An Evaluation Of Spoken Materials Of Oxford English Textbook

English textbooks, used by both students and teachers, have contributed a lot to English teaching as the major reference of learning and teaching.The thesis, taking Oxford English(Shanghai Edition) of Grade Seven as the subject, adopts the system evaluation approach proposed by Professor Cheng Xiaotang, and makes a detailed analysis from the inner part and external part. Internal evaluation will be executed from the following five aspects: the teaching methods of the spoken materials; the content arrangement of the spoken materials; the design of the spoken materials; the authenticity and genuineness of the spoken materials. External evaluation is to evaluate if this textbook is suitable for users by issuing questionnaires and interviewing. The questionnaires are designed based on the evaluation system of C unningsworth and Grant. Besides, the writer modified one topic of spoken material in the textbook and carried out a two-week teaching experiment. The test data were analyzed with statistical software SPSS 16.0, the results of which show that the performance of the experimental class has improved, indicating the adaption of materials is effective.The writer finds that the spoken materials of Oxford English(Shanghai Edition, Grade 7) are in accordance with the program and conception which are made for seventh grade students’ ability of communication in spoken language in the New Curriculum Standard. The spoken materials are fruitful and the subjects are catching up with the times, meeting most of the students’ interests and living background. In addition, most of the oral materials are fairly authentic. The proportion of the spoken materials is reasonable. The topics are fairly interesting and the forms of activities are diverse. There are also some shortcomings that some activities are designed so complicatedly that teachers are hard to control the situation for having not so much in-class time. Some spoken materials are not really authentic or native- like, showing a sign of repeating grammar exercises a nd language points. The materials fail to convey strategies of oral communication. Process assessment of the learners hasn’t been given much attention. The spoken characteristics in the dialogue are not shown enough in the textbook...