| Textbooks play a very important role in primary and secondary school education.They are not only concrete manifestations of course objectives and contents,but also are main tools for teachers and students to carry out teaching and learning activities.With the development of the English teaching and the opening of English textbook policy,more and more English textbooks have come into the market.One major problem is that materials with varied quality coming into the market made it difficult to identify them.The education administration departments,school headmasters,teachers and students' parents are concerned with how to evaluate English materials scientifically.Also,English materials evaluation promotes materials development.Therefore,English materials evaluation is significant.Based on researches on English materials evaluation at home and abroad and the studies of Oxford Junior Middle School English at home,the researcher adopted questionnaires,interview and classroom observation to evaluate Oxford Junior Middle School English(Shenzhen Version).The study aimed to answer the following six questions.(1)Does the textbook reflect the Ideological Principle as designed by English Curriculum Standards?(2)Does the textbook reflect the Scientific Principle as designed by English Curriculum Standards?(3)Does the textbook reflect the Interest Principle as designed by English Curriculum Standards?(4)Does the textbook reflect the Flexibility Principle as designed by English Curriculum Standards?(5)Do teachers observe the principles of using the textbook accordingly?(6)What are students' and teachers' evaluation of the textbook?The study lasted for one month.The subjects of investigation were 510 Grade 9 juniormiddle school students and 45 Grade 9 English teachers from different district junior middle schools.After the questionnaires,some teachers and students were interviewed to get their deeper evaluation of the textbook.In addition,the researcher did classroom observation to some teachers to see whether the teachers follow the principles of the textbook compilation.After analyzing the textbook according to English Curriculum Standards,analyzing the questionnaire data with SPSS20.0 and arranging the contents of the interview and classroom observation,the researcher drew the following conclusions.First,the textbook reflects the four principles of materials compiling as designed by English Curriculum Standards.Second,this set of textbooks is more beneficial for the county teachers and students.The teachers and students in the urban and county schools are more satisfied with the principles reflected in the textbook as designed by English Curriculum Standards than the rural teachers and students.However,in Shanxi Province,its normal English tests and senior high school entrance examination are based on Go for it! which is published by People's Education Press.In order to get more satisfied result,the urban schools have to learn the Go for it ! to meet the test which increases both the teachers' teaching burdens and students' learning ones.Third,the urban and county teachers follow the principles of using the textbook accordingly.They infiltrate excellent Chinese and western culture in their teaching.They also motivate students' patriotism and strengthen their environment protection awareness.The classroom activities help students to work with others and cultivate their teamwork.The teachers also use task-based activities and open questions to cultivate students' comprehensive abilities.According to the research findings,the researcher suggests that the teachers in the urban schools need to take into account of the students' learning burdens when they are developing students' abilities and in pursuit of the enrollment rate.For the rural middle school,teachers should be more flexible to teach Oxford Junior Middle School English(Shenzhen Version)on the basis of the student level.They can make appropriate adaptations of the textbook and improve their teaching methods. |
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