A Corpus-based Study Of Instrumental Texts In Yilin Senior High School EFL Textbooks From The Perspective Of Thinking Capacity

With the launch of General Senior High School English Curriculum Standards(2017 edition)(hereinafter referred to as ECS(2017)),new editions of senior high school EFL(English as a Foreign Language)textbooks have come out one after another.Thinking capacity was listed as one of four English subject core competencies in ECS(2017)and the curriculum standards also specified its graded requirements.Given the critical role of textbooks for senior high school students,textbook writers should regard the cultivation of students’ thinking capacity as one of the aims of textbook compilation.Thus,the evaluation of new EFL textbooks from the perspective of thinking capacity has become a heated topic of study.Textbook instrumental texts are the directive language that guides students’learning activities.Featured by rich cognitive verbs,instrumental texts can serve as a microcosm of textbooks’ thinking capacity profile.The activity-based approach to English learning is another important concept put forward in ECS(2017).English learning should be based on learning activities,and there are three major types of learning activities with increasing thinking levels,namely,Learning and understanding,Applying and practicing,and Transferring and creating.Utilizing textbook instrumental texts,the study probed into the profile of thinking capacity in the seven Yilin EFL textbooks for the required and the required elective courses from macro,micro,and complementary perspectives.From a macro perspective,Bloom’s revised Taxonomy was applied to present the distribution of thinking skills in Yilin EFL textbook instrumental texts.From a micro perspective,the instrumental texts in the Reading modules were examined in the light of the activity-based approach to English learning to investigate whether the distribution and sequence of learning activities are reasonable.Moreover,the study referred to thinking capacity requirements(Level 2)to measure the extent of alignment between Yilin EFL textbook instrumental texts and the curriculum standards,which serves as a complementary perspective.As such,the research questions of the study are as follows:(1)What is the distribution of thinking skills manifested by the instrumental texts in Yilin EFL textbooks(2019 edition)?(2)What are the distribution and sequence of the three types of learning activities indicated by the instrumental texts in the Reading modules of Yilin EFL textbooks(2019 edition)?(3)To what extent do the instrumental texts in Yilin EFL textbooks(2019 edition)meet the thinking capacity requirements(Level 2)specified in the new curriculum standards?To address the above research questions,the study combines corpus analysis and content analysis.Corpus analytical software AntConc 3.5.9 is used to retrieve the instrumental texts of specific thinking levels and infer typical features of instrumental texts through tools of Concordance,N-Grams,and Word List.Content analysis is used to conduct in-depth classification and comparison,and abstract the patterns and distinguishing features of textbook instrumental texts.The research findings are as follows:First,the six major thinking skills in the revised Taxonomy are unevenly distributed in Yilin EFL textbook instrumental texts,and the percentage of lower-order thinking skills is slightly higher than that of higher-order thinking skills.The Creating skill accounts for the biggest share while the Analyzing skill takes up the smallest.Besides,the thinking demands fluctuate from Book 1 to Book 7.And the instrumental texts in the required elective textbooks are even less cognitively demanding than that in the required textbooks.Second,the three major learning activities are unevenly distributed in the Reading modules of Yilin EFL textbooks.The percentage of the activities of Learning and understanding is the largest.Then comes the activities of Transferring and creating.The intermediate activities of Applying and practicing are the fewest.As for the sequence of learning activities,most reading passages organize three types of learning activities in the correct order,while there are still a few cases showing different extents of disorder and a lack of learning activities at the intermediate thinking level.Third,Yilin EFL textbook instrumental texts generally meet the thinking capacity requirements(Level 2).But the number of instrumental texts directing to the second dimension Analyzing and inferring is significantly smaller than the other dimensions.Besides,the thinking item "discover various causes of differences" has no instrumental texts to match.Based on the research findings,some suggestions are given to the stakeholders.As for textbook developers,in the future work of textbook compilation and revision,they are advised to pay special attention to the thinking levels in the revised Taxonomy as well as in the curriculum standards the textbooks don’t achieve well enough.Besides,they should contemplate the progressiveness of thinking demands across the seven textbooks.And the distribution and sequence of learning activities in the Reading modules need to be optimized.As for teachers,they are recommended to view Yilin EFL textbooks critically.On the one hand,teachers should try to conduct high-quality textbook learning activities to fulfill the cognitive utility of textbook instrumental texts.On the other hand,teachers should bring their agency into full play,and enhance the awareness and ability of textbook adaptation to make up for the shortcomings of textbook instrumental texts and facilitate students’ thinking development steadily.