Exploring And Contrasting Learners’ Perceptions Of Textbook-assigned And Self-selected Discussion Topics

Topic, the core of the textbook, is one of the important factors affecting learners’ motivation and learning effect. Self-selected topic teaching is a kind of learner-centered teaching activity. Numerous scholars dedicate to the discussion of the topic choice of the textbook or the self-selected topic teaching, but, to date, few studies have been conducted on the similarities and differences between textbook-assigned and self-selected topics in terms of learners’ view. Therefore, the present study tries to explore and contrast learners’ perceptions of these two types of topics, which is aimed at helping better understand the topic importance in language teaching.To be specific, the research questions addressed in the present study are:(1) What are the learners’ general perceptions of textbook-assigned topics from the dimensions of interest, knowledge, importance, and difficulty?(2) What are the common themes of learners’ self-selected discussion topics? What are the similarities and differences between textbook-assigned and self-selected discussion topics from topic content and theme as well as from four dimensions?The subjects in this study were65sophomores majoring in English at School of Foreign Languages, Yangzhou University. Two instruments were employed in this study. One involved two questionnaires; the other was to write an essay. The first questionnaire was delivered to learners in order to measure their perceptions of textbook-assigned topics. The argumentative writing task, the topic of which was self-selected, was given to learners the next week, in order to get their self-selected topics. The second questionnaire was asked to finish after the writing in order to measure their perceptions of self-selected topics.By both qualitative and quantitative analysis, the results yielded are as follows:Firstly, learners have different perceptions of ten themes that textbook-assigned according to different dimensions. Themes like education, the family, health, city life, and the environment are of the greatest interest and importance but of the least difficulty to language learners. In contrast, the five themes like violence, economy, politics, history, and travel are of the least interest and importance but of the most difficulty to them.Secondly,13themes, including the family, education, school life, mobile phones, job, travel, society, politics, entertainment, energy&environment, celebrity, marriage, and city life, occurred in learners’argumentative writings, most of which focused on their daily life and study, and are more related to hot social issues in China today. Compared with textbook-assigned discussion topics, five themes---the family, education, travel, politics, and energy, occur both in textbook-assigned and self-selected discussion topics. Besides, the comparison of perceptions along each dimension between textbook-assigned and self-selected topics shows that there are significant differences in the perceptions of the two kinds of topics.The pedagogical implications are:to textbook compilation, the proportion of the topics which learners prefer to choose should be increased; to teachers, college English teachers should adopt learner-centered approach in English teaching and be flexible to make adjustments to meet learners’needs.