An Evaluation Of New Century Senior English (Trial Edition) Based On Shanghai Primary And Secondary School English Curriculum Standards (Draft)

Foreign language teaching materials play a vital role in reforming foreign language teaching (FLT). Choosing and using suitable textbooks is one of the important factors to complete the teaching content and achieve the teaching goals.This thesis tries to make a case study of New Century Senior English(Trial Edition) (NCSE for short) from two aspects: an internal evaluation of it based on Shanghai Primary and Secondary School English Curriculum Standards (Draft) (the Curriculum Standards for short) and an external evaluation of it by means of questionnaires.This research focuses on the following two questions:⑴how far NCSE meets the requirements of the Curriculum Standards;⑵how well NCSE is implemented in English Language Teaching (ELT). All the six textbooks of NCSE provide the raw data for statistical analysis. Questionnaires for high school English teachers and students are also used to collect data. Based on the materials evaluation process (Hutchinson and Waters; McDonough and Shaw), the questionnaires used in detailed evaluation (Neville Grant), the quick-reference checklist for textbook selection and evaluation (Cunningsworth) and approaches to materials evaluation (Cheng Xiaotang), NCSE is evaluated from four perspectives, namely, the teaching aims and principles, the teaching approaches, the selection and arrangement of teaching material and the overall design.Based on the results of the research, NCSE meets the requirements of the Curriculum Standards and is considered acceptable by most of its users because it has strengths in many aspects: it looks lively and attractive with abundant vocabulary and exciting, informative and amusing topics; it adopts task-based learning and help students study with a research spirit; importance is attached to develop students'language skills and enough exercises are provided to help them communicate in English. In addition, there are several weaknesses of NCSE found, for instance, lack of introduction of pronunciation, too many new words, less reference, some unreasonable arranged materials, higher requests to the students, too many tasks to finish, lack of the PowerPoint soft wares matching the textbook and the background knowledge.Lastly, some suggestions are supplied for the revision of NCSE and its better implementation.