An Analysis Of Questions In Reading Materials Of New Standard English Based On The Bloom’s Taxonomy

21st century has witnessed an accelerating development in economy and technology of the world,and the new era calls for high-quality workforce and educational progress.China has also suffered great changes,and therefore,the cultivation of students’ thinking and abilities are receiving more and more attentions in education.Besides,the National English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School(NECS)(2017 Edition)emphasizes that thinking ability should be an important goal of English teaching.Thus,as the carrier of English curriculum,English textbooks should also reflect the cultivation of students’ cognition and thinking.Therefore,this study aims to analyze the questions in reading materials of English textbooks based on the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy(RBT)so as to find out the cognitive cultivation reflected in the prevailing English textbooks.New Standard English(NSE)for senior high,the most frequently used English textbooks in Sichuan,are chosen as research samples.Content analysis is conducted in this study.By analyzing and calculating,this study aims to find out the cognitive levels demonstrated by the questions in reading materials of NSE(Compulsory1-5).Meanwhile,this study attempts to examine whether the cognitive levels of questions in reading materials of NSE(Compulsory1-5)are related to the topics or genres of the reading texts.First,all the questions in reading materials of the referred five books are collected and transcribed into an excel sheet,and then they are classified into proper cognitive levels with the reference of the RBT.By calculating the frequencies and percentages,the different cognitive levels of the questions are presented.Moreover,by comparing the questions of reading texts with the same topic or genre,the relation between the cognitive levels of questions in reading materials and the topics or genres of the reading texts are revealed.By calculating and analyzing,this study finds that the questions in reading materials of NSE(Compulsory1-5)have reflected various cognitive levels with different percentages and the questions are not related to the topic or genre of the reading texts directly.However,some problems are also presented: most of the questions are classified into lower-order cognitive thinking and the questions reflecting high-order cognitive thinking are far insufficient,besides,the distributions of questions at various cognitive levels are imbalanced and irregular,and the cognitive levels reflected in the questions from Book1 to Book5 are lacking of progression.Therefore,this study hopes to shed light on compilers to compose questions according to both students’ language ability and cognitive characteristics,adjusting the proportion of questions at lower-order cognitive levels and the questions at higher-order cognitive levels.It is strongly recommended that textbook compilers should have the awareness of cultivating students’ overall thinking and offer questions in textbooks with various cognitive levels so as to make sure students are always exposed to different cognitive thinking levels.Besides,it is suggested that questions which require students’ to use analyzing,evaluating and creating abilities should be increased,and therefore,the cultivation of students’ higher-order cognitive thinking can be strengthened.