A Diachronic Analysis Of High School English Textbooks Compiled By PEP

In China,the English education has taken on a good momentum of development since the implementation of the Reform and Opening-up policy in 1978,which has paved the way for the cultivation of a pool of foreign language talents.The English education in China is mainly realized in public schools,and English textbooks are the major carrier of national English curriculum.The evolution of English textbooks can provide us with an insight into the dramatic change of English teaching during the past four decades.Thus,English textbooks are worthy of study.To achieve the goal,the Australian sociologist Karl Maton’s five-dimensional Legitimation Code Theory provides a fresh perspective for an analysis of English textbooks.In the five dimensions,Specialization and Semantics are closely related with language education.Therefore,it is necessary to employ the principles of Specialization and Semantics to analyze English textbooks so as to shed light on their diachronic changes during the forty years.The thesis will analyze three high school English textbooks compiled by the People’s Education Press in 1984,1996 and 2007.And then,from the principles of Specialization and Semantics,the knowledge-knower codes,semantic density and semantic gravity will be analyzed from two aspects(i.e.reading passages,reading exercises),aiming to address the following questions:1)What are the diachronic changes of the semantic codes and specialization codes in the three high school English textbooks compiled by PEP in 1984,1996,2007?2)What are the factors that responsible for these diachronic changes?3)What are the pedagogical implications for high school English teaching and textbook compilation?The diachronic analysis of the three textbooks indicates that:Firstly,as for specialization code,in the year between 1984 and 2007,theknowledge code decreases from 97% to 68% while the knower code rises from 3% to32%.The diachronic changes of the specialization codes suggest that SEFC(1984)and SEFC(1996)only focus on the students’ knowledge code while neglect the knower code,while NSEFC(2007)highlights both the knowledge code and knower code,stressing the combination of ‘instrumentality’ and ‘humanity’ in English education;2)as for semantic codes,the three textbook are all marked by a weak SD,which reflects that there is little diachronic change in SD from 1984 to 2007.However,as for SG,SEFC(1984)and SEFC(1996)are both marked by a strong SG,and there is little diachronic change in SG from 1984 to 1996.However,from 1996 to 2007,the SG in NSEFC(2007)has seen tremendous changes because it becomes from quite strong to quite weak,which indicates that NSEFC(2007)tends to pay more attention to the cultivation of students’ personal attributes.Secondly,as for the reasons behind these diachronic changes,the changing social-cultural contexts for foreign language education,the changing foreign language teaching approaches and the changing high school English curricula should be responsible for these changes.Lastly,as for the implications for high school English teaching and textbook compilation,when using NSEFC(2007),in order to promote students’ overall development,teachers are advised to make some adaptions to the reading questions so as to make a relative balance between knowledge code and knower code.Besides,teachers are required to take some action to strengthen the SD in the textbooks.Besides,as for the implications for high school textbook compilation,compilers are also supposed to make a relative balance between knowledge code and knower code,and strengthen SD in the reading passages which belong to the field of Nature.