An Evaluation Of The Reading Materials In The Senior High School English Textbook Series NSEC

Textbook plays an important role in foreign language teaching and learning, while reading material accounts for a large proportion in a language textbook. Besides, reading is not only one of the four language skills but also the main content of English teaching and all kinds of English examinations. Therefore, to prompt a more appropriate use of the reading materials in textbooks, it is of great importance and necessity to conduct corresponding evaluation. However, the majority of researches on middle school English textbooks at home and abroad, focus on textbook itself, like the introduction of textbooks,the evaluation and analysis of textbooks, the usage of textbooks or the compilation of textbooks. And the research subject of these researches is mainly teachers or the textbooks. By contrast, few studies are devoted to textbook evaluation from the perspective of students.This research aims to evaluate the reading materials in the New Senior English for China (NSEC) based on needs analysis. The NSEC is a widely-used set of senior high school English textbooks. According to Senior High School English Teaching Syllabus(Revised Version, 2000) and the National English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School (NECS, 2003), the NSEC is revised based on the old edition, the Senior English for China (SEFC, 1993). Accordingly, the textbook series embodies the notion that the development of students is both the starting point and final goal of teaching, as advocated by both the Syllabus and the NECS. Reading materials accounts for a large proportion in the NSEC. Against this background, this research, based on students' reading needs, is to evaluate to what extent the reading materials in the NSEC satisfy students' needs, to identify particular advantages and shortcomings of the reading materials in the NSEC and to provide advice to teachers and students so as to help them use the reading materials more effectively.The study, first of all, briefly describes the reading materials in the NSEC, i.e. the Pre-reading, Reading and Comprehending parts in the NSEC, summarizing their features.It then investigates to what extent the reading materials in the NSEC satisfy student's reading needs by two questionnaires and interviews. 276 senior high school students and 6 English teachers from the Middle School Attached to Wuhan University in Wuhan,Hubei province participated in the study. Students were asked to complete the two questionnaires, in which one is to learn their reading needs and the other is to learn their evaluation of the reading materials. And Teachers were interviewed for their usage of the reading materials in teaching practice and their opinions on whether the reading materials meet student's reading needs.After analyzing the results of the two questionnaires and the interviews with the teachers, the writer comes to know most students and teachers, who participated in this study, hold a positive point of view in terms of the topics, genres, exercises, activities of the reading materials as well as its cultivation of student's cross-cultural communicative competence. The abundant topics and genres and multiple activities in the reading materials are conducive to student's English learning. In addition,the reading passages introduce cultures of English-speaking countries, so through learning the reading materials, students can understand cultures unique to foreign countries and cultivate their across-culture communicative competence accordingly. As a whole, reading materials in the NSEC meet the majority of students' reading needs.At the end of this thesis, the writer puts some suggestions on how to make a more appropriate usage of the reading materials for teachers and students and how to refine the textbooks for textbook compilers. By doing so, the writer hopes to prompt a more appropriate usage of the reading materials and a refinement of the reading materials. As such, students' learning needs can be better satisfied.