A Study Of New PEP Senior High School English Textbooks From The Perspective Of English Subject Core Literacy

The core competencies achieved through the learning of a course,reflect the educational value,which consist of correct values and attitudes,indispensable qualities,and key abilities.The core competencies achieved through the English course include language ability,cultural awareness,thinking capacity,and learning ability.One of the general aims of the senior high school English curriculum is to promote students’ English subject core competencies,and the English textbook is an important carrier to cultivate students’ English subject core competencies.Therefore,it is of great significance to study the connotation of the core competencies of the new high school English textbooks.Through text analysis,this paper studies the new version of the PEP compulsory English textbooks,and at the same time,selects 50 English teachers and 314 students in Senior Grade Two for investigation.The research tries to explore the questions: 1)How does the Reading and Thinking module in the new version of the PEP compulsory English textbooks reflect the four English subject core competencies? 2)How do teachers and students evaluate the integration of Reading and Thinking module with English subject core competencies ?Through text analysis and survey,this study finds that:1)The cultivation of students’ language ability in the reading texts of the new version of the PEP compulsory English textbooks basically meets the requirements of the Curriculum Standard(2020 revised edition)and the requirements of CSE-4.There is not much phonological and pragmatic knowledge involved in the texts,but there are as many as 5819 words in the reading module,and the knowledge of grammar and discourse is quite rich as well.The proportion of thematic contexts in the reading texts is: man and society(60.0%)>man and nature(26.7%)> Man and self(13.3%),the proportion of the variety of Chinese culture and target language culture is equal.The questions which are set before-during-after reading texts are strictly logic,critic and innovative,which will finally help to cultivate students’ thinking quality.Metacognitive strategies are not particularly reflected in reading texts,however many kinds of cognitive strategies,communication strategies and affective strategies are used in the text for reading guidance,cooperative learning and multimodal perception.2)The overall mean score of the teachers’ questionnaire is 4.089,indicating that teachers are satisfied with the reading modules of the textbook.The overall mean scores of teachers’ questionnaire in each dimension are: overall impression M=3.993,language ability M=4.135,cultural awareness M=4.153,thinking quality M=4.064,and learning ability M=3.992,with the five dimensions rank as: cultural awareness > language ability > thinking quality >learning ability > overall impression.The teacher’s survey shows that they are satisfied with the reading module,esp.young teachers group of less than five years teaching experience.3)The student’s survey indicates that the students are generally satisfied with the reading modules(M=3.616),of which the dimensions are: overall impression M=3.552,language ability M=3.723,cultural awareness M=3.688,quality of thinking M=3.613,and learning ability M=3.301,ranked as: language ability > cultural awareness > quality of thinking > learning ability > overall impression.Different professional groups of students’ evaluation are ranked as: below 90 > 90-119 > above 120,with significant differences between groups(F=9.924;Sig=0.000).Based on the research result,this study provides some pedagogical implications of teaching and learning.