An Analysis And Evaluation Of New Standard English For Books1-5

Since the National English Curriculum Standards (NECS) was issued by Ministry of Education of China in April,2003, it has played a critical role in China’s English education. The NECS has stated four levels for senior high students to achieve. Particularly, Level Six and Level Seven are the two compulsory ones, which describe what the students are expected to achieve in terms of language knowledge, language skills, learning strategies, affect, and cultural awareness. Meanwhile, the NECS makes a statement about textbooks compilation, which helps teachers maximize the strength of the textbooks according to the needs of their own students. Owing to the NECS, the rigid framework of "one syllabus and one textbook" is broken in China and a variety of textbooks are flooding in the market. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze and evaluate them scientifically and objectively.Since2010, New Standard English (NSE) has come into use in Chongqing city. NSE published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press took the place of New Senior English for China in autumn,2010and it has been firstly used in seven key senior high schools in Chongqing. The first five textbooks of NSE contribute to the achievements of Levels Six and Level Seven. So far, very few researches have been done on the adaptability of this set of textbooks in Chongqing. It is apparent that timely evaluation of NSE is necessary. Therefore, this thesis tries to analyze NSE based on overall language ability advocated in the NECS and gathers teachers’and students’ feedback of using the textbooks through questionnaires and interviews.The thesis applies both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. First of all, an internal analysis of NSE from the perspective of overall language ability, including language knowledge, language skills, learning strategies, affect and cultural awareness is adopted. Then, in order to make the study more objective, questionnaires and interviews have been carried out among teachers and students as the external evaluation of NSE. The questionnaires are mainly designed by referring to Professor He Anping’s Assessment of English Materials in Senior High School and Cheng Xiaotang’ English Materials Analysis and Design. The author distributes30questionnaires to teachers and360questionnaires to senior two students in Nankai Secondary School. At last, interviews for teachers and students are taken to supply some supplementary information for the research. Five teachers and ten students are chosen for interviews. The data collected is entered by hand and-is anal yzed by-Exeel.The findings eventually turn out to prove that NSE meets the requirements of the NECS to a large extent and contains the topics required by the NECS. Each module is centered with one topic and the four language skills are closely developed. The vocabulary is learned in the context and meanwhile the grammars are taught in inductive ways. However, it has some shortcomings; for example, the dull topics and unauthentic reading materials make students have little interest in this set of textbooks and teachers find it difficult to arouse students’ motivation. Hopefully, the thesis sheds lights on the future study on compiling the textbook and provides some useful suggestions for better use of the textbook. As for compilers, it is necessary for them to incorporate more interesting topics. As for teachers, they should carefully study the NECS and the teaching materials, which can help their practical teaching. As for students, it is important for them to take an active part in the classroom learning.