Correlation Between Textbooks And Students' Performances

As a major component in the implementation of English education, textbooks play an important role in the context of English language teaching and learning in China. College teachers use them as the primary or sole source of classroom teaching. Students take them as the principal source of materials for their learning and rely heavily on textbooks to achieve prescribed goals and objectives. With the reform of college English teaching, a variety of textbooks are compiled and published which are claimed to be in line with College English Teaching Syllabus. The availability of so many textbooks exerts a great challenge on language teachers in their selection of textbooks. Taking the English teaching in Rongchang Campus of Southwest University as an example, this thesis first introduces the current situation in the use of textbook in Rongchang Campus and the significance of the study. Chapter Two analyzes the importance of evaluating and choosing textbooks and provides a literature review of theories related to textbooks evaluation. The most commonly used principles in textbook designing are introduced briefly in this chapter. In Chapter Three, the author introduces two criteria for College English teaching (College English Teaching Syllabus and College English Curriculum Requirements) and attempts to make a comparison of two textbooks: New Concept English and Experiencing English. The features of these two textbooks are analyzed. The author concludes that Experiencing English agrees with the current college English teaching reform and embodies the latest notion of material development. Chapter Four mainly deals with the correlation between textbooks and students' performances. The author conducts a survey among students and some English teachers in Rongchang Campus. Through the comparison of the different performances of the students using different textbooks, it comes to the conclusion that under the current criteria and the current situation of English teaching in Rongchang Campus of Southwest University, Experiencing English is a more appropriate textbook for college students who graduated from vocational high schools. In the end, the author comes to the conclusion: To maximize students' learning potentials, English language teachers have to evaluate different textbooks and select the most appropriate one to meet the needs of both teachers' teaching and learners' learning. As is known to all, no textbook is perfect. If every group of students has different needs, not a single textbook can be a response to all differing needs. So the author also puts forward a suggestion: English teachers should adapt the textbooks based on their own specific needs in their own teaching situation.