In-use Evaluation On The Tasks In New Senior English For China(NSEC)

A textbook plays a pivotal role in English teaching in China. It is one way of ensuring the implement of the English National Curriculum Standards. Besides, it is the main source for students to gain language knowledge, language skills, learning strategies, affects and cultural awareness. Simultaneously, it is also the medium to communicate and connect with each other between students and teachers. English textbooks with high quality and good task design are able to provide authentic language inputs for senior high school students, help enhance their overall language capacity and morality, develop their ability of independent learning, autonomous learning and cooperative spirit, as well as shape their outlook on life, values and worldviews.With the implement of the Basic Education Curriculum Reform Outline and the promotion of the reforms of English curriculum and teaching materials, great changes have taken place in the roles of teachers and students. As a result, they both have become the users of the language. Such transition is brought forward by tasks to some extent. The "task" mentioned in this thesis, which is in accordance with the broader definitions of Breen (1987) and Littlejohn (1998), refers to both communicative tasks and traditional exercises.New Senior English for China (NSEC) follows the compiling patterns of "topic-structure-function-task", with the topic being the core, and function and structure as the main line, to make English teaching objectives achieved through task-based activities. Therefore, tasks are the key to NSEC, and its quality has a direct impact on the overall quality of the textbook. Despite the increasing of research on senior high school English textbooks in China, those conducted from the micro-perspective of the tasks in textbooks are numbered. Furthermore, NSEC is at present one of the most widely used textbooks in China, so this present study is of great significance.First of all, this thesis carries out an impressionistic evaluation on the task in NSEC according to the basic theories of modern foreign language teaching, Nunan’s task evaluation checklist, as well as the English National Curriculum Standards. Afterwards, these tasks are evaluated by means of the questionnaire and interviews from the perspectives of students and teachers. These questionnaire and interviews target at900students and10teachers who’re using this set of particular textbook from five ordinary senior high schools in Zhejiang Province, in attempt to get the students’ and teachers’opinions and expectations toward the tasks in order to have an overall and objective view as well as to give some suggestions on the task design afterwards. Meanwhile, the author wishes to inspire teachers to select relevant teaching resources and carry out the tasks flexibly in their teaching.The major findings yielded from this study are briefly summarized as follows: The tasks in NSEC basically meet the requirements of the New National English Curriculum Standards, and the needs of students as well; the tasks attach great importance to the training of language skills with a diversity and clear focus, as well as the development of students’ learning strategies and cooperative spirit. However, several major problems are also inevitable:the tasks designed do not adequately consider the concept of autonomous learning, and the cultivation of student’s outlook on life and worldviews; the tasks lack novelty and are not close to the students’real life, thus are unable to arouse their interest in learning, etc. Further exploration suggests that students’ dissatisfaction with the tasks originates from the imperfect design of the tasks themselves, but more from the students’ own limited competence, weak teaching abilities of teachers, outdated teaching awareness, and rigid teaching methods and so on.Based on the data analysis above as well as the Communicative Competence Theory, Input Hypothesis theory, Humanism Theory and Cognitive Theory mentioned in Literature Review, the author puts forward some opinions and suggestions on how to improve and enhance the tasks in English textbooks, expecting the editors and teachers to benefit from them.The research on the tasks in the English textbooks is a topic which is worth pondering in the field of foreign language teaching. At present, it is still a brand-new domain in China in which any research on them is welcome. This article is only a tip of an iceberg. Because the sample is small, it is difficult to carry on further the discussion as well as offer the task investigation and analysis in every detail.