A Study Of Ideological And Political Elements And Their Classification In Senior High School English Textbooks

With President Xi Jinping putting forward the important idea that ideological and political work should run through the whole process of education and teaching,"Ideological and Political Education in All Courses",as a new teaching concept,has received more and more attention from educators and teachers.Having been the focus of curriculum improvement and teaching reform in colleges,it has scarcely been discussed in secondary education perhaps due to the pressure of exam-oriented education and the lack of teachers’ awareness of cultivating people of all-round development.High school students,right in the important period of forming their values and outlook on life and world,need adequate guidance.Therefore,"Ideological and Political Education in All Courses" should also be an important part of curriculum and teaching reform in secondary schools."Ideological and Political Education in All Courses" is,by definition,not to add a course or an activity in school education,but to integrate ideological and political education into the teaching of all subjects in all aspects,so as to achieve the goal of cultivating morality and nurturing people(Gao,2017).Ideological and political elements are defined in this thesis as any educational content that can be excavated to exert its positive impact on students’ moral,social and ideological mindset.The classification framework in this research is based on the core literacy framework of secondary school students,combined with the socialist core values.The 3 top categories are "Human and Self","Human and Society" and "Human and Nation",including 6 subcategories of healthy life,self-worth,harmonious living,social practice,Chinese spirits and international vision.This research takes Advance with English(Modules 1-11)as the materials to investigate.Published by Yilin Press and Oxford University Press,this series of textbooks is widely adopted in the senior high schools of Jiangsu Province.It consists of 11 modules,39 units in all.Through textbook analysis,the thesis aims at(1)analyzing the feasibility of implementing ideological and political education in high school English courses;(2)analyzing the comprehensiveness of Advance with English in the context of "Ideological and Political Education in All Courses";(3)offering basic data for the convenience in the course and teaching design oriented towards "Ideological and Political and Education in All Courses".Therefore,this thesis puts forward the following research questions:(1)Does Advance with English cover any ideological and political elements?If yes,what are they?(2)How are those ideological and political elements distributed in the classification system adopted in this thesis?It is found that(1)there are many ideological and political elements in the target textbooks such as anecdotes of celebrities,local conditions and customs,cultural differences and so on.Altogether 140 ideological and political elements are listed out;(2)these elements are unevenly distributed in the classification system.There are 53 elements under the category of Human and Nation,52 under Human and Self,and 35 under Human and Society.Among them,35 elements can be subcategorized into international vision,accounting for the highest proportion among the 6 subcategories.However,the subcategories of Chinese spirit and social practice account for the least.Consistent with our expectation,the Reading section in each unit contains the biggest number of ideological and political elements.Based on the above findings,the following conclusions can be drawn:(1)It is feasible to carry out ideological and political education in secondary school English courses;(2)The ideological and political elements in the target textbooks are not satisfactorily distributed.Human and Society elements as well as elements reflecting Chinese spirit should be increased.It is suggested that the reading section in each unit should be made full use of by teachers in implementing the concept of Ideological and Political Education in All Courses and more efforts be made to integrate this concept into grammar and vocabulary teaching by,for instance,giving proper example sentences.