A Comparative Study Of The Tasks In English Textbooks Interchangethird Edition And Cecl

Communicative Language Teaching, focusing on the cultivation ofcommunicative competence, has enjoyed high popularity since it was introduced intoChina. Following the trend, many CLT textbooks sprang up either compiled byChinese educators or brought in by publishers. Among those textbooks,Communicative English for Chinese Learners (CECL) complied by Li Xiaoju et aland Interchange Third Edition (Interchange) compiled by Jack C. Richards et al aremost reputable and influential Textbooks, as an integral part of teaching, have a greatimpact on learners, teachers and even classroom activities. The researcher attempts tocompare and contrast the tasks in the two influential textbooks to find theirsimilarities and differences, to seek the users’ feedback, and to reveal the advantagesand disadvantages. A triangulation including checklist evaluation, questionnairesurvey and semi-structured interview, was conducted to obtain data.The objective comparison finds that: Interchange covers more listening andspeaking tasks, while CECL contains more listening and reading tasks. In general,Interchange presents language knowledge explicitly and systematically, and thereforereceives a higher degree of satisfaction from its users. The knowledge about cultureand society is most widely involved in both textbooks compared with the othercomponents in the dimension about liberal arts and science. Interchange users call formore coverage on politics and history, while CECL users expect more knowledge oneducation and psychology. The two textbooks show few differences on theirapplication of English teaching and learning principles as they both relate tasksclosely with learners’ life and the text, combine receptive skills with productive skills,and more than half of the input and output is above sentence level. In terms of learnerautonomy, both textbooks encourage questioning and expressing and neglect to guidelearners to make study plan. Interchange users are more satisfied with their book inthis dimension because some tasks assist them to do self-assessment. Both textbookshave little coverage on the dimension about positive world outlook and view on life.