| Author: | Chen, Fenghua |
| Title: | Ideational meanings of texts and images of the EFL textbook in China : case study of new horizon college English |
| Advisors: | Francisco, Veloso (ENGL) Feng, William (ENGL) Cheng, Winnie (ENGL) |
| Degree: | DALS |
| Year: | 2020 |
| Subject: | English language -- Textbooks English language -- Study and teching -- China Discourse analysis Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | Faculty of Humanities |
| Pages: | 253 pages : color illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | New Horizon College English (NHCE) is a national planning textbook that is mainly launched by the Ministry of Education of China. It is also a college EFL textbook widely concerned by the current academic community. The in-depth research has been conducted, mostly focusing on semiotics, inter-semiotic relations, and PPTs. This thesis is the first to explore the verbal ideational meaning and visual representational meanings of NHCE, which may provide a new research perspective for the academic community. The research questions raised in this thesis are: 1. What is the verbal ideational meaning in the text of NHCE? 2. What is the visual representational meaning in the image of NHCE? 3. What is the implication of the meanings for the teaching of college EFL textbooks? Based on the systemic functional grammar (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014), visual design grammar (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006), the representational meaning framework of EFL textbook (Guo & Feng, 2015) and text and image of NHCE, this thesis establishes an analysis framework for the ideational meaning in NHCE. It mainly studies three sections of NHCE, namely, learning objectives section, opening up section and listening to the world section. It is found that, first, in terms of the transitivity system, the material process, relational process, and mental process are more significantly frequent than the behavioral process, verbal process and existential process. It seems to indicate teachers should teach more material processes, relational processes and mental processes in the class of college English listening and speaking. Second, in terms of activity field, expounding and reporting are more frequent than enabling, sharing and doing. It might imply teachers should focus on expounding. Third, in terms of image, the action process and reactional process are more frequent than the speech process and mental process. The classificational process and analytical process are more frequent than the symbolic process. It may indicate teachers should use images to train students' ability to describe the action process, reactional process, classificational process, and analytical process. Fourth, in terms of the participant, from NHCE 1 to NHCE 4, generic / group type is more frequent in the text and image, while the specific/individual type is less frequent, which might reveal the gradual increase of the comprehension difficulty of NHCE. It possibly requires teachers to guide students to focus on the specific/individual type during their learning of NHCE 1 and NHCE 2, and on the generic/group type during their learning of NHCE 3 and NHCE 4. Fifth, in terms of circumstance/setting, world, community, and city are more frequent than family, school, and country. It probably reveals teachers should guide students to pay attention to both local development and the international community. Sixth, in terms of culture, foreign cultures dominated by British and American cultures occupy most of the cultural content of NHCE. In contrast, the proportion of Chinese culture is almost negligible. It is suggested in the future revision, NHCE editors should consider increasing multiculturalism including Chinese culture. Last, in terms of text-image relation, there is almost no connection between many an image and text on the same page. It is recommended to add appropriate semiotics to explain to students there is a certain logical relationship between the text and image. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 991022385555703411.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 3.11 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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