An Analysis And Evaluation Of Learning Strategies In The Compulsory Textbooks Of New Standard English (2019 Edition) For Senior High Schools

Textbooks,as an important carrier of the National English Curriculum Standards(NECS),play a unique role in the teaching of teachers and the learning of students as well as the personal development of teachers and students.It is of vital importance to do a research on textbook evaluation,including measuring the value(or potential value)of a set of textbooks by making judgements about the impacts of the textbooks on the users.It can help both teachers and students use the textbooks more effectively,improving the efficiency of teaching and learning.Learning strategies compose a huge important part in textbooks,so does the analysis and evaluation of learning strategies in textbook evaluation.However,one of the biggest problems in practical teaching activity is that more attention is paid to the learning of knowledge and skills instead of the cultivating of learning strategies.This learning and teaching process ignores the importance of the cultivation of learning strategies,the key to the cultivating of self-learning.Therefore,analyzing and evaluating the learning strategies in textbooks owes highly practical significance.The New Standard English(NSE)for Senior High Schools,published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press(FLTRP),is based on the NECS(2017 Edition),which is formulated by the Ministry of Education,People's Republic of China.The wide influences the NSE has had in China have made itself a great value in the field of textbook evaluation.This study evaluates the learning strategies in the NSE for senior high schools,and determines the distribution and frequency of learning strategies.In the research process,the author analyzes the requirements of the target textbook and the NECS to understand how well the textbook has achieved the NECS for learning strategies and the consistency between the actual use of teachers and students.The author raises three research questions:1)Are the learning strategies of the compulsory textbooks in NSE well matchedwith the requirements of the NECS?2)How well does the design of learning strategies in the textbooks help guide teachers' instruction of learning strategies?3)To what extent does the design of learning strategies in the textbooks enable students meet the requirements of learning strategies in the NECS?In order to answer the above research questions,this study uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods to conduct internal and external evaluations of the textbooks.Based on the principle of textbook evaluation by Cheng Xiaotang(2002),internal evaluation analyzes the content of the textbook;external evaluation uses research tools such as questionnaires,interviews,and classroom observations.The author obtains the following results: First of all,the compulsory textbooks of NSE basically meet the metacognitive,cognitive,communicative and emotional strategies required by the NECS.Secondly,the learning strategy design in this textbook provides some help for teachers' learning strategies teaching.For example,the design of explicit strategies can guide teachers to introduce the strategies to students,but due to the insufficient understanding of learning strategies,most teachers cannot identify implicit learning strategies.They add that the learning strategy activities in the textbooks are not enough to train students' learning strategies.Thirdly,students are not proficient in using learning strategies in actual learning.The mostly used strategies are communicative strategies,followed by affective and cognitive strategies,and finally metacognitive strategies.However,in fact,these textbooks provide many opportunities for training cognitive and metacognitive strategies,and make up for the lack of knowledge and ability of students in learning strategies.Based on the results of these studies,the author refers suggestions for textbook compilers,English teachers,students,and teaching researchers.Although this research has revealed some findings,there are shortcomings as well.The sample of students' strategy use and teachers' use of teaching materials is too limited to result in accurate results.This need to be further improved in future research.