A Survey Of The Match Between Junior High School English Textbooks And Learners’ Topic Interests

Textbooks or teaching materials are an important source of students’ learning and teachers’ teaching.English textbooks are the core part of English curriculum resources.Teachers should study the teaching materials deeply to meet the needs of different students’ learning.They develop and utilize the teaching materials reasonably according to the students’ levels and teaching needs in order to better stimulate students’ interests in learning,broaden students’ horizons and expand students’ thinking through the teaching materials.The administrative departments of education,teaching and research institutions and schools should timely grasp the use of teaching materials and put forward proper suggestions for the revision of teaching materials.If necessary,the teaching materials should be updated in time.Interests have positive influences on learners’ learning.Interests can be divided into situational interest and individual interest,and topic interest is composed of both interests.Researchers can study learners’ interests by studying their topic interests.This study attempts to investigate and analyze the three popular versions of junior high school English textbooks---the edition(Go for it)published by People’s Education Press(PEPedition),the edition published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press(FLTRP edition)and the edition(Project English)published by Popular Science Press(PSP edition),and Junior New Concept English and examines the match between junior high school English textbooks and learners learners’ topic interest.It also studies the differences of topic interest between different genders,different regions and different grades and the influence of these factors on the matching of teaching materials.This thesis tries to provide reference for the compilation and evaluation of junior high school English textbooks.In this study,the topics of three sets of junior high school English textbooks and Junior New Concept English are classified according to the topic interest questionnaire of Yu Qianhua and Chu Xingyuan,to explore the topic distribution features of junior high school English textbooks,and to formulate and perfect the topic interest questionnaire suitable for junior high school learners.Then,the features of learners’ topic interest and topic selection are discussed,through the questionnaire survey of 541 students in different grades of junior middle school,including 287 from Changjun Foreign Language School in Changsha and 254 from Wuya Middle School in Chenzhou.Finally,the extent of match between junior high school English textbooks with learners’ topic interests are further explored by data processing and analysis.The findings are as follows:Firstly,the topic distribution features of all three sets of textbooks and Junior New Concept English are presented below.Topics concerning entertainments has the highest rank.And topics on daily life ranks the second place.Topics about social focus ranks the third place.And Social life,School&Education and Emotion world rank fourth,fifth and sixth respectively.Secondly,from the most interested topics to the least interested topics of junior high school learners are as follows: school&education,entertainments,emotion world,social focus,social life and daily life.That is to say,topics concerning school&education are of the greatest interest,while topics about daily life are of the least interest.The results show that there is no significant difference in topic interest between boys and girls,between Changsha and Chenzhou,and between different grades in general,but there are significant differences in specific topics.Thirdly,the topics of junior high school textbooks are not so closely related to learners’ topic interest on the whole.Among the three sets of textbooks and Junior New Concept English,FLTRP edition best matches learners’ topic interests;and next comes PSP edition,then PEP edition.And JNCE Edition rank fourth.For the perspective of different genders,the English textbooks that best match the topic interests of junior high school students are FLTRP Edition,then PSP Edition,PEP Edition and JNCE Edition.From the point of different areas,the English textbooks that best match the topic interests of junior high school students are FLTRP Edition,then PSP Edition,PEP Edition and JNCE Edition.From the aspect of grades,the English textbooks that best match the topic interests of junior high school students are FLTRP Edition,then PEP Edition,PSP Edition and JNCE Edition.