A Study On The Quality Of Junior English Materials

Nowadays, English teaching and learning develops fast in our country. During this progress, English materials also experience unceasing development so as to keep pace with the changes of specific teaching and learning situations. At the same time the new curriculum reform has made "One Standard, Multiple Versions of Textbook" policy (2001) come true. Such a new materials policy makes materials markets quite active. Teachers and students thus have wider room to choose their materials to conduct their teaching and learning, which makes materials evaluation very important. There is no doubt that materials evaluation will helps them more and better know about the English materials in their hands so that they can take better use of their materials to promote their language teaching and learning.Guided by "One Standard, Multiple Versions of Textbook" policy, two sets of English materials are adopted in junior high schools in Liaoning Province. One is Oxford English (for Shenyang) (2006) used in Shenyang, and the other is Go for It! (2006) used in Dandong.The researcher developed a specific set of criteria for junior English materials evaluation based on "English Curriculum Standard" (for experiment) (2001) and previous theories on materials evaluation. And then basing on them, the researcher conducted a comparison and evaluation of the two sets of materials. During the comparison and evaluation process, we got clearer of the strengths and weaknesses of the two sets of materials. Some results were confirmed that the aims of the two sets of materials corresponded closely with the aims of "English Curriculum Standard" (for experiment) (2001). In addition, the designs, contents, and methodologies of the two sets of materials were approved on the whole. Meanwhile, certain shortcomings of them were found respectively. For example, the packages of the two sets of English materials sometimes didn't get the full use. The utilization ratio was in doubt. Besides, it was short of a general grammar reference to the whole Students' Book of Oxford English (for Shenyang) (2006), compared with Go for It! (2006). Moreover, the Grammar focus section in each unit of Students' Book of Go for It! (2006) wasn't explained in detail. All above will be conducive to future's development and adaption of materials...