The Comparison Of Reading Materials Between New Standard English(FLTRP Version)and New Senior English For China(PEP Version)

Textbooks are an indispensable resource for teachers’ teaching and students’ learning,which provide language materials for students to promote their learning of language knowledge and development of language skills.Reading materials are a necessary part of English textbooks.Reading skills training with the guidance of teachers in the classroom is the main way for students to develop their reading skills,students’ reading effectiveness is closely related to the selection and design of reading materials.Therefore,it is of great significance to study the reading materials of the textbook.With the promulgation of the High School English Curriculum Standards(2017),the new senior high English textbooks have been supplied to use nationwide in September,2019.This thesis selects two representative versions of the new textbooks that are written based on the new curriculum standards,namely New Senior English for China(PEP version)and New Standard English(FLTRP version),and takes the compulsory one textbook as an example.The research combines Cheng Xiaotang’s framework of internal evaluation and external evaluation to evaluate reading materials of the textbooks with the High School English Curriculum Standards(2017).(1)The internal evaluation analysis according to the Cunningsworth’s framework for analyzing reading texts,explores the similarities and differences between the two versions in the topic context,text type,length,and language characteristics;and research which version of the textbook’s English reading activities is better accord with the view of English learning activities;(2)The external evaluation refers that the reading materials is compared and analyzed by questionnaires and interviews,which aims to investigate the teachers’ and students’ views of using the two new editions of reading materials.(3)According to the conclusion of the internal and external evaluation,the research provides the suggestions for teachers to use the reading materials effectively.The research concludes several results.(1)According to the analysis of internal evaluation,from the perspective of the topic context,both versions have a variety of topic contexts,and the topics’ layout in FLTRP version advanced by degrees;From the perspective of text type,the text types in the two editions are diverse and involved many different texttypes;In terms of length,the total amount of the reading materials in FLTRP version is more than PEP version’s,but the length of reading material in PEP version has a large leaping in general;In terms of lexical features,the reading materials in two editions textbooks involve the vocabularies that are required by High School English Curriculum Standards(2017).While,the vocabularies that are over-ranging accounts for a large portion of the reading materials in FLTRP version;In terms of syntax,the average sentence length of PEP version is more longer,and most of sentences are compound and complex sentences;In terms of reading activities,both versions involve a series of learning activities,application and practice activities,and innovating activities.The FLTRP version designs more types and comprehensive reading activities,which better reflect the view of English learning activities.(2)According to the analysis of external evaluation,teachers and students are more likely to agree that the topic context and text types in reading materials of two versions are diverse and rich;Meanwhile,teachers and students who use FLTRP version think that the length of the passages and vocabularies in reading materials are more difficult for students;In addition,the teachers and students trend to agree that the sentence structures in reading materials are more complicated in PEP version.Besides,both teachers and students are inclined to view that the reading activities are difficult to some extent,and some of activities should be finished by students with teacher’s guidance.Through the comparison and analysis of the reading materials,the corresponding suggestions are put forward to improve the efficiency of teachers’ use of reading materials:(1)In terms of themes,teachers can compare the themes and contents of the two editions of teaching materials during teaching to choose better reading materials in similar topics for teaching or as extracurricular reading materials.(2)In terms of text types,teachers can use multimedia aids to increase students’ interest in text types.In addition,for specific discourse types,teachers can explain the characteristics and proper nouns of such discourse types,which will increase students’ interest and their understanding of the article.(3)In terms of length,teachers can properly design pre-reading activities to help students fully preview.Teachers can appropriately delete or increase the content of the article under the premise of ensuring the integrity of the reading materials to make it suitable for the language level of the students according to the length of the text and the level of the students,.(4)In terms ofmorphology and syntax,on the one hand,teachers can present vocabulary around the topic and construct a vocabulary network;for syntax,teachers can combine the context in teaching to explain the form,meaning and use of the sentence,so that students learn to apply grammatical knowledge to understand and express meaning.(5)In terms of reading activities,teachers can use a variety of tools and methods,for example the mind maps activities to help students fully sort out the summary articles.Teachers can appropriately reduce the difficulty of reading activities according to the language level of the students being taught.Finally,the author also pointed out the shortcomings of this study and the prospect of follow-up research.