The Research Of The Evolution Of College English Textbooks In China

Over five decades ago, college English evolved in China. Since then, college English textbooks have been renewed again and again. Remarkable achievements have been gained in college English teaching in our country since reform and opening to the outside world, while there still exists huge gap between the present effects of college English teaching and the development of our country's economy and the depth of reform and opening .Teaching results are far from the demand of international competition in the 21st century. Apart from such factors as teaching methods,teachers'quality,curriculum and instruction and,textbooks are another important factor that affects English-teaching qualities. For a long period,in compiling textbooks,the training for the students' abilities in practice has been neglected, and the contents are much too difficult and the teaching methods are conservative. All these factors restrict the efficiency of our English educational practice. Therefore,it is an important task to reform English textbooks and build a new English textbooks system. Without the base of new textbooks system, English teaching reform can neither obtaine long-term effects nor be conducted deeply and widely.1n another meaning,the reform on English textbooks system is the base and the crux of reforming English curriculums, and it is now the most difficult problem that we can't avoid in English teaching reform.Since 1949 in China,the development of English textbooks for college has gone through the beginning stage, the exploring stage, the developing stage and the improving stage. College English textbooks in every stage have their special background and reasons under the reasons in such special background. Correspondingly,English textbooks in every stage have their special characteristics. The paper aims at summarizing the factors which influenced the changes of college English textbooks and summing up the traits and law. Therefore basic thought about textbooks reform in new situation is put forward. The research approaches applied in this paper are version research method, document analysis method and comparison method. Based on the analysis about several teaching syllabi made since 1949, the paper analyzes the characteristics of the typical college English textbooks in every stage. From their change and tendency since 1949, the trend of modernization and diversities of textbooks can been seen, which are used to develop college English textbooks with Chinese and epoch features. This paper consists of five parts.The first four parts set forth four generations of textbooks from the beginning stage, the exploring stage,the developing stage to improving stage. The first-generation textbooks, from 1961 to the Revolution of Culture, focused on the analysis of text and grammar,mainly developing the students'abilities of reading,which was a traditional mode. The second-generation textbooks ,from 1979 to 1985,had some breakthrough in teaching methods while still following the traditional mode. The third-generation textbooks, from 1986 to the middle 90s',began to be compiled into series ,including intensive reading, extensive reading, fast reading , listening and grammar practice and so on.The forth-generation textbooks began in the late 1990's. With the help of modern information technology, textbooks with characteristic emerged, which changed from plane pattern to stereoscopic pattern based on multi-media Internet. While modern information technology is adopted, the traditional teaching mode is still used. The fifth part analyzes the trend that college English develops in the 21st century according to the current state of college English teaching. Thus comes the conclusion of the necessities of building stereoscopic quality textbooks system of college English under multi-media teaching circumstances.