| Textbooks is the most crucial component in English curriculum implementation and their importance is beyond doubt. High-quality English textbooks can not only provide students with excellent language input, but also help them to improve their comprehensive language skills and core competences. The New Curriculum Standards advocate task-based teaching, and it clearly point out that the foreign language teaching must reflect the design of tasks. Task section is its most direct reflection. As a result, the quality of the task has an important impact on the overall quality of the textbook. Besides, "One Standard, Multiple Versions of Textbook" policy (2001) has been established in China,and more and more teaching materials have come into the market. Therefore, it becomes vitally important for teachers to get some insights into how to select and adopt them. The comparison and analysis of different teaching materials has a vital effect on the actual teaching of teachers and the improvement of teaching materials.In this thesis, the author takes the internal evaluation and external evaluation proposed by Professor Cheng Xiaotang as a benchmark to compare two series of teaching materials,which are Advance with English (published by Yilin Press and Group of Phoenix Publication Medium) and New Standard English (published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press). Combining with the previous research, the author makes a contrastive study of tasks in two series of textbooks by content analysis, questionnaire, interview. The author also takes into account the static quality analysis and dynamic use evaluation of the teaching materials, combining qualitative analysis with quantitative assessment. The study makes an attempt to investigate them by the following questions.1) What is the present situation of activities in Task section? (including task type and distribution characteristics, task topic type, quantity and proportion and etc.)2) What is the current use status of the Task section? (are the users satisfied with it?Does it meet the needs of users)?According to the collected data and data analysis, the author explains the similarities and differences of tasks in this two sets of teaching materials, showing the main findings and inspiration. Hope to inspire the preparation of high school foreign language teaching materials in China and help front-line teachers to design the task-based activities.The study finds that the setting of task is generally holistic and scientific. Both of the books has a wide range of topics and rich content. Most of the tasks are combined tasks,real-world tasks, two-way tasks and open tasks. And the cultivation of learning strategies permeates all aspects of the teaching process. Within them, NSE is more concerned about writing skills training, language outputting and communicating among students. While AWE takes into account the English input, output. It trains students from many aspects of language skills. The most common recurring topics in two textbooks is school life, travel and friendship. They are closely linked to student life, therefore students can have something to say. The most common forms of activity in them are presentation,writing,and discussion. However, the users’ satisfaction of the task in the two sets of teaching materials is not high, and there are still many deficiencies in the use. For example, the topics are out-of-date; the participation of students is not satisfied; the teachers do not pay enough attention to the tasks and the tasks are not practical enough. |
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