An Evaluation Of PEP New Senior English For China

Foreign language teaching materials play a vital role in reforming foreign language teaching (FLT). Choosing and using the suitable textbook is one of the important factors to complete the teaching contents and achieve the teaching goals. Textbook can guarantee to implement the teaching syllabus. It is the primary evidence for the teachers to organize the teaching activities and the main source for the students to gain their knowledge, skills and learning strategies. With the reform of courses on elementary education coming into practice and the development of foreign language teaching,more and more foreign language teaching textbooks have come into the market. In this situation, it is very important to evaluate these various textbooks. The textbook evaluation can not only offer reference to the education administration to choose textbooks but also provide suggestions for the compilers to revise textbooks. Moreover, it can help the teachers to adapt or adjust the textbooks in the course of teaching and give teachers teaching guidance and students a great help in their study.The new Senior English for China (Revised SEFC), was successfully revised by the People's Education Press and began to be used throughout the country from the autumn semester of 2003. And the whole set is completed in 2006. As for a textbook newly published and widely used, timely evaluation of SEFC is in need since it can provide some feedback that may be helpful for its revision and better implementation.This research chooses the middle schools in Guilin urban area as the objects. On the basis of the internal evaluation of SEFC 2003, the paper investigates whether this new textbook can both meet the teachers and the students'needs. It also aims to find out the merits and demerits of the textbook in use and the deviation between the textbook designs and the implement. The author hopes to give some useful and practical advice to the teachers. This paper consists of six parts: The first part serves as an introduction, which focuses on the background information, such as the position of English education, the importance of English education reform, the coming out of SEFC and the objectives, content and significance of the research.The second part systematically discusses the related theories of textbooks and textbook evaluation, containing the definition, the roles of the textbook as well as the definition, types, purposes and criteria of textbook evaluation.The third part makes an internal evaluation of the textbook and points out its development principles and the significant features.The fourth part mainly focuses on the external evaluation. In this part, the case study on SEFC 2003 is described and the data collected is analyzed. Then, some main problems in use are listed.The fifth part analyzes and discusses the problems in use and points out the reasons. Then some advice on textbook amendment and use are proposed.The last part is the conclusion.