An Analysis On Senior English For China Published By People’s Education Press And Learners’ Needs

Textbooks are the core factor of foreign language teaching.Under the circumstances of lack of learning foreign language in China,the teaching materials are very important to both teachers and learners.With various kinds of new materials,most of the teachers have mixed feelings.Some of them feel happy,but some are worried and confused.Therefore,an objective and comprehensive understanding of the teaching materials is the prerequisite for the teacher to use teaching materials effectively.Since 1990,experts have become more and more concerned about the students’ needs and the students’ learning psychology.As an important medium for teaching syllabus and English curriculum,teaching materials should not only meet the requirements of teaching syllabus and the rules of English teaching,but also meet the students’ needs.This study tries to explore the usage of the New Senior English for China published by People’s Education Press in 2007 and learners’ needs by investigation of the students in a key high school,an ordinary high school in Zhangzhou city and students in rural middle school.The author uses quantitative and qualitative ways to answer the following two questions:1.Whether the teachers and students are satisfied with this textbook? Is there any difference between students in the in a key high school and an ordinary high school in Zhangzhou city?Is there any difference between the students from urban district and those from rural district?What are the ideal textbooks which could satisfy the needs of learners? From the learners’ feedback questionnaire about textbook and interview,we may draw the following conclusions:the students in urban high schools are satisfied with interests and difficulty,practicability,supplementary materials and physical make-up.But they aren’t satisfied with exercises and tasks.The students from rural district aren’t satisfied with interests and difficulty,practicability and exercises and tasks.But they are satisfied with supplementary materials and physical make-up.Except for interests and difficulty,students in the key high school are satisfied with practicability,exercises and tasks,supplementary materials,and physical make-up.Except for exercises and tasks,students in an ordinary high school are satisfiedwith interests and difficulty,practicability,supplementary materials and physical make-up.From teachers’ feedback questionnaire about textbook and interview,we may draw the following conclusions: except for practicability,all teachers are satisfied with objective and aims,teaching methodology,content compilation and interests.All in all,the teachers are satisfied with NSEC in general.From the learners’ needs analysis questionnaire and interview,we may draw the following conclusions: both urban middle school students and rural middle school students all hope that textbook should be practical and interesting;the content should be authentic and related to their daily lives,and it should contain a variety of topics.In addition,the difficulty of the text should not exceed the students’ ability of language learning.In order to solve the existing problems,the author proposes some specific proposals according to the learners’ needs analysis questionnaire and learners’ feedback questionnaire about textbook as follows: firstly,advices for editors: to strengthen the cohesion between junior high school and high school;content should be closed to the students’ life and thus to improve students’ interest;improve the practicality of the teaching material;give full consideration to the difference in the learning level of students in different regions;then,advices for the teachers: treat the contents scientifically;adjust the teaching order;change teaching method.Of course,there are many shortcomings in this paper.Firstly,the number of participants is small.Secondly,the author only studied on NSEC while other editions of the English textbooks are not been studied.Finally,the questionnaire design is also lack of objectivity and comprehensiveness,some issues are not included.