An Analysis And Evaluation Of "Warming Up" Block In New Senior English For China (NSEC) Published By PEP From Lead-in Perspective

Teaching materials are fundamental media for teachers to conduct teaching activities.Correspondingly,National Curriculum Standard(2011),contains requirements and principles that compilers ought to follow on organizing and managing teaching contents.Nowadays,series of National English for Senior High New Senior English for China(NSEC)published by People's Education Press(PEP)is one of the most widely used types of English textbooks in senior high schools throughout China.Warming up block exists as an individual element devised for a quick glimpse of what is going to learn with stimulating activities in textbooks.In terms of similar functions upon lead-in procedure and Warming-up blocks in NSEC,the author has selected the perspective of lead-in to conduct a textbook analysis and evaluation.The Warming up Block and its application in daily education would be systematically analyzed and evaluated based on the research model from internal text analysis and external response on textbooks.Four research questions have been put forward to guide the whole research process,aiming at exploring function of Warming up Block,problems in ELT from lead-in aspect and corresponding factors,and relationship between Warming up Block and lead-in.All participants(240 students and 4 English teachers)involved in this research came from X Senior High School in Xi'an,where the author served ELT internship.Results from internal text analysis on Warming up Block came to the conclusion of functions set in Warming ups from task type and topic content set in tasks.To be more specific,varies types of tasks in form contribute much to development of students' comprehensive competence in processing target information.At the same time,debatable topics set in Warming ups contribute to improving students' logical thinking competence for humanistic aspect.Correspondingly,results from external investigation discovered several problems in senior ELT class,and further exploration found out key factors from both students' and teachers' perspectives which influencing ELT.Last but not least,based on text analysis as well as external investigation,relationship between Warming ups in NSEC and lead-in activities has also been connected.In accordance with results from this research,English teachers in senior high schools could incorporating textbook warming ups into actual lead-in with creativity and feasibility to some degree.However,more attention upon learner-centered principle,individual differences between genders requires to be paid for a successful class.Finally,the author proposed some practical suggestions from three aspects including organization of lead-in activity,contents contained in lead-in procedure,and teachers' professional development.