A Contrastive Evaluation Of ESL Writing Textbooks By Native And Chinese Writers

With the advancement of the China’s opening-up policy and globalization, English communication has also developed from simple oral communication to written form. The importance of ESL writing has given rise to a high level and ESL writing ability has been more important than ever before. Since the 1980 s, English teaching textbook evaluation has aroused scholars’ attention both in China and abroad, and a large number of checklists, guidelines and criteria for textbooks evaluation have been proposed(e.g. Cunningsworth, 1984;Breen & Candlin, 1987;Mc Donough & Shaw, 1993;Cheng Xiaotang, 2002 etc.).Nowadays, the English writing textbook study has gotten the attention of Chinese experts, and the research of ESL writing has developed quickly in China, but the past years have witnessed that the research in ESL writing textbooks evaluation is not enough. In view of the indispensable significance of the English writing textbooks in ESL teaching and learning, the present study attempts to evaluate and contrast the eight ESL writing textbooks written by native and Chinese writers by means of the writing textbook evaluation framework which are based on the criteria and guidelines for materials evaluation put forward by native and Chinese researchers and experts.The eight ESL writing textbooks were published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press and Peking University Press, including the writing textbooks written by native writers: College Writing Skills with Readings, Strengthen Your Writing, Successful Writing for the Real World, and The Practical Writer; the writing textbooks written by Chinese writers: Yingyu Xiezuo Shouce, An Advanced Course for English Writing, The Practical Advanced English Writing and College English Composition—From Creative Thinking to Critical Thinking, are selected to be scrutinized.The results indicate that there are some similarities between the writing textbooks written by native and Chinese writers in the table of contents, tasks and exercises, compiling principles, teaching methodologies and authenticities. In the table of contents, all the books list the subtitles of every part. Teaching process in these books all follows the teacher-centered compiling principle, and involves a lot of tasks and exercises; meanwhile, the process approach, genre approach and task-based approach are adopted. In addition, the chosen teaching materials both written by native and Chinese writers are of three kinds of authenticities—unauthentic, semi-authentic and authentic. On the other hand, there are also some differences between the writing textbooks written by native and Chinese writers in topics, genres, syllabus, and overall designs. In the aspects of topic and genre, the samples in the textbooks written by native writers are close to the real life of students and the genres included in the textbooks are varied, but the topics in the textbooks written by Chinese writers are too deep or out-dated and the genres involved in are those for ESL writing for academic purposes. The contents in the four textbooks written by native writers meet the requirements which are prescribed in the syllabus, but the textbooks written by Chinese writers were not compiled according to the requirements of the syllabus. In the overall design, the textbooks written by native writers put emphasis on the patterns and skills while the textbooks written by Chinese writers stress much on basic knowledge and practical writing.It is found that the customized framework of evaluating ESL writing textbooks constructed in this study proved to be successful and effective, because it can provide a comprehensive evaluation to the characteristics of current ESL writing textbooks, and it confirms the necessity of simplifying the evaluation questions and significance of modification of textbooks evaluation criteria proposed earlier(e.g. Hutchinson, 1987; Sheldon, 1988; Cunningsworth, 2002 etc.) according to the real conditions as well. In addition, this study proposes some effective aids and suggestions for the teachers and compilers in selecting and compiling the ESL writing textbooks in the future.