A Study On The Alignment Between The English Textbooks By People’s Education Press And The Senior High School English Curriculum Standards(2017 Edition)

Curriculum standards serve as a significant guide to the edit of textbooks.Whether the contents in the textbooks are in agreement with the requirements of curriculum standards or not is fundamentally influential to the realization of educational and instructional aims and the cultivation of core competency.Besides,reading ability,a significant part of language competence,is indispensable to the development of the core competency of English subject.The Senior High School English Curriculum Standards(2017 Edition)put forward the six elements of English curriculum contents,directing the edit of textbooks.English textbooks published by People’s Education Press(PEP),examined and approved in 2019,are one of the most representative and widely used textbooks in China.The alignment between PEP and the new English Curriculum Standards has an impact on the depth of English curriculum reform and the quality of English education.However,there is little research about the alignment between the textbooks and the new English Curriculum Standards.Therefore,this study,based on the perspective of reading ability,employing SEC as the research tool,constructs a research framework to study the alignment of the textbooks published by PEP and the new English Curriculum Standards so as to reflect the general consistency level between them and the consistency features from the dimensions of cognitive ability and content theme.The aim is to make it clear the status quo of the alignment between the textbooks and the new English Curriculum Standards,and to provide guidance for teachers on how to employ textbooks more flexibly and improve students’ reading ability.The finding shows that there is no significant alignment between the textbooks and the new English Curriculum Standards.However,comparing with the results of other studies,the two are well aligned.They both put an emphasis on Understanding and Integration,Positioning and Extraction of Content,but the textbooks and the new English Curriculum Standards ask for different cognitive abilities in most elements of content theme.In regard to the dimension of cognitive ability,the alignment level is relatively high.Almost all the cognitive abilities are evenly distributed in the reading sections of the textbooks,and it makes space for the cultivation of higher-order thinking abilities.Concerning the dimension of content theme,the consistency level is low.In terms of Language,the proportion of reading activities in textbooks reaches,or even goes beyond the requirements of the new English Curriculum Standards.Concerning Content,the proportion of most elements are varied with the proportion of reading activities either well beyond or way below that of the new English Curriculum Standards.With aspect to Structure,the proportion of the reading activities does not reach the required level in the new English Curriculum Standards.The reasons for the discrepancy include the ambiguity of the new English Curriculum Standards,the selection and arrangement of the textbooks.Thus,it is necessary to work on the expression of the new English Curriculum Standards,the edit of the textbooks,and reading instruction so as to enhance the alignment between the textbooks and the curriculum standards,to improve students’ reading ability and to promote the implementation of the new English Curriculum Standards.