An Interdisciplinary Analysis Of Junior Middle School English Textbooks Contents

Interdisciplinarity is a kind of scientific research or educational activity that breaks the boundaries of disciplines and integrates theories or knowledge of different disciplines into one.As the main carrier of teaching,the main materials for teachers’ lessons and the main resources for students’ English learning,English teaching materials with the features of integration of different subjects knowledge can promote the integration of interdisciplinary knowledge and the implementation of interdisciplinary teaching.The English curriculum standards indicate that the select of teaching materials should strengthen the connection between English and other subjects.And language materials should be beneficial to students’ long-term development.Therefore,it is important to conduct interdisciplinary analysis of English teaching materials.Based on the evaluation theory of English teaching materials and the theory of multiple intelligences,this paper takes the English textbooks of the FLTRP edition for junior high school as the research object.It uses the literature method and content analysis method to analyze the interdisciplinarity of the teaching materials through three main research questions.First,how interdisciplinary of the unit themes in the English textbook of the FLTRP edition? What are the reasonable and weak interdisciplinary components?Second,how interdisciplinary is the textual content of the English textbook of the FLTRP edition? What are the reasonable and weak interdisciplinary components? Third,how interdisciplinary are the exercises of the FLTRP edition? What are the reasonable and weak interdisciplinary components? Firstly,according to Fanwei’s elaboration of the composition of the textbook,the units of analysis are identified as unit themes,text content and exercises,and the dimensions of analysis are subject coverage,subject categories,subject balance,subject diversity and subject consistency,so an analysis framework is formulated.Secondly,the subjects are divided into five subject categories according to the Classification and Coding of Subjects and the setting of the junior school curriculum.Finally,by conducting an interdisciplinary content analysis,presenting data using tables and statistical charts,and analysing the statistical results.The study found that the interdisciplinarity of unit themes is strong,with a subject coverage rate of 46.1% and the highest degree of integration with geography;subject categories span a wide range,covering four disciplines;subject balance is average,with a bias toward humanities,social and scientific categories and natural sciences.The texts have the strongest interdisciplinarity,with a subject coverage rate of 74.2%,covering 24 subjects and the highest integration with geography;in subject categories,texts cover four disciplines;poor in subject balance,with a strong bias toward humanities,social and scientific categories and natural sciences;abundant in subject diversity,with text contents discussing the same topic from different perspectives and subjects.The interdisciplinarity of the exercises is the worst,with a subject coverage of 30.8%,and more knowledge of geography and literature in the exercises;exercises cover four disciplines;the subject balance is average,with a bias toward humanities,society and sciences;the subject consistency is high,the exercises are similar to the interdisciplinary knowledge covered in the text content.Based on the results of the study,it is suggested that the proportion of humanities,social sciences and natural sciences should be reduced in the teaching materials,and the proportion of the other disciplines should be appropriately increased.The interdisciplinary knowledge in the exercises should be enriched,and some appropriate adjustments should be made to the units where the content of the exercises and texts are not consistent.Secondly,the teachers should improve their own interdisciplinary awareness integrate disciplinary resources and strengthen interdisciplinary communication,analyze the learning situations to ensure that the teaching difficulty is moderate,and focus on promoting students’ multiple intelligence development to carry out interdisciplinary teaching.Thirdly,the students should establish interdisciplinary awareness,use interdisciplinary thinking to think and solve problems.And students should reverse the instrumental awareness of English learning.