The Investigation And Application Research On Adverbial Conjunctions In Two Versions Of Textbooks For High School

English textbook,an important part of the implementation of English Curriculum,is the first-hand reading material for senior high school students.With the reform and development of education in recent years,a wide variety of English textbooks are available on the market,which makes selecting the right textbooks a challenging task.New Century English(Shanghai Edition)and Oxford English(Yilin Edition)for senior high school are two sets of the most widely used textbooks in Shanghai city and Jiangsu province.Nevertheless,little comparison between them from discourse cohesion’s perspective has been conducted.Discourse cohesion is found in the use of devices in the text such as Adverbial Conjunctions(abbreviated as ACs).Thus,to narrow the scope of the research,this thesis mainly explores the application of ACs in the textbooks.The research in this thesis employs the qualitative and quantitative analytical approach on ACs.It starts with the introduction of ACs associated with classification,judging benchmarks as well as semantic functions.Then,the investigation of ACs frequency and its distribution in New Century English and Oxford English are explored respectively.In the thesis,the critical issue with textbook is whether the distribution of ACs between two versions of these English textbooks shares some similarities and differences and how students’ comprehension benefits from ACs occurring in the text.Thus,the research serves to provide empirical evidence of how the application of ACs impacts on the students’ language learning and writing ability.The research results will be stated as follows: 1.The investigation of ACs applied in two sets of textbooks shows that: 1)Both New Century English textbooks and Oxford English textbooks yield high proportions of ACs,among which really,too,then,first,however account for a large proportion of ACs.Meanwhile,the overall proportions of ACs increased soundly across grade levels for New century English and Oxford English.2)New Century English textbooks contain higher density but lower variety of ACs across grade levels than Oxford English.3)New Century English is found to favor ACs suggesting resultative relations and additive relations,whereas Oxford English favor ACs suggesting assertive and resultative relations.2.The results of empirical research in senior high school show that: 1)ACs’ frequency in different English textbooks influences students’ ability of inferring semantic relations in translation.2)The variety of ACs in different English textbooks benefits students’ flexibility of manipulating ACs in composition.3)The application of ACs in English textbooks and the teaching improve students’ reading comprehension.Lastly,the present study,based on the findings illustrated above,provides some suggestions for senior high school students.Furthermore,the application of ACs should be highly valued so as to help students meet the requirements of English Curriculum Standard.