A Study Of The Adapted Topic Illustrations In Go For It!(2012) From Go For It!(Nunan,2005)

Previous studies on topic illustrations,an important part of English textbooks to attract students’attention and facilitate their textual comprehension,have been long concerned with their effects in contributing to a unit as a whole.Less attention has been given to their adaptation from the original version,and least discussion made on the causes of the variations or changes in the adaptation.This thesis studies the topic illustrations in middle school English textbooks Go for it!(2012)(hereafter,shortened as GFI(2012),by comparing with its American version Go for it!(2~ndd edition),compiled by David Nunan(hereafter,abbreviated as GFI(Nunan,2005).It seeks to find out problems with the adaptation,figure out what underlies the problems,and attempts at principles for textbook adaptation.The research results are as follows:(1)The adaptation of topic illustrations from GFI(Nunan(2005))is,to some extent,a localization of what is pictured about American(or Western)life into what is Chinese,as manifested in lexical replacement as well as figures caricatured in GFI(2012).(2)Second,the adaptation of topic illustrations is mostly a generalization of or detachment from English-speaking situations,as a result of which the situations created by adapted illustrations tend to lose their authenticity,and offer few reliable clues to the actual use of the language.(3)In terms of lexical use,the words in the adapted illustrations are much more general than those in the Nunan version,which is,again,a sign of generalization.