A Study On The Cohesion Of English Coursebooks Between Primary School And Junior High School

Teaching material plays a key role in English language teaching especially under Chinese context. English teaching materials are inevitably developing along with the time vicissitude and the English educational undertaking development. A great many of the researches have been done on the diversified English coursebooks,while the cohesion between different learning stages is often overlooked by most of the researchers. This thesis attempts to probe into the cohesion problems and actual application of English coursebooks between primary and junior high school with the focus on the version of PEP and Go for it, published by the People’s Education Press.The study aims to specifically explore the following research questions:1. How could the selected English coursebooks meet the general and multi-level requirements of new English curriculum standards?2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the selected textbooks in connection aspect?3. What are the negative effects caused by the inappropriate cohesion between the selected English textbooks?This study has evaluated two sets of English textbooks from the cohesion perspective and tried to find out the drawbacks remain in the textbook compiling and actual application. Qualitative and quantitative analysis methods are adopted in this research. In the qualitative analysis, language knowledge, language skills and compiling techniques of the selected textbooks are explored based on the general and specific requirements proposed by the new curriculum standards. In the quantitative analysis, questionnaire survey and in-depth interview are adopted in order to get the information from the textbooks’ prime users. 110 students from grade 8 and 10 senior teachers in junior high school are invited to take part in the questionnaire survey. Based on the questionnaire results, 2 students and 2 teachers among them are also invited to do the in-depth interviews. Through the analysis of the results from quantitative analysis this study mainly explores actual application of the selected textbooks, and tries to point out the inappropriate cohesion and its negative effect.From all the above analysis, major findings of this research can be concluded as follows: Firstly, the compilation of two sets of English textbooks on language knowledge and skills closely accords with the new English curriculum standards’ general and multi-level objects;Secondly, discontinuity defects still remain in their compiling. For one thing, the two sets of English textbooks are accomplished by two different and independent compiling teams, different compiling approaches and styles are adopted. For another, the selected English textbooks hold different focuses on both language knowledge and skill cultivation, while the transitional guidance is insufficient for book users. Besides, those compilers show little concern on learners learning interest and motivation change.Thirdly, the inappropriate cohesion between these English textbooks puts additional burdens on book users. For learners, they have to take time to adapt themselves to the usage of new textbooks; for teachers, extra energy must be put into actual teaching process so as to make up the inadequacy of the textbook cohesion.The results and findings of the study are based on our empirical research, which may be a help to arouse broad attention about the cohesion between different coursebooks. This study suggests that textbook editors for different learning stages should strengthen their collaboration to build a set of systematic and well-connected English textbooks will benefit textbook users. As for textbook users, making good use of their textbooks in a reasonable and flexible way will bring the effect of English textbook into a full play and improve the quality of English elementary education.