更新时间:2025-09-13
Developing College English textbook input materials with an international communication orientation
胡杰辉 ,  李京南    作者信息&出版信息
Foreign Language Education in China   ·   2025年9月13日   ·   2025年 8卷 第3期   ·   DOI:10.20083/j.cnki.fleic.2025.0024
57 7(CNKI)
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AI 摘要

1 Introduction

This section discusses the significant value of research on textbook compilation processes for improving textbook quality and promoting textbook comprehension and utilization, pointing out that college foreign language textbook compilation in China suffers from problems such as over-reliance on experience at the expense of theory and insufficient applicability of content materials. Building upon Wen Qiufang's theoretical framework for college foreign language textbook compilation, it emphasizes that teaching materials, as the primary carriers of teaching content, serve dual functions of language input and value orientation. Addressing the current situation where existing research pays insufficient attention to international communication orientation, it proposes taking the development of *Understanding Contemporary China: College English Integrated Course* as an example to explore compilation concepts and strategies for organically integrating Chinese elements into textbooks and cultivating students' ability to disseminate Chinese voices in English.

2 Elements of the Teaching Material Compilation System and Their Interactive Relationships

This section discusses the core elements of teaching material compilation as a dynamic system and their interactive relationships. Teaching material compilation comprises three interlinked and organically interactive stages: material selection, material transformation, and discourse optimization. Textbook compilation concepts and goals determine the direction of material compilation; taking *Understanding Contemporary China: College English Integrated Course* as an example, its concepts of curriculum-based ideological and political education, integration of language and content, and cultivation of intercultural communication competence run through the entire compilation process, serving the strategic needs of international communication. Material compilation and unit teaching objectives as well as learning activity design maintain a bidirectional interactive relationship: materials are constrained by teaching objectives, while their discourse characteristics simultaneously react upon the refinement and adjustment of teaching objectives, ensuring that materials precisely support specific teaching and production tasks. These elements are interconnected and jointly serve the overall goal of high-quality material compilation.

3 Strategies and Elements of Material Selection

This section discusses strategies and elements for selecting college English teaching materials with an international communication orientation. Contextualization of macro-narratives is the primary strategy, emphasizing the transformation of grand topics such as reform and opening-up and Chinese modernization into concrete scenarios close to daily life to enhance audience emotional connection and value resonance; taking the "People First" unit as an example, it embeds abstract concepts into perceivable situations through three event slices: flood fighting and disaster relief, post-earthquake reconstruction, and emergency management system construction. Unit themes and specific cases form organic interactions: themes guide material selection direction, while cases serve as direct entry points to achieve integration of language and content through representative examples. This strategy enables students to spontaneously construct understanding of Chinese discourse and narrative systems, breaking the separation between language skills and thematic knowledge, and providing imitable models for telling China's stories well.

4 Strategies and Elements of Material Transformation

This section explores core strategies and elements for transforming college English teaching materials with an international communication orientation. Material transformation is a crucial stage of pedagogical reconstruction, with individualization of narrative perspective as its core principle, aiming to transform documentary discourse into language materials that learners can easily understand, experience, and imitate, thereby addressing the dilemma of "abstraction in Chinese narratives." The strategy of individualizing narrative perspective manifests in two dimensions of reconstruction: first, reconstruction of narrative perspective, which requires breaking through the "knowledge indoctrination" model and guiding learners to tell China's stories from the identities of "participants" and "witnesses," activating their awareness as "civilian diplomatic subjects"; second, reconstruction of logical framework, which integrates multiple independent materials and constructs unified narrative logic to jointly serve core teaching objectives. Taking the "People First" unit as an example, the compilation team uses the song *For Whom* as a thread to connect three cases—flood fighting and disaster relief, post-disaster reconstruction, and emergency management system construction—constructing an embodied experiential cognitive framework from first-person individual perspective, transforming abstract concepts into perceivable "memory coordinates." Narrative perspective transformation and logical framework transformation are closely related; the same case can be approached from different angles, and material compilation must adhere to the principle of theme-goal-driven development, enabling various cases to jointly serve the interpretation of the same theme.

5 Strategies and Elements of Discourse Optimization

This section explores strategies and elements of discourse optimization, with adaptation of narrative goals as its core principle. Regarding teaching objective adaptation, it emphasizes precise alignment between material content and unit themes as well as specific teaching objectives, enabling input materials to correspond to sub-goals of production and reducing conversion difficulties for future users. Regarding communication objective adaptation, it follows the "audience-centered" principle, adjusting content presentation according to audience cognitive backgrounds; for example, adjusting "Chinese soldiers" to "rescuers, primarily Chinese soldiers and police" helps audiences lacking Chinese cultural background accurately understand core meanings. Discourse optimization comprises two levels: content fine-tuning and language optimization. Content fine-tuning ensures discourse coherence and logical clarity through addition, deletion, and polishing to support language and intercultural skills training; language optimization regulates vocabulary and sentence pattern difficulty to match learner proficiency, preventing classrooms from becoming mechanical translation exercises. This section takes the "People First" unit as an example to illustrate the fine-tuning practice of changing "acres" to "hectares," demonstrating cultural recoding that breaks Anglo-American centrism and stays close to communication targets, effectively enhancing precision and adaptability in cross-cultural communication.

6 Conclusion

This section discusses new challenges in college English textbook compilation under the international communication orientation, pointing out that the compilation of *Understanding Contemporary China: College English Integrated Course* essentially represents a creative process of transforming documentary discourse into teaching discourse and Chinese experience into world language; it emphasizes that material compilation must balance general principles of foreign language teaching with characteristic educational goals, achieving narrative reconstruction through strategies of contextualization of macro-narratives, individualization of narrative perspective, and adaptation of narrative goals, thereby avoiding cognitive barriers, transcending fragmented limitations, and providing solutions with political integrity, academic rigor, and operability for cultivating international communication competence; finally, it notes that college English teaching in China has distinctive Chinese characteristics, and textbook construction cannot simply copy general frameworks. This paper serves only as a preliminary exploration, hoping to provide reference for future textbook compilation and utilization.

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