An Analysis And Evaluation Of New Standard English By Foreign Language Teaching And Research Press

The status of textbooks is significant in English language learning in China.Textbooks not only provide students with learning resources, but also help teachersdesign teaching activities. Local education administrative departments have rights tochoose their textbooks. And a variety of textbooks are published in the market. For thisreason, textbooks evaluation becomes more significant. Most researches makequalitative studies in the area of textbook evaluation. And an empirical study in the areaof textbook evaluation is relatively rare. Thus, it is significant to make an empiricalstudy in the area of textbook evaluation.This paper is about the analysis and evaluation of New Standard English publishedby Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. The study aims to analyze thebenefits and drawbacks of New Standard English and evaluate whether the textbookmeet the demands of teachers and students. The evaluation of NSE is conductedaccording to the requirements of National English Curriculum Standards. The studypays more attention to analyze New Standard English rather than evaluate it in order tohelp students and teachers use New Standard English better. The theoretical basis of thisstudy comes from multi-dimensional theories, especially the cognitive point of view.Textbook evaluation can be divided into preliminary evaluation and in-use evaluation.Preliminary evaluation is based on the requirements of National English CurriculumStandards. And in-use evaluation is conducted from the perspective of users’ feedback.The survey is conducted in Yantai by the way of questionnaires and interviews.Questionnaires and interviews were done successfully to answer the research questions:(1) To what extent does NSE suit student’s cognitive development and the fivegoals of language learning?(2) To what extent does NSE suit the demands of teachers and students?(3) What advantages and disadvantages does NSE have? To answer the questions above, both quantitative and qualitative studies are used inthis research. Specifically, both preliminary evaluation and in-use evaluation areconducted to solve these research questions. Preliminary evaluation is used to analyzeNSE and the requirements of NECS. And in-use evaluation is operated with the help ofquestionnaires and interviews. To get more specific information, questionnaires aredesigned separately: student questionnaires and teacher questionnaires. The distributionof questionnaires was made by the writer in October,2014.212valid student’squestionnaire and36valid teacher’s questionnaire were collected. Later the study usesPercentage and Excel to analyze data and information collected. The major findings ofthe study are as follows:First, the study shows that New Standard English can meet the five goals oflanguage learning, and suits for students’ cognitive development. Language knowledgeand language learning strategies are also combined together. One strong point of NewStandard English is that it advocates the method of task based language teaching.Another strong point of New Standard English is that each unit has a module file whichreally helps students review the previous knowledge. New Standard English providesstudents sufficient exposure to different types of discourse and genre.Second, NSE generally suits the demands of teachers and students. It also has astimulating effect for senior students in further studies. Thus, it is proved that NewStandard English is really a good choice for senior students.Third, NSE has both advantages and disadvantages. NSE pays more attention tolearning strategies. The combination of language knowledge and language skills ispretty good in NSE. However, NSE also has disadvantages. There is too much difficultvocabulary which burdens students a lot. To some extent, New Standard English can notsuit the exams well. Based on the major findings, some useful implications are got andadvices for the future study are given.