Corpus-based Research On Material Selection Criteria Of College General Academic English Textbooks

With the deepening of college English teaching reform in China,English teaching for general academic purposes(EGAP)are becoming more and more popular in college English teaching in China,but there is a shortage of relevant teaching materials.Teaching materials are the carrier of teaching content and the necessary means to effective curriculum implementation.The difficulty of teaching materials reflects the difficulty of the curriculum.There are few studies by Chinese and foreign scholars as to the features of the current EGAP textbooks,what kind of textbooks to choose and what standards to fall on in textbook selection.This research aims to test the academic nature and the difficulty of some EGAP textbooks in China in terms of Academic Word List coverage and Grade Level(GL).The Academic Word List(AWL)was developed by Coxhead in 2000,and its coverage has been confirmed to determine whether an English text is "academic" or not.It is usually assumed that a text with AWL coverage below 1.4%is of "general" English,a text with the AWL coverage between 1.4%and 10%is "general academic",while it is quite "academic" when its AWL coverage exceeds 10%.Grade Level is the figure calculated by the "readability" embedded in WORD in MICROSOFT OFFICE to measure the difficulty of texts.The research is carried out within the corpus which comprises five sets of EGAP textbooks,ten volumes in total,widely used in Chinese colleges and universities,i.e.Nucleus-An Integrated Academic English Course(edited by Cai Jigang,2014),An Integrated Course of English for General Academic Purposes(edited by Cai Jigang,2015),Reading-English for Academic Study(edited by John Slaght(Ireland)and Anne Pallant(England),2015),English for General Academic Purposes(edited by Zhang Jingyuan,2017),Academic Encounters:Life in Society-Reading and Writing and Academic Encounters:Human Behavior-Reading and Writing(edited by Yang Huizhong,2018).By analyzing the distribution patterns of GL and AWL coverage of texts and the relationships between them,this thesis is to verify whether the volumes are "general academic" textbooks or not,to test whether the "readability" and"academic" of the texts are in line with learners’ spiral cognitive development,and to explore the scientific criteria for materials selection of EGAP textbooks in China.The results show that:(1)among the 10 textbooks,5 are "general academic"textbooks and 5 are "academic";(2)either "readability" or "academic" of each volume shows a wavy distribution,and most of them generally show an upward trend while only a few volumes show slightly downward trends;(3)the texts with high AWL coverage also have high GL,and texts with low GL also have relatively low AWL coverage;(4)as to selecting "academic" materials,the AWL coverage of the text would be the first reference,while GL is to be considered when it comes to selecting materials for "general English" purposes.The findings of this research provide data reference for teachers to decide the order to use EGAP textbooks,offer difficulty reference for students’ independent learning,and suggest to textbooks compilers sensible criteria for materials selection.This research is conducive to promoting the compilation and development of EGAP textbooks.