1 Introduction

Emphasizes the importance of strengthening international communication capacity building as proposed in the report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, highlighting the critical role of foreign language education in disseminating China's voice. Analyzes the challenges faced by foreign language education, including insufficient attention to contemporary Chinese theory and practice, as well as difficulties in effectively communicating Chinese discourse. Introduces the launch of the multilingual textbook series Understanding Contemporary China, designed to help students master the discourse system with Chinese characteristics and enhance their ability to tell China's stories effectively in foreign languages. Proposes the necessity of constructing an evaluation framework for unit instructional design of Understanding Contemporary China to improve teaching design quality and cultivate international communication talents. Finally, raises two research questions: what constitutes the evaluation framework for unit instructional design, and how to apply this framework for evaluation.

2 Research Design

Describes the research design, employing a dialectical research method divided into four steps: studying the spirit of the 20th National Congress and relevant literature, constructing the evaluation framework for Understanding Contemporary China unit instructional design, applying the framework to analyze teaching design cases, and reflecting on the framework's applicability and optimization pathways.

3 Evaluation Framework for Understanding Contemporary China Unit Instructional Design

This chapter constructs the evaluation framework for Understanding Contemporary China unit instructional design based on Tyler's curriculum theory and Berlo's communication theory. The framework comprises six key elements: teaching objectives, teaching process, communicators, communication audience, communication content, and communication methods. Teaching objectives aim to enhance students' capacity for disseminating Chinese culture, incorporating elements of international communication. The teaching process relies on scientifically sound instructional design to achieve these objectives. Communicators refer to foreign language teachers and students, who must possess the ability to disseminate Chinese culture. The communication audience consists of foreign citizens, and instructional design must consider their cultural background, cognitive needs, and emotional attitudes. Communication content is primarily drawn from the Understanding Contemporary China textbook, serving as the core of teaching. Communication methods should align with the audience's cognitive needs and language habits, avoiding abstraction and complexity. The evaluation framework assesses the rationality of instructional design rather than directly examining the achievement of teaching objectives.

4 Application of the Evaluation Framework for Understanding Contemporary China Unit Instructional Design

This chapter explores the application of the evaluation framework, including the evaluation process and key findings. The application involves selecting instructional design cases, evaluating textbook unit content, and specific evaluation steps. The study analyzed 826 instructional design cases from the National Foreign Language Curriculum Ideological and Political Teaching Case Competition and the FLTRP "Teaching Star" Competition, focusing on the "Whole-Process People's Democracy" unit. The unit's teaching objectives include fostering students' cultural confidence in China's democratic system, rationally responding to criticisms from other countries, and understanding differences among democratic systems worldwide. Evaluation steps include case reading, element evaluation, single-case holistic evaluation, and multi-case comprehensive evaluation, aiming to validate the framework's applicability and provide guidance for teaching improvements.

Key findings include single-case and multi-case evaluation results. Single-case evaluations revealed that exemplary cases, such as Lesson Plan 3, explicitly aimed to enhance students' cross-cultural and international communication abilities, designed specific communicative scenarios as output tasks, emphasized China's political system, and employed activities like AI teaching assistants to boost learning interest. However, this lesson plan did not fully consider audience characteristics in its communication methods. Multi-case evaluations found that most cases met basic requirements for communication elements but had shortcomings in teaching objectives, communication content, and methods, such as failing to explicitly target the enhancement of Chinese cultural communication capacity, inadequately respecting diversity when comparing Chinese and Western democratic systems, and not adjusting discourse styles based on audience characteristics.

Based on evaluation results, three recommendations are proposed: accurately grasp the strategic significance of the textbook, scientifically address the textbook's challenging features, and emphasize the cross-cultural adaptability of discourse transformation. Teachers should recognize the textbook's core goal of cultivating international communication talents, design activities integrating content understanding and language learning, and comprehensively consider target audience characteristics to flexibly select discourse styles and expressions, thereby improving the global comprehensibility and emotional resonance of China's stories.

5 Reflection and Interpretation

Reflects on the applicability and feasibility of the evaluation framework through case analysis, highlighting its strengths and areas for improvement in enhancing students' capacity for disseminating Chinese culture. The article argues that integrating international communication and curriculum theory perspectives is reasonable and feasible, facilitating the organic combination of teaching objectives and processes. It also acknowledges the study's limitations, including simplified information presentation, discrepancies between instructional design and actual teaching implementation, and the framework's limited scope of application. Future research could expand on classroom practice observations, learning outcome assessments, differentiated instructional design strategies, and teacher development support systems to deepen theoretical understanding and practical innovation in textbook use, contributing to the construction of a discourse system with Chinese characteristics and the enhancement of Chinese cultural communication capacity.

6 Conclusion

Emphasizes the importance of telling China's stories well and disseminating China's voice, highlighting the innovative role of the Understanding Contemporary China textbook series in foreign language education. Effective instructional design should transform textbook content into students' practical communication abilities, requiring systematic support at both teacher and institutional levels. The study constructs an evaluation framework for Understanding Contemporary China unit instructional design and validates its applicability and feasibility through case studies. The findings provide teachers with instructional design references and theoretical support for cultivating international communication talents. As China's central role on the world stage becomes increasingly prominent, the strategic function of foreign language education will further intensify. Continued theoretical exploration and practical innovation are expected to build a more comprehensive instructional design evaluation framework, nurturing more high-quality international communication talents needed by the nation.