1 Introduction

It elaborates on the mission transformation of foreign language education in the context of international communication capacity building, points out the dilemma faced by foreign language majors of "being proficient in foreign languages yet struggling to tell China's stories well," and further explains the compilation purpose of the *Understanding Contemporary China* textbook series and the uneven quality issues in their instructional design. On this basis, it proposes the necessity of constructing a unit-based instructional design evaluation framework, clarifies "unit" as the basic unit, attempts to build a systematic evaluation framework to enhance teaching effectiveness, and lists two specific research questions.

2 Research Design

A four-step dialectical research design is adopted: first, studying the spirit of the 20th National Congress of the CPC, literature on international communication and instructional design, combined with teacher interviews and classroom observations to understand the current status of textbook usage; second, constructing a unit-based instructional design evaluation framework based on preliminary analysis; third, applying this framework to six instructional designs of the "Whole-Process People's Democracy" unit for case analysis; and finally, reflecting on the applicability and rationality of the framework and proposing optimization pathways.

3 Evaluation Framework for *Understanding Contemporary China* Unit Instructional Design

An evaluation framework for *Understanding Contemporary China* unit instructional design is constructed, integrating Tyler's four elements of curriculum theory with Berlo's four elements of the communication model, forming six key elements: teaching objectives, teaching process, communicator, audience, content, and method. Teaching objectives occupy the top level, guiding the overall direction of enhancing students' Chinese cultural communication competence; the communicator refers to foreign language teachers and students with Chinese cultural communication competence; the audience comprises foreign citizens whose cultural backgrounds and cognitive characteristics need to be precisely grasped; the content centers on the textbook, requiring accuracy, systematicity, and vivid cases; the method must align with audience cognition and language habits; the teaching process serves as the concrete foundation, requiring the integrated design of progressive and diverse teaching activities based on various elements. The six elements are interconnected through bidirectional arrows and dynamically interact; the framework focuses on evaluating the rationality of instructional design rather than goal achievement, and elaborates on the specific requirements and functional positioning of each element.

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

It elaborates on the application process and main findings of the evaluation framework for *Understanding Contemporary China* unit instructional design. Regarding the application process, the study selected 826 instructional design cases using this textbook from two national foreign language teaching competitions in 2023–2024, ultimately focusing on six cases with the "Whole-Process People's Democracy" unit as content; this unit was selected due to its extremely low inclusion rate resulting from topic sensitivity. The evaluation steps include four stages: case reading and information extraction, element-by-element evaluation of the six elements, holistic evaluation of single cases, and comprehensive comparative analysis of multiple cases, aiming to verify framework applicability and provide feedback for instructional design improvement.

Regarding main findings, single-case evaluation takes Lesson Plan 3 as an example; this case explicitly designated intercultural competence and international communication competence as teaching objectives, designed specific communicative scenarios where student clubs produce English posters and short videos for foreign university students, accurately grasped key points of communication content with emphasis on examples and data-based argumentation, employed AI teaching assistants to facilitate pre-class interaction, and designed diverse language processing activities; the shortcoming lies in failing to guide students to adjust discourse style according to audience characteristics. Comprehensive comparison of multiple cases shows that most cases met basic requirements in communicator, audience, content, and method, such as setting specific communication identities, supplementing authoritative extension materials, and adopting the "comprehension before production" teaching sequence.

Areas for improvement concentrate on three dimensions: at the teaching objective level, five lesson plans failed to explicitly designate enhancing Chinese cultural communication competence as the overall objective, mostly limiting themselves to ideological and political education rather than national strategic height; at the content level, four lesson plans required students to conduct China-West comparisons of democratic systems, and all lesson plans failed to design countermeasures for dual learning difficulties in content and language; at the method level, five lesson plans failed to adopt targeted communication strategies based on audience characteristics, lacking analysis of audience misunderstanding causes and response training.

Based on the above analysis, the study proposes three recommendations: first, accurately grasp the core positioning of textbooks serving the national cultural "going global" strategy and cultivate high-quality compound international communication talents; second, scientifically address the dual challenges of integrating content and language in textbooks, designing teaching activities that balance content comprehension and language learning; third, emphasize cross-cultural adaptability in discourse transformation, guiding students to master "audience-oriented communication" strategies, flexibly selecting discourse styles for different audiences, and achieving "global comprehensibility" and emotional resonance of Chinese values.

5 Reflective Interpretation

It reflects on the applicability and feasibility of the evaluation framework, verifies the rationality of integrating international communication and curriculum theory perspectives, clarifies the logical relationships among the six elements, and points out that the framework needs to integrate communication elements into teaching objectives and processes to achieve organic fusion; it also acknowledges limitations including textual simplicity, design transformation differences, and limited application scope, and proposes future expansion toward three directions: classroom practice assessment, differentiated teaching strategies, and teacher development support systems.

6 Conclusion

It elaborates on the strategic mission of foreign language education in international communication, emphasizes the foundational role of the *Understanding Contemporary China* textbook in talent cultivation; points out that instructional design needs to achieve transformation from textbook content to communication competence, relying on the synergy between teacher innovation and institutional systematic support; explains that the evaluation framework constructed in this study has been verified through cases as applicable, providing dual support for teacher instruction and international communication talent cultivation; finally, it prospects the highlighting of foreign language education's strategic function, calling for continuous exploration to refine the framework and serve the cultivation of high-quality international communication talents.