Comparison Of Three Sets Of Primary School English Textbooks

With the speeding up procession of China's accession into WTO and integration of world economy, with the unceasing implement and perfection of the new curriculum, the whole country attach more and more importance to English teaching. The global educational reform has made English teaching approaches diversify, combine, and personify. And it has been a necessity for teaching materials to be of new variety, related to social life while full of individuality. The internationalization of education has made it possible and necessary for countries to co-sponsor and design teaching materials.As the carrier of the new curriculum, textbooks are the basis of courses, and the quality of them will have a direct effect on the implement of the new curriculum and the quality of teaching and learning.At present, there are three kinds of textbooks in use in our country:textbooks designed by Chinese, which are closer to the current situation in China but mainly based on traditional language teaching approaches and featured by grammar teaching; textbooks imported from English-speaking countries, though they have usually been rewritten, still has evident features of western cultures while Chinese cultures are almost ignored; the third kind is textbooks designed by a joint of experts from both China and English-speaking countries. Each kind of textbooks has their own advantages and disadvantages.This study focuses on comparing three sets of primary school English textbooks to see if the goals of the new curriculum are well presented in them, thus some practical suggestions may be provided for experts who are designing and improving primary English textbooks or teachers who are using the textbooks. The study has adopted the method of comparison based on a series of data-analysis.In total, statistics of several aspects of the three kinds of textbooks were collected and compared, including differences among the contents, approaches of presenting the contents, activities of teaching and learning, goals of language skills that students are expected to reach, global features of the textbooks and the national educational theories they convey. Because of the limitation of length of this assey and my abilities of researching, the ways to present emotional goals, learning strategies, Multicultural and international visions are not systematically compared here.Chapter One gives a brief introduction to this essay, including two sections. Section one focuses on the background of this research, definition of textbooks involved in this research and a brief introduction to the three sets of primary English textbooks. Also included in this section are the methods adopted in this study and the theoretical and practical significances of it. Section two introduces theories and materials involved in this research.Chapter Two mainly compares and analyzes the contents and the ways of presenting them. It is divided into two sections, the first of which is featured by the comparison of numbers of new words and phrases, sentence patterns, conversations and passages while the second section looks at the ways in which the contents are presented in the textbooks, consist of six parts:the topics, situations of conversation; poems, songs and chants; passages and stories; pictures and colors; practice and exercises; appendixes and tabular forms, and so on.Chapter Three makes comparisons in the methods of presenting the new curriculum goals of capabilities in listening, speaking, reading, writing; thinking and practice; communication and cooperation.Chapter Four is made up of two sections. In Section one, a summary will be made on the main features of the three sets of textbooks and the educational theories they convey, including elements of Chinese cultures, concepts of internalization, learning through practice, learning how to learn and all-around development. Section two offers some advice on both how to improve the textbooks and how to use these textbooks effectively, such as paying equal attention to emotional attitudes, learning strategies, humanity cultivation; balancing language knowledge, language skills and potential comprehensive academic capacities; properly combining traditional and modern teaching methods, aggregating teaching materials and adopting a multilateral evaluation system, etc.Different English textbooks used in primary schools contribute to differences in students' learning methods, strategies, interest and confidence in their future English learning and their English skills may also be developed at different speeds.In fact, foreign language teaching and learning means much more than language knowledge, which is mainly made up of vocabulary and grammar, it is also the acquisition of skills, which calls for large quantities of meaningful practice, that is to say, only by practicing properly can students learn a foreign language well.Experts who design English textbooks should make sure that the language materials they choose are selected from daily use and the activities are practical, and that language knowledge and language skills are effectively combined. We should keep in mind that English is more than a tool, it's also a new culture and a new world. English teachers of primary schools should use the textbooks flexibly according to the new curriculum of nine-year compulsory education, disciplines of language learning and laws of both physical and mental development, cognitive level and knowledge foundation of children. Primary school teachers are supposed to use the most effective ways of teaching and evaluation to stimulate students'interest, helping them form good learning habits and lay a solid foundation for their future study in junior high and senior high school.