A CSSE-Oriented Analysis Of Discourse In English Textbooks For Senior High School

In the new edition of Curriculum Standards for Senior English(CSSE)published in 2017,the “thematic context” and “text type” are included in the major contents of the curriculum for the first time,revealing that the discourse,a linguistic unit beyond the sentence level,is stepping into the spotlight.Discourse competence is an important medium for students to transform their language knowledge into language competence.English teaching should make it an essential aim to cultivate students' discourse awareness and improve their discourse competence.Textbooks,the major source of English materials for most students in China,deserve the uttermost attention to their compilation and development.The theory of discourse analysis aims at studying the meaning,function and organization of the components of a text,and is an ideal theory to guide students to raise discourse awareness and improve their discourse competence.In the past 30 years,linguists have made in-depth research and gained fruitful results in the framework of discourse analysis,but it has not been fully applied in the field of textbook development.With the theory of discourse,this study attempts to interpret the new edition of CSSE and analyze the texts and reading tasks of Oxford English(Shanghai Edition)with an aim to promote the application of discourse analysis in English teaching and textbook development,to arouse the discourse awareness of textbook editors and language teachers,to ensure students' adequate exposure to abundant,intriguing texts and interactive tasks,so as to deepen the understanding of texts,achieve effective communication and ultimately enhance the language competence.This study consists of five chapters.Firstly,it introduces the research background and significance by interpreting the new CSSE.Secondly,it reviews the theory of discourse analysis and its application in English teaching from macro-and micro-perspectives,setting up the theoretical framework.Then,this study takes Oxford English(Shanghai Edition)(hereinafter referred to as OESE)as the main research object,and adopts the methods of literature research,textual analysis,qualitative and quantitative analysis.Then,this study analyzes the texts in the reading part from three aspects: thematic context,genre and authenticity,and then examines the design pattern of the exercises/activities in the pre-reading,while-reading and post-reading parts of the reading section.In order to validate findings from the analysis,a questionnaire is completed by high school teachers and students.Through the descriptive statistical analysis of the survey results,the paper provides the methodological triangulation for the text analysis.Finally,the results are discussed with reference to specific requirements of the new curriculum standard and related theories,and some suggestions are put forward to promote discourse teaching through textbooks.The findings of this study are as follows: 1)In text selection and compilation,OESE provides a variety of multi-topical materials,but compared with the requirements of the new curriculum standard,it leaves considerable room for improvement in terms of theme coverage,genre proportion and authenticity.2)In the design of reading tasks,most of the exercises/activities are arranged in varied types according to levels of difficulty,and center on the content of the text.Nonetheless,it lacks adequate training of discourse knowledge and strategies,and needs a more balanced proportion of exercises and tasks in order to enhance the interactivity of reading tasks.