A Comparative Study On The Readability And Content Features Of Reading Materials In Go For It (2013) And New Standard English (2012) For Junior High School Students

Reading occupies a very important position in English teaching and learning. Reading materials are considered as a leading tool for teachers’reading teaching as well as a major resource for students’reading learning. With the development of the curriculum reformation for basic education, various versions of textbooks flood into the market. In such a case, evaluating textbooks scientifically is of great significance for making better use of textbooks and improving teaching quality.This research chose the reading materials in textbooks Go for It (2013) published by People’s Education Press and New Standard English (2012) published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press as samples to have a comparative analysis. This research aims to answer the following questions:What is the readability of reading materials in the two sets of textbooks? And what are the similarities and differences?; What are the content features of reading materials in the two sets of textbooks in the perspective of topics and genres? And what are the similarities and differences?; What are the teachers’and students’attitudes towards reading materials in the textbooks they use?Literature survey, comparative study, questionnaire and interview were adopted in this study. The limitations of existing researches were explored and the research objectives were determined through literature survey. The comparative study aimed to find out the differences between the reading materials in the two sets of textbooks in terms of readability as well as content features in the perspective of topics and genres. The questionnaire aimed to collect data of students’ and teachers’ attitudes towards the reading materials in the two sets of textbooks. The interview through face-to-face conversation with the interviewees was used as a complement to the questionnaire to gain needed information for this study.It is found that the reading materials in the two sets of textbooks both have advantages and weaknesses. Generally speaking, the reading materials in the textbooks Go for It (2013) are a bit difficult to read and understand for students than those in the textbooks New Standard English (2012). As for the content features, the choice and distribution of topics of reading materials in the two sets of textbooks share similar features and both sets of textbooks offer a large amount of reading texts with description and exposition genres but a small amount of reading texts with narration and argumentation genres. The results of questionnaire reveal that students who use the textbooks Go for It (2013) show higher satisfaction with the topics of the reading materials while the results of questionnaire from teachers are opposite. On the other hand, students who use the textbooks New Standard English (2012) show higher satisfaction with the readability as well as genres and the results of questionnaire from teachers are similar with those for students. Based on the findings, some suggestions were put forward for teachers who use the textbooks Go for It (2013) and New Standard English (2012).