| Education should be geared to the need of the world and the future. English is thebirdge to link the world A good command of English can help us communicate withother people around the world. The Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)叩proachhas been a widely adopted language teaching methodology. In CLT the ultimate goal oflanguage learning is to attain communicative competence, that is, the ability to usel’anguage for real communicative purposes in the leanrers everyday life. Therefore,textbooks and class teaching should be presented based on how language is used in reallife so that learners will develop communicative competence. The purpose of this studyis to explore communicative content of English textbooks of Taiwan and Mainland Chinaso that we can have a general understanding of the way these two textbooks help studentsdevelop their communicative competence and provide suggestions for the construction ofEnglish teaching mateirals in Shanghai.This study compares the communicative functions of the junior high Englishtextbooks of Han Lin Educational Publishing Group and Oxford English of Taipei andShanghai. First, this study analyzes the concepts of developing communicativecompetence in the English Curirculum of Shanghai and Taipei. Secondly, through a birefintroduction of these two books, we get to know their concepts of editing and the sectionsof a unit they contain. Then, this study compares the teaching objectives ofcommunicative functions of the two books. In addition, by referirng to the EnglishCurirculum of Shanghai and Taipei and taxonomy put forward by language experts, thisstudy has made tables for compairson. With the help of the tables, this study comparesthe proportion, arrangement, presentation of the communicative functions andcommunicative activities in textbooks and puts forward suggestions for Oxford English(Shanghai Edition)’writers reference.The results of our analyses show that books of Han Lin English give teachers andstudents clear teaching objectives of the communicative functions of each unit which isbeneficial to learning. Furthermore, the communicative functions identified in the abovementioned English textbooks overlap with the lists of communicative functions provided by the educational authorities, with only a couple of exceptions. Overall, Oxford English (Shanghai Edition) has a higher level of comprehensiveness in the sub-categories of communicative functions and has a wider range of communicative activities, while Han Lin English has a variety of ways to present communicative functions.It is hoped that the findings from this study may be useful to educational authorities, textbook writers and publishers, and English teachers in the compilation and use of English textbooks. |
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