A Comparative Analysis Of High School English Textbooks In China: From The Perspective Of LCT

Nowadays,‘core competency' has become a new focus in Chinese primary and secondary education.It is a key factor in the reform of education curriculum and the implementation of education goals,which coincides with the guiding principle for foreign language teaching that emphasizes the unity of ‘instrumentality' and ‘humanity' of language.In this context,textbooks,as a significant source of language input,should make some adaptations accordingly,and English teachers should make a better use of them.Taking this as the departure,this thesis purports to conduct a comparative study of two widely used high school English textbooks in China,i.e.New Standard English(NSE,compiled by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press)and Look Ahead(compiled collaboratively by the British Council and Foreign Language Teaching Research Press)in the framework of the Legitimation Code Theory(LCT).LCT is a theoretical framework first advanced by the Australian sociologist Karl Maton and his associates on the basis of Basil Bernstein's Knowledge Structure Theory to explore issues,practices and contexts in education and beyond.This theory consists of five principles,among which the principles of specialization and semantics are closely related to language teaching and learning.The knowledge-knower relationship is profoundly elaborated in the dimension of specialization,where knowledge codes are characterized in terms of the possession of specific knowledge practices and knower code by highlighting the attributes of actors,i.e.‘natural talent' or cultivated artistic ‘gaze' or ‘taste'.An ‘ideal knower' is required to demonstrate both the ability with knowledge and technical skills and the capacity for personal expression,which is consistent with the concept of ‘core competency' in education,a comprehensive performance in knowledge,skills,emotions,attitudes,values and so on.As for the principle of semantics,the semantic structures of all social fields of practice are characterized by both semantic gravity and semantic density,whose relative strengths may be varied independently to generate a range of semantic codes,which are often applied as tools to study the semantic features of different practices(i.e.knowledge codes).In the current project,a comparative analysis of specialization codes(including knowledge code and knower code)in the two textbooks is expected to shed light on the cultivation of ‘core competency'.Moreover,the comparative research of semantic codes in both books aims to illustrate the distinctiveness in knowledge codes,providing some inspirations for teachers on knowledge-teaching(knowledge code)and students-teaching(knower code).Thus,in this thesis,knowledge code,knower code,semantic density and semantic gravity in NSE and Look Ahead will be analyzed at full length from different aspects,including the compiling concepts,reading goals,reading passages and reading exercises,with an aim to address the following two research questions:(1)How are specialization codes and semantic codes distributed in NSE and Look Ahead?(2)What pedagogical implications can we get for high school English teaching and learning,particularly for the cultivation of ‘core competency' as well as the achievement of the unity of ‘instrumentality' and ‘humanity' in foreign language education?This results indicate that:(1)in terms of specialization,Look Ahead is characterized by a relatively even distribution of knowledge code and knower code,while NSE is characterized by a great emphasis on knowledge code.This suggests that Look Ahead prioritizes the cultivation of an ‘ideal knower' with what we call ‘core competency',particularly the capacity for personal expression and competence in knowledge and technical skills;(2)the knowledge code in Look Ahead demonstrates a strong semantic density and a weak semantic gravity with complicated sentence structures,which demands an integration of reading materials with readers' personal experiences.In contrast,the knowledge code in NSE is characterized by a weak semantic density with simple expressions,where the reading exercises present information directly from the reading materials with no elaboration,reflecting a high level of semantic gravity.This suggests that English teachers in China are expected to use the two different-structured textbooks rationally.On the one hand,they should make different adaptions to their teaching plans in terms of distinctive featured specialization codes and semantic codes in textbooks.On the other hand,teachers in normal high schools can make full use of some supplementary materials(i.e.original reading materials from Look Ahead),which highlights both the possession of specific knowledge and skills as well as the attributes of learners(i.e.personal expression,judgment,attitudes,etc.),so that the ‘instrumentality' and ‘humanity' of language can be better united in English education to improve students' core competency.