Research On The Match Between Oral English Textbooks For English Majors And Learners' Topic Interest

As a universal and basic element in English language teaching including oral English teaching,textbooks can give cohesion to the teaching and learning process by providing direction,support and language-based activities.The importance of textbooks in language teaching contributes to the crucial role of textbook selection which is based on textbook evaluation.Topics which every unit of textbooks and activities in oral English class are based on,and learners' interest which facilitates effective learning are important factors in oral English teaching and textbook evaluation.Therefore,it is essential to choose oral English textbooks that can meet English majors' needs by considering their topic interest.This thesis investigates topic distribution features of three sets of textbooks,Learn to Talk,A New Course of College Spoken English and Inside Out after labeling topics to each unit.And 179 questionnaire sheets are distributed to English majors in Wuhan University of technology to research into their topic interest.Based on learners' topic interest and textbooks' topic distribution,correlation analysis is carried on to explore whether oral English textbooks can match English majors in terms of their topic interest.Major results are as follows:Firstly,English majors show high interest in specific topics like film & play,travel & journey,food & clothes,date & party,and friend & friendship and low interest in politics & economy,public services,ethics & morals,and charity.General topics of learners' interest are ranked as entertainments,sentimental life,education & development,daily life,social life,humanities,social issues and science & technology.Besides,males' and females' interest differs greatly in topics like shopping,beauty & fashion,meeting & leave-taking,introduction & description,parent,children & kinship,politics & economy,and science & technology.Secondly,in three sets of textbooks,topics concerning education and development rank the first,humanities the second,and daily life as well as social life the third,while topics about humanities and science & technology are less in quantity.And each set of textbooks has its own characteristics because their topic distribution features vary greatly.Thirdly,topic distribution features of textbooks can't fully match the features of English majors' topic interest.Relatively,among three sets of textbooks,Inside out is the best fit for learners in terms of topic interest while A New Course of College Spoken English is not so appropriate.This thesis can provide some references for the design and choice of topics in class and textbooks,and for the evaluation,selection and compilation of textbooks.