Analysis And Evaluation Of Learning Tip Section In New Senior English For China

The second edition of New Senior English for China published by People Education Press has been used in many provinces in China since 2007. A new section called learning tip becomes a highlight. The purposes of this section are to encourage students to use English in their daily life in various ways, to guide them to improve their learning methods, to optimize their learning styles, to develop their autonomous learning ability and to help them form learning strategy through providing learning suggestions related to the content of the unit. However, the author finds that a large number of high school teachers and students do not attach importance and make full use of this section in their practical teaching because some restrictions. Therefore, the author believes it is necessary to make a comprehensive analysis and evaluation on this section and investigate how it is used and put forward some suggestions for future improvement.The author attempts to analyze and evaluate the compulsory modules of New Senior English for China by drawing on Cheng Xiaotang’s systematic evaluation method, Grant’s textbook evaluation checklist and the National English Curriculum Standards (2003). The author adopts internal evaluation and external evaluation methods, intending to analyze the design and contents of it and evaluate it from the perspective of its users. Firstly, the author analyzes this section from the aspects of its teaching and learning ideas, contents and language in detail on the basis of the National English Curriculum Standards for senior middle high schools to examine its reasonability and scientificity. Then the external evaluation is done by means of questionnaire and interview.160 students from the High School Affiliated to Wuhan University submit their questionnaires and 7 English teachers in this school participate in the interview. The research aims at knowing their perceptions of this section and how they use it in their practical teaching and gathering their problems when using it and their suggestions.The research questions are1) What are the designing features of learning tip section in Module 1 to Module 5?2) What are teachers’and students’perceptions of this section?3) What problems do teachers and students have in using this section?The results show that the design and content of learning tip section basically meet the demands in the NECS and help developing students’autonomous learning ability but specific learning strategies are not enough in Module 1 to 5 and it does not equip teachers with teaching resources. Most students and teachers are satisfied with the designing and content of this section and 90% of the students think this section is helpful in their English learning. A majority of students think the great help of this section is to provide them with different channels to learn English. While some students do not know the existence of this section and 60% of the students say their teachers seldom or never use it. Students are not sure whether it is necessary to learn the learning tip and how to implement it. Teachers seldom use this section because of the limited lesson time, their own teaching habits, students’various English levels and high pressure from the examinations. In order to make this section more effective and useful, the authors give teachers some suggestions like integrating the learning tip section into their teaching trying various teaching methods and holding extracurricular activities to arouse students’ interests and develop their autonomous learning. Meanwhile, some suggestions are given to students and textbook writers.