Abstract

After the issue of English Curriculum Standards (ECS) in 2001, it is of significance for both the school administration and teachers to choose appropriate textbooks among a number of English textbooks. Therefore, it is worthwhile to compare several widely-used textbooks in a specific area. This research employs a qualitative way to investigate two specific textbooks used in Zhejiang province: Go for it and New Standard English (NSE). This research compares the two textbooks from the perspectives of macro evaluation and micro evaluation, concentrating on guiding ideology, overall structure, topics and grammar items. The results show that the guiding ideology of the two textbooks corresponds to the requirements of ECS to some degree. Both the two textbooks arrange knowledge into several parts in accordance with themes and topics, and the overall structure of NSE is more hierarchical and comprehensive than Go for it. The topics in both two textbooks are real life-related, suitable for students of that age, and also culture-related. Furthermore，topics in NSE are more diversified while in Go for it are more conservative. In addition, the grammar items in the two textbooks are compiled in a spiral and inductive way. NSE is more authentic and pays more attention to the communicative purpose.

Key words: textbook evaluation; Go for it; New Standard English; English Curriculum Standards

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

1. Introduction- 1 -

2. Textbook and Its Evaluation- 2 -

2.1 Textbook- 2 -

2.2 Textbook Evaluation Models- 2 -

2.3 The Development of English Textbooks for Middle Schools in China- 3 -

2.4 Previous Studies on English Textbook Evaluation- 5 -

3. Methodology- 7 -

4.The Comparison of English Textbooks: Go for it and New Standard English (NSE)- 8 -

4.1 Macro Evaluation- 8 -

4.1.1 Guiding Ideology- 8 -

4.1.2 Overall Structure- 9 -

4.2 Micro Evaluation- 10 -

4.2.1 Topics- 10 -

4.2.2 Grammar Items- 11 -

5. Conclusion- 17 -

References- 19 -