Study On The Content Areas Of PEP English(Ⅰ-Ⅲ) From The Perspectives Of English Curriculum Standards

Textbooks are at the core of curriculum resources,playing an essential role in providing rich input for the learners.PEP(People’s Education Press)English textbooks have long been regarded as one of the most influential and widely used materials in China,and the latest series of English textbooks were published in 2019.Hence,it is necessary to conduct a study on this set of textbooks in order to have a better understanding of its features and help the English teachers with better use of the textbooks.English Curriculum Standards for Senior High Schools(2020 Revised Edition)(English Curriculum Standards(2020)for short thereafter)is a directional document issued by the Ministry of Education with the four key competencies(linguistic competence,cultural awareness,thinking qualities,and learning ability)and the six content components(themes,text-types,language knowledge,cultural knowledge,language skills,and learning strategies)newly proposed.The compilation of textbooks should follow the guidelines stated in the curriculum standards.The present research focuses on the content areas in the PEP English textbooks(the Compulsory Books 1-3)taking into consideration the six content components specified in English Curriculum Standards(2020)with Hutchinson and Waters’ evaluative checklist(1987)as the research instrument.This research aims to make materials analysis for teachers’ better use of the textbooks,focusing on these two research questions:(1)What are the features of the content dimensions of PEP English textbooks(Book 1-Book 3)?(2)What are the areas that senior high school English teachers should focus on in the use of PEP English textbooks(Book 1-Book 3)?Through the analysis of the collected data,it is found that the target textbooks have the following characteristics.In general terms,the six content components are covered in the textbooks,among which language skills are paid much attention to while cultural knowledge is less emphasized.The textbooks are theme-oriented and provide various text-types.To be specific,the detailed characteristics are shown below.(1)Themes: the textbooks attach importance to “Human and Society”,followed by “Human and Nature” and “Human and Self”.(2)Text-types: dialogue and interview account for large proportion.Practical text,narration,and news report are laid stress respectively in different English textbooks,while exposition does not gain enough attention.(3)Language knowledge: the textbooks give priority to grammatical knowledge with the application of the continuum “form-function-use”,while they pay little attention to pragmatic knowledge.(4)Cultural knowledge: the textbooks lay emphasis on understanding Western and Chinese traditional festivals and customs,but do not pay enough attention to exploring the relationship between language and culture.(5)Language skills: the textbooks give precedence to the cultivation of production skills and contain much skill-specific and skills-integrated work,but do not cover all the comprehension micro-skills.(6)Learning strategies: the textbooks pay much attention to cognitive strategies,while they rarely emphasize communicative strategies,especially the strategy of using non-linguistic techniques to facilitate communication.Therefore,the three compulsory English textbooks meet the requirements of English Curriculum Standards(2020)on the whole.According to the features of textbooks,senior high school English teachers should pay special attention to the following areas.Among those covered six content components,the capacity of some areas is still not enough,which should be emphasized when English teachers use the textbooks,namely smallest proportion of “Human and Self”,few expository texts,inadequate pragmatic knowledge and cultural knowledge,and insufficient training of communicative strategies.Additionally,English teachers should pay much attention to those specific areas of textual knowledge,comprehension skills,and learning strategies that English textbooks uncover.This thesis summarizes the whole research,presents the limitations of it and provides suggestions for further studies in the future.