| The General Senior High School English Curriculum Standards（published in 2017 and revised in 2020）suggests that the compilation of teaching materials should be based on the curriculum objectives and content,as stipulated in the curriculum standards,and should also focus on the objective laws of language learning and students’ abilities.The English textbook is an indispensable vehicle of knowledge for the English classroom.It helps teachers to impart to students knowledge in a systematic and organized way,so great importance must be attached to the compilation of the textbook.In the compilation of teaching materials,the theme of each unit is usually presented in the form of a reading text,and then listening,reading,writing and other training are carried out around the reading text.There are several editions of senior high school English textbooks in China.In order to better understand the differences between the reading texts of different editions of textbooks and help senior high school English teachers to use reading texts more flexibly in teaching in the future,this study compares two major high school English textbooks in China in the hope of putting forward some suggestions on the compilation of reading texts in senior high school English textbooks and further improving the quality of writing and using reading texts in high school English textbooks.The senior high school English textbooks published by People’s Education Press（"PEP"）and Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press（"FLTRP"）are widely used.This study takes the main texts of Compulsory 1 to Compulsory 3 and Optional Compulsory 1 to Compulsory 4 of the two sets of textbooks as the subject of study.In this study,36 texts from PEP edition and 42 texts from FLTRP edition were selected and analyzed by the online text analysis tool Coh-Metrix 3.0 and the statistical software SPSS 23.0.The texts were then categorized into text types and thematic contexts,with the aim of gaining a deeper understanding of the differences between the two sets of textbooks in terms of reading texts.This study aims to address the following three questions.（1）What are the differences in word complexity between the two sets of reading texts?（2）What are the differences in syntactic complexity between the two sets of reading texts?（3）What are the differences in article complexity between the two sets of reading texts?What are the differences in the distribution of discourse types and thematic contexts between the two sets of reading texts?The results of the study are as follows:（1）In terms of word complexity,by comparing word length,word frequency,word diversity and word specificity,it was found that there was no significant difference in word complexity between the two sets of reading texts.（2）In terms of syntactic complexity,by comparing syntactic simplicity and syntactic similarity,the analysis indexes of PEP edition were significantly higher than those of FLTRP edition,indicating that the sentence structure of PEP was more similar and simple than that of FLTRP;however,there was no significant difference between the two sets of reading texts in terms of sentence length and syntactic density.（3）In terms of article complexity,the potential semantic analysis of articulation and coherence was significantly higher in PEP than in FLTRP,indicating that the potential semantics of the reading texts in PEP was better;there was no significant difference between the two sets of textbooks in terms of the number of words in an article and the readability.In terms of the types of discourse,the six main types are narrative,argumentative,expository,application,conversation and interview,and others.Narrative essays dominate both sets of textbooks,but the PEP edition places more emphasis on expository essays than the FLTRP edition,while the FLTRP edition places more emphasis on argumentative essays than the PEP edition.In terms of thematic contexts,both textbooks cover the three main themes listed in the GCSE English Curriculum,namely "Man and Self","Man and Society"and "Man and Nature".However,there are slight differences in the arrangement of the thematic clusters under the three thematic contexts.Based on the above findings,the author makes suggestions for the preparation of reading texts in the two sets of textbooks and for teachers’ use of reading texts in the textbooks.PEP edition should pay attention to appropriate changes in sentence length and syntactic structure at the syntactic level,and increase the arrangement of argumentative essays;FLTRP edition should strengthen the potential semantics of articles and include more expository essays;teachers should focus on extending the teaching of reading texts and providing good scaffolding to help students learn English reading texts better. |
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