A Comparative Study Of Go For It And New Standard English Textbooks For Junior High School

In China,since it lacks of corresponding target language environment in English learning.English textbooks are the important way for students to obtain English language.The quality of textbooks directly affects teachers' teaching and students' learning.The English textbooks Go for It and New Standard English for junior high school were published in 2000,and they have been widely used in China for nearly 20 years.After the promulgation of the Criterion of English Curriculum Standards(2011),the two sets of textbooks were revised in 2012.How do the two sets of textbooks reflect the concepts,aims and requirements of the new English Curriculum Standards,and what are their characteristics,similarities and differences? How can English teachers better promote the development of students by implementing the new textbooks? Now eight years have passed,do the two sets of revised textbooks still meet the needs of students? And what improvements do editors need to make? Therefore,through the comparative analysis of the two sets of textbooks,readers can better clarify these issues.Based on the textbook evaluation theories proposed by Ding Zhaopeng,Cheng Xiaotang,and Qian Yuan and according to the English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2017),the study summarizes an evaluation framework.The study conducts internal evaluation on the textbooks from different levels,and then conducts external evaluation on the textbooks based on the feedback questionnaires after the use of the textbooks and the interviews with teachers and students.A total of 240 students and 40 teachers were selected from two schools in Beipiao,Liaoning Province,which used the textbooks for junior high school published by People's Education Press.And the other two middle schools in Dalian,Liaoning Province,which used the textbooks for junior high school published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.The feedback from these students and teachers formed the external evaluation of the two sets of textbooks.The instruments used in this study include questionnaires and interviews aimed at the feedback of students and teachers after using the textbooks.The study intends to explore three research questions: 1)What are the advantages and disadvantages in the surface structure of the two sets of revised textbooks for junior high school? 2)What are the advantages and disadvantages in the deep structure of the two sets of revised textbooks? 3)In use,in what aspects do the two sets of textbooks meet the needs of teachers and students and in what aspects they do not meet the needs of teachers and students ?Through comparative analysis,it was found that: In terms of content arrangement in the surface structure,some of the texts are outdated in the textbooks published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.And the text selection of the textbooks published byPeople's Education Press are urbanization,which is not conducive to the understanding of students in rural areas.Therefore,both sets of textbooks need to add some content close to students' real life and rural life.At the same time,in the deep structure,the textbooks published by People's Education Press are relatively scattered in grammar arrangement,and the recurrence rate of grammar is low.And grammar arrangement in the textbooks published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press are more reasonable.And in the textbooks published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press,“Learning to learn” part is set in each module of the textbooks,which pays more attention to the cultivation of students' learning strategies.However,the setting of listening part can be increased appropriately in this set of textbooks.And the quantity of vocabulary in the two sets of textbooks is relatively large.In practice,the two sets of textbooks can meet the needs of teaching and learning,but most teachers think that the arrangement of phonetics in the text is not very systematic.This study makes a comparative analysis of the internal and external evaluation of the two sets of textbooks in order to provide some references for the authors and users of the textbooks.