Study On Directive Discourses In Senior High School English Textbooks(Yilin Edition) Based On Bloom’s Taxonomy Of Educational Objectives

Directive discourses,which instruct students to complete tasks,are one of the direct links between textbooks and students.As a necessary component of textbooks,directive discourses play a vital role in organizing textbook content and instructing students’ learning.The analysis and research of directive discourses in textbooks can not only assist teachers and students in understanding the requirements of curriculum standards for students,but also reflect students’ cognitive levels mentioned in the textbooks.Educators,instructional designers,and curriculum developers have set and reestablished educational goals and evaluation criteria since 1956 with the guidance of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives.Then researchers gradually combine Bloom’s Taxonomy with directive discourses.With the promulgation of General Senior High School English Curriculum Standards in 2017,in 2020,students in Jiangsu Province have got access to new Senior High School English Textbooks published by Yilin Press.Therefore,research on directive discourses in this set of English textbooks based on Bloom’s Taxonomy is of great significance for improving senior high school English teaching and future textbook compilation.This study analyzes the directive discourses in Senior High School English Textbooks(Yilin Edition).The main research questions are as follows.(1)What is the distribution of directive discourses in knowledge process? In which way do the directive discourses help students acquire knowledge?(2)What is the distribution of directive discourses in cognitive process? What are the high frequency words at each cognitive level?This paper takes the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives as the theoretical foundation.Its knowledge process focuses on factual knowledge,conceptual knowledge,procedural knowledge and metacognitive knowledge.Cognitive process has been divided into remembering,understanding,applying,analyzing,evaluating and creating.The six cognitive levels vary from being low to high.On this basis,the criteria for the dimensional analysis of directive discourses are clarified.Corpus-based approach and content analysis have been applied to quantitatively and qualitatively analyze the directive discourses in Senior High School English Textbooks(Yilin Edition).Major findings are as follows.(1)In terms of knowledge process,the proportions of directive discourses in Senior High School English Textbooks(Yilin Edition)in factual knowledge,conceptual knowledge,procedural knowledge,and metacognitive knowledge decrease in turn.To assist students in acquiring knowledge,directive discourses regarding detailed information,principles or generalizations,criteria for when to apply appropriate procedures,cognitive tasks,and self-reflection are mostly engaged.(2)In terms of cognitive process,directive discourses in Senior High School English Textbooks(Yilin Edition)are not evenly distributed,and the lower levels have been covered more extensively than the higher ones.Directive discourses at understanding and analyzing level account for the most.Next are the applying and remembering level,and directive discourses at evaluating and creating level account for the least.Furthermore,the directive discourses primarily cover the most commonly-used words.The high frequency words,on the other hand,are singular and lack diversity at each cognitive level.In view of the features and shortcomings of the distribution,some suggestions for teachers and textbook editors are provided.Teachers should be familiar with the distribution of directive discourses,and make use of some appropriate directive discourses that target students’ advanced cognition.Textbook editors should balance the distribution of directive discourses in knowledge and cognitive process,pay attention to the cognitive order of directive discourses in different volumes and take more frequency words into consideration.