On Sexism In English Textbooks For Senior High School Students

From the perspective of feminism, with quantitative research, and analysis in terms of texts, linguistic structure and discourse, this thesis attempts to perceive whether or not sexism exists in the series of"English Textbooks for Senior High School Students"examined by National Primary and Junior School Teaching Material Committee in 2003, trying to find some strategies for sex equity in teaching materials.This thesis is composed of 5parts. Chapter 1 is setting the problem which is based on the following six issues: there is gender inequity in China and foreign countries'culture; the value aim for from sex to gender; education is an important approach to achieving sex equity; teaching materials carries sex culture; attention paid by the elementary education reform to the women's education and sex issues in teaching materials as well as my experiences and interest.Chapter 2 looks back the related researches concerning sex issues about the teaching materials home and abroad. The theories foundation of this thesis is the feminism about gender theories and feminism curriculum.Chapter 3 and chapter 4 are the main parts which systematically examines the gender culture in English Textbooks for Senior High School Students published by People's Education Press in 2003.With regard to its contents, the thesis find out the following: (1) in respect of illustrations, protagonists'presentation and public figures, the frequency of the male presentation is higher than female; (2)on the occupational roles, the types of the male's is more than that of the female's, and males are mainly engaged in public realm, while females are mainly play roles in family; (3)in linguistic structure analysis, which covers marked languages, personal pronoun, order of different roles, the research has perceived sexism in this set of textbooks; (4) discourse analysis ,including narrative and words analysis, the study shows that the adjectives used to describe females are very monotonous; the female's social position can not compare with the male's, and the female's emotions and value are not well expressed in the textbooks. Above-mentio ned gender inequity phenomena will have negative influences on the students.At last, with the purpose of promoting gender equality, some proposals are suggested to get rid of textbooks of sexism in the aspect of policies, writing and accreditation, choices for the textbooks, school, and classroom teaching.