community. When writing English compositions about Chinese stories in practice, respondents' theme choices are influenced by personal experiences, understanding and reflection on "Chinese stories," past writing experiences, and interests. For example, some respondents choose themes related to their personal experiences, some choose themes based on their understanding of "Chinese stories," and some choose themes based on their interests and hobbies.

5 Discussion and Conclusion

This study delves into the theme selection of college students using English to tell Chinese stories and the influencing factors behind it. Research has found that respondents tend to choose "Chinese history and traditional culture" and "achievements and national conditions of contemporary China" as story themes, reflecting their construction of Chinese cultural identity and their understanding of Western audiences. The study proposed the "Self Other" model for selecting themes in Chinese stories, emphasizing how college students choose their discourse through self experience and reflection when telling Chinese stories, as well as how to choose themes based on their understanding and imagination of Western audiences.