A Study On Task Design Of English Textbooks With New Curriculum Standards

Textbook is a major source for students to obtain language knowledge. The tasks in the textbooks are pivotal for students to practice what they learned. Therefore, how to evaluate and improve the quality of task design in textbook becomes an important issue.The study about task evaluation is more and more popular in China. They mostly focus on the topic from macroscopic view or just depend on personal opinions. This study pays attention to the alignment between tasks and New English Curriculum Standards(NECS). Three senior high English textbooks are selected for this study. They are The New Senior English for China(NSEC) published by People’s Education Press, Senior English Book(SEB) published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, and Senior High English(SHE) published by Beijing Normal University Press. The three textbooks are used in China widely.Data for this study are tasks in the three workbooks. The tasks include listening, speaking,reading and writing tasks used for analyzing the alignment between tasks and NECS. This study is based on Webb’s model to assess the alignment from the perspectives of categorical concurrence, depth of knowledge consistency, range of knowledge correspondence, and balance of representation. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are used for data analysis.Data analysis shows that the three editions meet the requirements of NECS basically. NSEC and SEB are better aligned with NECS than SHE in listening, speaking, reading and writing tasks. SHE is far away from the requirements of NECS in listening and speaking tasks in the categorical concurrence, range of knowledge, depth of knowledge consistency, and balance of representation. It does not have listening and speaking tasks in the workbook. And the three textbooks are different in task types and quantity, too. SEB has more tasks than the other two editions. The number of tasks in SHE is lower than that of others. In terms of task types, NSEC and SEB have four kinds of tasks, namely, listening, speaking, reading and writing. However,SHE only has reading and writing tasks.On the basis of the above findings, it is suggested that the compilers of textbooks should develop textbooks on the basis of New English Curriculum Standards. Besides, teachers should design and select tasks carefully and help students complete the tasks in the workbook effectively.Meanwhile, students need to develop their ability of autonomous learning and learn to solve problems themselves.It is inevitable that this study has its limitations. The number of samples is limited and other aspects in NECS are not included. Therefore, more studies should be conducted to make up for the deficiency in the future.