Materials As Input In English Learning And Teaching In China: A Language Awareness Perspective

Language materials have been widely acknowledged as essential or unique input in foreign language teaching and learning.Numerous researchers have found materials problematic in authenticity and difficulty,and it is of great importance to investigate their effects on learners.Research on this issue,however,is limited due to challenges in conducting longitudinal research or difficulties in excluding variables like quality of teaching or individual learner differences,which,together with materials,influence language learning.Relevant studies tend to address teachers’ or learners’ attitudes towards a whole or series of materials or focus on learners’ performance after using materials.Although these studies provide some insights into the effects of materials,it remains unclear how specific content in materials gradually influences language learning.This can be addressed from the perspective of language awareness by exploring teachers’ and learners’ evaluations when reading specific representative materials,such as written versions of conversations used in language materials.Taking the theoretical perspective of language awareness,the investigation described in this thesis explores how teachers and students evaluate the written versions of conversations in global and local English materials.Using a mixed methods research design,both quantitative and qualitative data were collected through questionnaires completed by 212 participants(30 teachers and 182 students)and analyzed by a Cognitive Discourse Analysis(CODA)approach(Tenbrink,2015,2020)in three dimensions(quantitative results,content categories,and linguistic features).Specifically,this study addresses three research questions:(1)what do participants attend to when interpreting the authenticity and difficulty of spoken texts in English materials?(2)What are participants’ perceptions of the authenticity of spoken texts reflected through their attention foci? and(3)What are participants’ perceptions of the difficulty of spoken texts reflected through their attention foci? Major findings are as follows:Overall,participants were exposed to similar listening resources,but there were differences in attitudes toward the four conversations between teachers and students.Although most participants were exposed to listening input from textbooks and testing materials,most believed that conversations in global English materials were more authentic than in local materials.Many Students favored the IELTS conversation,but teachers showed no preference for any conversation.A content analysis of the corpora uncovered five major evaluation foci among all participants: Language,Discourse,Content,Context,and Learning.The distribution of the five foci and their subcategories differed between the groups.Both students and teachers were concerned about Language,but students paid significantly more attention to Context and Learning than teachers.There were also significant differences in the distribution of subcategory foci concerning authenticity,register,turns,and background between English and non-English majors.A more in-depth linguistic analysis identified differences in lexical choices within each major evaluation focus.When interpreting the authenticity of conversations,participants focused more on written rather than spoken features and familiarity with the topic and context.When interpreting the difficulty of conversations,participants were more concerned with difficult words,long and complicated sentences,and length of turns,according to which participants evaluated the usefulness of conversations in language learning.The findings of this research provide insights into research concerning the analysis and evaluation of spoken English materials and offer pedagogical implications for spoken materials development and teaching and learning of spoken English.