| Author: | Deng, Lan Amanda |
| Title: | English textbooks in Hong Kong and in Chinese Mainland : a comparative analysis of new way to English and go for it in terms of TBLT |
| Advisors: | Sampson, Nicholas Alistair (ENGL) |
| Degree: | M.A. |
| Year: | 2016 |
| Subject: | English language -- Textbooks -- Evaluation. English language -- Study and teaching -- China -- Hong Kong. English language -- Study and teaching -- China. Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | Department of English |
| Pages: | 47 pages : color illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) is a pedagogy widely adopted in many countries, especially Asia-Pacific countries. An important notion to TBLT is "learning by doing", which aims at improving the language proficiency of students by engaging them in authentic tasks. A number of specialists in linguistics and language education have laid a solid theoretical and empirical foundation for TBLT in the past decades. Up to date, numerous researches have been conducted about TBLT both to advance its theory and to investigate its application. After years of study and practice, TBLT has gained major development as its theory has gradually matures as a result of its extensive application to English teaching and learning. Hong Kong is one of the first to introduce this pedagogy into its English curriculum and Chines Mainland is the most important and giant laboratory for TBLT since it has the most English learners in the world. Teachers together with theorists and researchers have made great contribution to the development of TBLT with their teaching practices and researches. Textbook is one of the important factors influencing English education. However, most studies and researcher focus on TBLT in teaching process and few were about TBLT in textbooks, and even fewer compares TBLT-guided textbooks in different places. Therefore, the present research examines English textbooks in Hong Kong and in Chinese Mainland aiming at providing reference for textbook compilation and hence English teaching in the future. The current study looks into New Way to English and Go for it as the representative for English textbooks in Hong Kong and Chinese Mainland respectively with a tentative analytical framework as the parameter. The analytical framework is proposed on the basis of former studies and theories, which refers to a wide range of reliable literatures to ensure the objectiveness. Then the selected textbooks are assessed and quantified results are generated from the study. The data collected from this step are compared to identify the differences and further analyzed to find out the underlying reasons that are likely to cause such differences. According to the findings of this research, New Way to English attempts to achieve multiple outcomes even at the initial level as it includes a certain proportion of tasks that encourages cooperation, communication and interaction, but Go for it mainly aims at improving the communication skills of students. Meanwhile, Go for it attaches more importance to language focus than New Way to English does. Go for it starts with the introduction of some basic knowledge, explains grammatical rules by making language point the content of task instead of direct instruction. Such differences reflect that Hong Kong students are expected to be more proficient in English than their peers in Chinese Mainland are due to the better language environment in Hong Kong. The textbook analysis also reveals that a soft version TBLT is implemented both in Hong Kong and in Chinese Mainland with regional characteristics taken into consideration. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| b2917076x.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 988.33 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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