A Comparative Study Of The Reading Texts In The Third Year English Textbooks Of The People's Education Edition And The Ren'ai Edition

Textbook is a must for both teacher and student,and its importance is widely recognized.Textbook presents such things as teaching objectives,teaching concepts and teaching methods of the subject.It embodies the mainstream ideas of the subject,and reading texts is an important aspect of English textbook.The development of students' reading skills mainly comes from the training of reading skills guided by teachers in the classroom.The selection and design of reading materials in textbooks will directly affect students' reading effectiveness.This thesis chooses two kinds of textbooks which are most commonly used in Chongqing for comparison.There are PEP(Go for it!)English Textbook and Project English Textbook for Junior Three.Based on the English Curriculum Standards(2011)(Hence Standards),this thesis uses Cheng Xiaotang's internal and external evaluation methods for analysis.Internal evaluation analysis is based on Cheng Xiaotang's analytical framework of reading text,and discusses the similarities and differences of reading materials in the two sets of textbooks in terms of genre,theme,length and linguistic features,and concludes which textbook agrees nicely with the requirements of the Standards in terms of genre,theme,length and linguistic features.External evaluation is a comparative analysis in the form of questionnaire.The purpose of this study is tantamount to investigating the acceptance of reading materials by teachers and students who use these two kinds of textbooks.The results show that the reading materials in the two editions of the textbooks meet the reading requirements of the Standards to varying degrees.In terms of genre and subject matter,the reading materials of PEP are more diverse.However,in terms of cultural content penetration required by the Standards,the Project English Textbook has done a better job.In terms of length,the total reading volume of the two textbooks is almost identical.In terms of phonological features,the reading materials of the two editions of the textbooks both better reflect the vocabulary required in the Standards.The core vocabulary of PEP Textbook accounts for a large proportion,while the non-core vocabulary of Project English accounts for a large proportion.The types of sentences are more abundant and the patterns are more disparate in the textbooks of PEP.We hope that this study can provide some insights into the selection of teaching materials for junior three teachers and students.