An Internal Evaluation Of The Secondary English Textbooks In Singapore:A Case Study Of All About English

All about English is a series of textbooks first published by Pearson Education South Asia Pte Ltd in 2011.As a series of stipulated English textbooks for Singaporean secondary students [E/N(A)],All about English plays an essential part of efficient Singaporean secondary English education system and deserves a systematic and in-depth evaluation.This research carries out an internal evaluation of All about English,tending to find out its strength & limitation and articulate the meaningful advices for the high school English textbook compilation in mainland China.Employing literature method and textual analysis,this research focuses on the four dimensions of the textbooks like teaching aims,teaching methodology,lingual materials,structure and organization.With the systematic and in-depth evaluation,this research points out the strength and limitation of All about English.Firstly,the aims of the textbooks,individually the 4 fundamental skills in Book 1 and Book 2,the comprehensive language competence in Book 3 and Book 4,cater to the requirement of English Language Syllabus 2010 Primary & Secondary(Express/ Normal [Academic])(ELS E/N[A]),steadily enhancing the English competence of the Singaporean secondary students.Secondly,the flexible and practical teaching methods like task-based method,audio-lingual method and communicative method employed in the textbooks are well arranged to meet the needs of the students.Thirdly,the lingual materials are authentic and cover a wide range of the subjects and genres which closely related to the students daily life and school study.Finally,the organization and structure of the textbooks is proved to be scientific and reasonable to make a qualified English knowledge and skill reference book.Except for the points mentioned above,the textbooks also have some limitation like the lack of enough concern of the local culture,absence of the examination-oriented exercises and subjectivity of some ideological judgment.Finally,the findings of the evaluation of the four dimensions of All about English bring about the recommendations on improving the English textbooks for high school students in mainland China which includes that a qualified series of English textbook should aim at enhancing the language competence of the students,meet the requirement of the society on English education;the lingual materials employed in the textbooks should be authentic and close to the native culture.More than that,the textbooks should concern the native culture of the students;the teaching methods adopted in the textbooks should be conducive to the establishment of the students' English skills and technologies;finally,the organization and structure should be of clarity and efficiency to help the students use the textbooks conveniently.