A Comparative Study Of The Speaking Activities In Four Sets Of Junior English Textbooks

The study takes as the subjects four sets of junior English textbooks that are widely used in China--Go for it!(GFI), English (Yilin Edition), English (Hebei Edition), New Standard English (NSE), attempting to make a comparative analysis on the speaking activities through research methods like data collection and textual comparison. Based on Cunningsworth’s approaches of evaluation and checklist on speaking materials on textbook evaluation and analysis, this thesis investigates the speaking activities in these textbooks from four aspects--the quantity of speaking activities, the way of distribution and presentation, the speaking topics covered in the textbooks, and the relevance between speaking and listening, reading and writing skills.Findings indicate that 1) In terms of the quantity of speaking activities, the amount of speaking activities in NSE textbooks is more than other three sets of textbooks, while that in English (Yilin Edition) only takes 1/3 of the speaking activities in NSE textbooks.2) With regard to the way of distribution, English (Yilin Edition) and English (Hebei Edition) textbooks are superior to GFI and NSE textbooks for their regular and explicit way of distribution of speaking activities. In the way of presentation, English (Hebei Edition) textbooks include not only the common ways of presentation but also innovative and interesting ways of presentation of speaking activities, which are conducive to arising students’ interest and stimulating their learning motivations.3) Regarding the speaking topics, NSE textbooks cover all the topic categories stipulated in the English Curriculum Standards of the Full-time Compulsory Education (2011) (ECS), and the other three sets also include most of the topic categories specified in the ECS. Meanwhile, differences are found in each set of textbooks in terms of their emphasis, explicitness as well as difficulty of speaking topics.4) Concerning the language skills, the emphasis on the combination of language skills varies from sets to sets. English (Hebei Edition) textbooks primarily combine speaking and writing exercises together, with some supplementary exercises with a combination of speaking and listening and diverse hands-on activities. While the other three focus on speaking exercises in combination with speaking and listening, and some speaking and writing exercises or isolated speaking activities are also arranged as a supplement.Finally, some implications have been drawn from this study:1) A moderate amount of speaking activities should be set to ensure that students are exposed to sufficient language input, and the recycling of oral activities should be valued to better consolidate the learnt knowledge; 2) The way of presentation should be enriched in the speaking activities of textbooks in order to stimulate students’ participation; 3) Teachers should make suitable adaption for the textbook contents, so that the speaking topics will correspond to the ECS with a sequenced distribution; 4) A balance is supposed to be achieved between speaking and listening, reading and writing to improve students’ oral communicative competence as well as comprehensive language use ability.