A Comparative Analysis Of Eight Sets Of English Teaching Textbooks For Junior Middle Schools

With the advancement of English curriculum reform, China has seen a new phenomenon of "one syllabus, many sets of English textbooks". At present, there are more than ten sets of English textbooks for junior middle schools available. Although every set of textbooks claim that the textbook writers have made their effort to meet the requirements of the curriculum standards, they differ from each other in their writing principles, the designing of the content and the exercises and activities. As a result, it becomes necessary to systematically analyze and compare them with reference to the curriculum standards, so that a substantial theoretical framework will be formulated for the evaluation of English textbooks.This study chooses eight sets among more than ten sets of widely-used English textbooks for junior high schools in our country for analysis and evaluation. The framework for the analysis and evaluation is mainly based on the English Curriculum Standard of Compulsory Education (ECSCE), promulgated in 2011, and on the literature review on the textbook evaluation of theorists and practitioners at home and abroad. The analysis and evaluation framework is composed of five dimensions and nine evaluation criteria. The five dimensions are the dimension of theoretical guidance, the dimension of language knowledge and skill, the cultural dimension, the psychological dimension, and the dimension of teaching evaluation. The nine evaluation criteria are theoretical advancement, systematicness of language knowledge, balance of language skills, universality of topics, balance of Chinese and Western cultures, cultural ideology, scientificalness of knowledge arrangement, individual differences, and evaluation principle.The results of the textbook analysis show that each set of textbooks have some obvious advantages, but all have some room for improvement. They all make efforts to help students with their vocabulary learning, but they all have their own characteristics in terms of the arrangement of vocabularies, grammatical points and the four basic language skills. Different textbooks show distinct learning strategies, and different problems. The vocabularies in the textbooks published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press (FLTRP) and those by Oxford Shanghai Edition (OSE), do not have frequent recurrence. In the arrangement of Chinese and Western culture, the textbooks by Beijing Normal University Press (BNUP), People’s Education Press (HEP) and Shanghai Education Press (SEP) attempt to balance the Western culture against the Chinese, which may result in the development of the learners’ ability of cross-cultural communication. More concern has been shown about the development of students’ ideology, morality and patriotism, in the textbooks by FLTRP, SEP, Yilin Press (YP), SFL EP and OSE. From the point of meeting the need of students with different English levels, the textbooks by BNUP, PEP, and FLTRP show obvious elasticity in the learning content with diversified exercises. Although other textbooks also have some flexible learning content, the simplicity in forms and types of presentation of the content makes it less effective in the improvement of students’ English level. Finally, it is worthy of mentioning that every set of textbooks have designed evaluation activity to help students evaluate their own learning situations.In light of the above analysis and evaluation results, the author puts forward some suggestions from the five dimensions. From the perspective of theoretical guidance, textbooks should represent new and advanced learning and teaching theories, absorbing the advantages of different theories and presenting to the learner updated knowledge of the time. From the dimension of language knowledge and skills, according to the curriculum standards, textbooks should arrange enough amount of knowledge and provide students with different English learning strategies and techniques. From the cultural dimension, the culture in textbooks should show the features of Chinese and Western cultures with a wide range of topics. From the psychological dimension, knowledge in textbooks should be presented in accordance with mental and psychological nature of the students’ developmental phases. As for the evaluation dimension, textbooks should present various ways of evaluation, including the evaluation of the learning process and the result.