A Comparative Research Of Question Designs For Reading Materials Between NSEFCSB (2007) And SHSET (2019)

English Curriculum Standard for Senior High School(2017)[ECSSHS(2017)]emphasizes that English education should cultivate students’ English Key Competences(EKCs),foster socialist builders and successors with Chinese emotions,international visions and cross-cultural communication skills on the basis of compulsory education.EKCs include Language competence,Cultural awareness,Thinking quality and Learning competence.In 2019,in order to meet EKCs’ requirements,People’s Education Press(PEP)published Senior High School English Textbooks [SHSET(2019)].Compared with New Senior English for China Student’s Book [NSEFCSB(2007)],SHSET(2019)has great differences in the reading materials selection,vocabulary quantity,and question designs.Since 2020,SHSET(2019)has been applied as high school English textbooks generally.Therefore,in time of textbook version alternatives,it is greatly significant to study the distinctions between SHSET(2019)and NSEFCSB(2007)and the related influences.This study combines content analysis and interviews,selecting the first three compulsory textbooks of SHSET(2019)and NSEFCSB(2007)as research objectives.The study also invited three experienced high school English teachers,12 Grade two students using NSEFCSB(2007)and 12 Grade one student using SHSET(2019)to participate in interviews.This study attempts to investigate 3 questions: 1)Compared with NSEFCSB(2007),what changes have been made in the Reading and Thinking sections of SHSET(2019)? 2)What are the deficiencies in NSEFCSB(2007)relating to reading sections and their question designs? What improvements has SHSET(2019)made? 3)What problems do teachers and students have to face in the Reading and Thinking section when applying SHSET(2019)? What can teachers do to improve students’ English learning efficiency?The research results find that: 1)Compared with NSEFCSB(2007),SHSET(2019)pays more attention to cultivate students’ English context awareness and reading strategies application.2)Reading materials in NSEFCSB(2007)are old-fashioned,varieties of relevant questions are not enough,and questions arrangement is not reasonable.However,reading materials in SHSET(2019)are in line with social life,its questioning models are various and the question arrangement is more rational.3)The abundant contents and vocabulary in SHSET(2019)leave students much pressure in coping with them.As a consequence,English reading teaching is influenced.Meanwhile,students’ English proficiency is polarized.Thus,English teachers need to integrate teaching contents,utilize English contexts and apply stratified teaching models to improve teaching quality.Consequently,the researcher considers that,in order to obtain a better teaching effect,English teachers and students need to keep adjusting teaching and learning strategies to adapt SHSET(2019).