抄録
Cultural understanding is of great importance in the process of learning at junior high school and high school. This paper analyzes each series of junior high school English textbooks approved by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology from the perspective of intercultural understanding. It elucidates the portion of concrete culture and abstract culture shown in the cultural materials in the textbooks, the countries the materials dealt with, and the purposes of the materials. It compares the materials shown in each publisher and shows the trends of the textbooks. The result of the research shows the new materials contain many concrete cultural materials concerning English-speaking countries in each series, although there are some differences between textbooks to some extent. Furthermore, the important fact is that more materials concerning Japan as the purpose for understanding the Japanese culture are shown in the textbooks compared with previous textbooks.
