A Comparative Study And Teaching Implication Of Go For It!(2003) And Go For It!(2012) By PEP For Junior High Schools

English is an important tool of communication.Therefore,one major goal of English teaching in our middle school is to cultivate the ability to use English.As the carriers of knowledge and culture transmission,English textbooks are the key point of the English curriculum.They determine the teaching content and organization.With the prosperity of English education,English textbooks have been updated at an alarming rate.The research chooses two versions of Go for it! for comparison.Because of the release of the new National English Curriculum Standards(NECS)in 2011,Go for it!(2003)has been replaced.This thesis takes two versions of Go for it! for grade seven in the first semester published by People's Education Press in 2003 and 2012 respectively as the objects.It attempts to solve the following three research questions: 1)What's the merits and drawbacks of Go for it!(2012)? 2)Does Go for it!(2012)better meet the requirements of the NECS(2011)and the needs of teachers' teaching and students' learning? 3)Can the comparative study of the two versions of Go for it! provide better suggestions on the use of textbooks and new ideas on the textbook compilation?Based on the combination of the NECS(2011)with Cheng Xiaotang's textbook evaluation theory,comparative analysis,text analysis,and bibliography are employed to compare Go for it!(2003)and Go for it!(2012)from two aspects: external evaluation and internal evaluations.With the combination of static analysis and dynamic survey,the study can summarize the strengths and weaknesses of the two versions,examine whether they meet the requirements of the NECS(2011)and users' needs,facilitate the use of Go for it! and provide new ideas on the compilation.Compared with Go for it!(2003),Go for it!(2012)has made great progress in many aspects.It can be obtained that Go for it!(2012)better meets the requirements of the NECS(2011)and the needs of students' learning and teachers' teaching.First,some teaching content is appropriately reduced,the sequence of some units is adjusted.Second,phonological knowledge,imitative dialogues and “Notes on Text” is added to make the knowledge system is more perfect.Third,Go for it!(2012)focuses on developing students' reading,communication and writing skills.Fourth,the language knowledge design of Go for it!(2012)is more in line with the learning characteristics of Chinese students.Fifth,Go for it!(2012)is favorable for the reasonable arrangement of class hours.Six,the layout of the knowledge section is relatively clear.Even so,Go for it!(2012)still has some shortcomings: 1)the connection between teaching materials is not reasonable enough;2)Go for it!(2012)pays less attention to the cultivation of students' cultural awareness;3)partial content of the textbook cannot keep up with the requirements of the times;4)too many higher demands on teachers are not conducive to saving teachers' preparation time.Accordingly,some suggestions will be given for teachers and compilers on the basis of the major findings in this thesis.It is earnestly hoped that these suggestions will be useful.