Exploring the Teaching Pathways of Ideological and Political Education in English Majors through “Understanding Contemporary China” under the New Liberal Arts Context

The construction of the new liberal arts has assigned foreign language disciplines the mission of cultivating internationally oriented talents who are equipped with Chinese feelings, a global vision and cross-cultural communication competence, while curriculum-based ideological and political education (IPE) has become the fundamental measure for implementing the task of moral cultivation in higher education. For English majors, who come into direct and frequent contact with foreign cultures and values, how to integrate value education into professional instruction without weakening language learning constitutes an urgent issue. Drawing on the “Understanding Contemporary China” (UCC) textbook series, this paper first examines the theoretical grounding of IPE in English major courses under the new liberal arts context, including the value orientation of foreign language disciplines, the policy foundation of curriculum-based IPE, and the pedagogical value of the UCC series. It then synthesizes from the literature three salient challenges: the fragmentation of IPE elements and the imbalance between theoretical discussion and operable practice, the separation of language instruction from cultural and value education, and the inadequate yet risky integration of digital technologies. On this basis, the paper proposes four interconnected teaching pathways: the content-language-values integration pathway, the intercultural discovery-comparison-comprehension pathway, the task-driven thematic-linguistic-realistic (TLR) pathway, and the digital-intelligence-empowered pathway. The paper finally discusses implementation considerations in teacher development, evaluation mechanisms and resource support. It argues that these mutually reinforcing pathways can transform the UCC series from textbook resources into an operable carrier of IPE, promoting the coordinated development of English majors’ language competence, thinking quality and value identification.