A Comparative Study Of Hebei Education Press PEP And Junior High School English Textbooks

Textbooks, as the teachers’ teaching tools and students’ learning resources, areimportant materials and means to achieve English Curriculum Goals. With furtherdevelopment of curriculum reform in our country, various versions of Englishtextbooks appear on the market. Faced with so many versions, it becomes veryimportant as how to evaluate and analyze the textbooks reasonably and scientificallybecomes very important.This paper selected two sets of English textbooks in Shaanxi province as thecomparative objects, One is English textbook published by people’s education press,and the other is English textbook published by Hebei education press. Four researchmethods, comparative method, documentary method, questionnaire method andinterview method are adopted in this paper. First, it compared and analyzed thesurface-layer structures and deep-layer structures of these two sets of Englishtextbooks statically. The surface-layer structures include organization system, contentselection, column designing and illustration. The deep-layer structures includeemotional and attitudinal factors, culture consciousness factors, knowledge factors,and language skill factors. Based on the comparison and analysis, questionnaires andinterviews were done on the using of the two sets of English textbooks. Then theresearch analyzed the results dynamically and summarizes the advantages anddisadvantages of these two sets of English books.The research findings show that organization system of the English textbookpublished by people’s education press is accepted by most teachers and students in theaspect of the surface-layer structure. They think it is logical and circulative. In theaspect of the deep-layer structure, teachers and students think highly of the languageknowledge, including pronunciation and intonation, vocabulary and grammar, but itslanguage skills are more superficial than the other aspects. The comparison andinterview results show that most teachers and students are satisfied with the topiccontents and pictures of the English textbook published by Hebei education press, butit is defective in organization system and column designing. In the aspect of the deep-layer structure, language skills are generally praised by English teachers andstudents. They think that the textbook pays more attention to the training of listening,speaking, reading and writing, but its language knowledge is more superficial than theother aspects, especially pronunciation, intonation and vocabulary.At last, this paper proposes some suggestions for the editors as how to edittextbooks，textbook choosers how to choose textbooks and users how to use textbooksaccording to the investigation and interview results.