Comparative Analysis Of Senior High School English Textbooks In The View Of English Key Competencies

The Ministry of Education revised the original curriculum standards and then issued the English Curriculum Standards for Ordinary Senior High School(2017 Edition)in January 2018.It divides the concept of “key competencies” into four dimensions: language competence;quality of thinking;cultural awareness and ability of learning.Based on the four dimensions of key competencies in English,this paper employs literature research method and comparative approaches to make a comparative analysis between the NSEFC(New Senior English for China)in mainland China and Lung-Teng English textbook in Taiwan Region.The comparison is mainly elaborated from text themes,text contents,problem settings and activities designing.The author analyzes the two teachers' different teaching plans in each distinction,and tries to design the specific teaching plans to promote the students' key competencies,as well as put forward some suggestions for textbooks writers and teachers according to the existing problems.This study attempts to answer the following questions:(1)What are the advantages and disadvantages of these two sets of English textbooks in cultivating students' key competencies?(2)What opinions and suggestions can be proposed to the revise of the new NSEFC according to the comparison?(3)What implications can teachers learn from the study and teaching plans?The result shows that these two editional textbooks involve four aspects of key competencies,but still have some shortcomings.Firstly,in the aspect of language competence,the vocabulary arrangement in NSEFC is not detailed enough as Lung-Teng's,and students may lag behind in grasping the accurate meaning and characteristic from the context.The writing activities in Lung-Teng textbooks can help students build the overall cognitive process of writing articles.The “viewing”,one of the language skills,is less reflected in textbooks,it is unfavourable for improvement of students' “viewing skill”.Secondly,in the aspect of cultural awareness,these two kinds of English textbooks all emphasize on the world culture but neglect Chinese culture.In additions,the arrangement of cultural knowledge content lacks of systematicness.Thirdly,in the aspect of quality of thinking,the exercises of Reading Part in textbooks all reflect the comprehensiveness and diversity of students' thinking quality.The proportion of different level questions changes constantly with students' different thinking quality in different stages.Fourthly,in the aspect of ability of learning,textbooks all emphasizeon cultivating students' cognitive strategy and few of materials reflect on meta-cognitive strategy,communicative strategy and affective strategy,which is not conducive to the cultivation of students' learning ability.Based on the above analysis,the study puts forward some suggestions for the compilers and teachers.As for compilers,they had better add word family,lexical chunks on the textbooks,expand the scope of reading topics,and choose various genre;increase the proportion of outstanding traditional Chinese cultures,as well as integrate hierarchy of cultural structure;add more tasks and research materials to the classroom activities that can cultivate students' advanced thinking quality.The suggestions for teachers are as follows,they need to read the text in depth,make an appropriate selection of textbooks and implement key competencies in English teaching;aim at cultivating students' critical thinking,and focus on the level of thinking,they also need to pay attention to students' learning strategies.