A Comparative Study Of Syntactic Complexity Of Reading Texts In New Editions Of PEP And FLTRP High School English Textbooks

Few existing studies have focused on the assessment of high school English textbooks,and even fewer studies have examined the syntactic complexity of the new PEP and the FLTRP Edition of high school English teaching materials from a comparative perspective.In this dissertation,the author will analyze the syntactic complexity of reading texts in all series of the PEP edition high school English teaching materials(compulsory books 1-3 and elective books 1-4)and all volumes of the FLTRP English textbooks(compulsory books 1-3 and elective books 1-4)by combining relevant research theories,and raise the following three questions:(1)What are the features of the syntactic complexity of the reading texts in the new editions of high school English textbook series of PEP and FLTRP?(2)What are the differences of syntactic complexity between the reading texts in the new PEP high school English textbooks and those in the new FLTRP high school English textbooks?(3)In terms of the syntactic complexity,what changes are exhibited respectively in the reading texts in Books 1-7 of PEP and FLTRP high school English textbook series?This paper applies the automated syntactic complexity software L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer developed by Lu Xiaofei in combination with the previous research of Ortega and Wolfe-Quintero,and the quantitative analysis method of SPSS data processing package to analyze and process the text with 14 indicators in five dimensions to obtain the following conclusions.(1)The mean values of 14 indicators for the reading texts of the PEP version and the new FLTRP high school English textbooks have been derived to give some reference value for quantifying the new curriculum standards and future textbook adaptations.(2)There were significant differences between the PEP and the FLTRP in the five indicators of MLC,CP/C,CP/T,CT/T and T/S.The first three of the five metrics were significantly higher in the PEP textbook than in the FLTRP textbook.However,the latter two indicators were significantly higher in the FLTRP textbook than in the PEP.(3)The syntactic complexity of the PEP textbook does not show a gradual increase among the seven books,and almost all indicators show the lowest values in the elective book 3 and the highest values in the compulsory book 1,which violates the trend of gradual increase in students’ learning difficulties.In the two indicators of Mean length of sentence and Complex T-units per T-unit,significant differences appear in the seven books of the PEP edition,which shows that teachers should pay attention to the learning of the two indicators.In contrast,the FLTRP is significantly better than the PEP in terms of coherence,with almost all indicators rising gradually and slowly.In terms of the indicators of MLC,MLS,MLT,CP/T,T/S and CN/T,FLTRP textbook shows significant differences among the 7 books.