The Ideology Analysis Of English Textbooks For Junior High School

The research on textbooks has been going on ever since there are textbooks,which is the same with English textbooks. English textbooks play a vital role in English teaching and doing research on them can help perfect the compilation of textbooks and guarantee the quality of them. Nowadays there are a great number of researches about textbook ideology home and abroad. However, after reviewing related literature, I find most of the research objects of textbook ideology researches are social, Chinese, history and political textbooks, which are salient in ideology, as well as science textbooks, which are usually considered ideology free textbooks. As for the researches in ESL/EFL textbooks(EFL textbooks in China), most of them concentrate on the allocation of different kinds of cultures, such as the allocation of Chinese and Western culture, rural and urban culture,minority and Han nationality culture, but rarely on value orientation of English textbooks.But there should be value orientation in English textbooks, just like any other textbooks.From the perspective of ideology, the dialogues, texts, and exercises in Go for It published by PEP are analyzed. The method used in this thesis is content analysis. Firstly all the units of the textbooks are classified, according to their topics, into eight topic groups:basic physiological need, family life, school life, interpersonal relationship, leisure and recreation, nature and science, future life, other life. Then the content are analyzed to inspect the value orientation in English textbooks.This thesis intents to answer three questions: (1) Are there any value orientation or moral qualities students are supposed to have that are hidden in English textbooks? (2) If the answer to question one is "Yes.", then what kind of value orientation and moral character students are supposed to have? (3)How are the requirements put forward and are they reasonable?The results show that English textbooks for junior high school students have the following requirements for them: have a healthy lifestyle,have a positive attitude towards life, be ready to help others,have sense of responsibility, obey the rules, and have environmental awareness.The requirements themselves are reasonable and beneficial for students, but the way they are put forward are slightly biased. Only the good side,but not the social reality,is displayed. Nowadays, in the age of information, students have various access to current events, therefore, if only one kind of value orientation is publicized in textbooks, students may think textbooks are lecturing, which may generate antipathy in them.Therefore textbook compilation in this aspect should be improved. As for teachers,they should also take social reality into consideration and make some changes when using the textbooks, thus students are more willing to accept what's taught in textbooks. Only in this way, can textbooks help students form a comprehensive world view.