A Study Of Grammar Exercise Design For Senior English Coursebooks-A Functional Approach

The thesis surveyed three sets of Senior English coursebooks intended for Chinese Senior Middle School students to explore the presence of contextualization of grammar practice in Senior English coursebooks.The analysis focused on the interpersonal meaning of language in the perspective of functional grammar. Context was taken into account throughout the analyses. Modal auxiliaries were selected as an example to check how the grammar item was practiced.Based on the analysis, a conclusion can be drawn that some grammar exercises in these coursebooks were designed at discourse level, emphasizing the importance of context and highlighting the function of language, while others only at sentence level in the form of pattern drills.Subsequent to the findings, the researcher pointed out the strengths and weaknesses of these coursebooks in grammar exercises design.It is worth pointing out that the analysis of coursebooks from a functional approach is still at an initial stage, so the methodology remains to be improved in future research.