热点聚焦 | 外语教材研究（一）：内容研究

从世界范围看，外语教材作为意识形态、知识和文化内容的载体，既是外语教师教学的主要依托，也是育人的重要保障。虽然相关研究已蓬勃兴起，但无论研究视角，还是理论建构和方法论层面仍有较大探索空间。加强外语教材研究，有利于外语教师结合我国外语教育的实际情况创新教学和教材建设，为培养具有中国情怀和国际视野的新时代人才提供支撑。

外语教材研究视角多样，比如文化呈现、国际化元素、教师使用、教材的编写创作等，不同视角下的研究侧重、方法、启示也都不同。因此，在接下来的系列热点聚焦中，我们将为大家呈现内容丰富的外语教材研究案例，以期为外语教师的教材使用、编写和研究提供参考。

在英国学者Nigel Harwood看来，外语教材研究主要包括三大方面——内容研究、使用研究和出版研究。内容研究主要关注教材在语言、文化、语用等层面的内容设计，也包括对教师用书的专门研究。本期热点聚焦即关注内容研究，所选的三篇文章也来自Nigel Harwood主编的《英语教材研究：内容、使用与出版》一书，分别为“All Middle Class Now? Evolving Representations of the Working Class in the Neoliberal Era: The Case of ELT Textbooks” “Reading Comprehension Questions: The Distribution of Different Types in Global EFL Textbooks”“Teaching English Reading: What’s Included in the Textbooks of Pre-Service General Education Teachers?”。第一个研究调研了新自由主义时代（20世纪70年代）以来国际英语教材中的工人阶级表征，结果发现相关内容的大幅缺失，这实则是一种偏见，提醒我们在教材编写中应关注社会各阶层的现状，让学生有机会了解全面、真实的社会，增强对社会的责任感。第二个研究关注国际英语教材阅读文本的问题和任务设计，分别统计了文本内容类、语言类、情感认同类问题的数量、频次和分布。第三个研究关注职前教师英语教材中的阅读教学问题，主要探讨阅读教材在语音、音素、词汇、熟悉度、文本理解、拼写、测评等方面的不同侧重。后两个研究均对外语教材阅读内容的设计具有一定的参考价值。因篇幅所限，本文仅梳理了三篇文章的概要，有意了解详情的读者可参阅《英语教材研究：内容、使用与出版》一书。

All Middle Class Now? Evolving Representations of the Working Class in the Neoliberal Era: The Case of ELT Textbooks

John Gray and David Block

作者简介

John Gray is Senior Lecturer in TESOL Education at the Institute of Education, University of London.

David Block is Research Professor in Sociolinguistics for the Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats, working at the Universitat de Lleida (Spain).

内容概要

UK-produced English language teaching textbooks aimed at the global market are core products in a multi-million-pound Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) industry that includes language teaching and testing, teacher education, academic publishing, and educational consultancy work and quality assurance for ministries of education globally. The growth of this industry coincides largely with the birth of the neoliberal era, dating more or less from the late 1970s. This is a period which has been characterized not only by the deregulation of financial markets, the abolition of trade barriers, and the imposition of structural readjustment programmes on developing world countries, but also by an ideology that promotes and celebrates individualism over class-based and other collective identity inscriptions. Elsewhere in our work (Block, 2010; Gray, 2010a, 2010b, 2012), we have argued that UK-produced textbooks frequently reproduce and legitimize neoliberal ideology, and here we turn our attention specifically to representations of the working class. We begin with a short discussion of the supposed demise of the working class before moving on to a discussion of what class means in the highly complex world we live in today. This is followed by quantitative and qualitative analysis of a set of textbooks dating from the 1970s to the end of the first decade of the 21st century. The analysis reveals a largely superficial treatment of class in general and a progressive editing out of working class characters and issues relating to working class life from these textbooks. We conclude by arguing that this writing out of the working class from language learning materials can be seen as both a failure to educate students (by providing them with a very skewed view of the world) and a simultaneous betrayal of working class language learners, who are denied recognition.

Reading Comprehension Questions: The Distribution of Different Types in Global EFL Textbooks

Diana Freeman

作者简介

Diana Freeman is currently studying for a PhD at the University of Essex. Her doctoral thesis discusses the questions and tasks accompanying reading texts in global English as a Foreign Language (EFL) textbooks.

内容概要

This article presents research into the types of questions and tasks that accompany the reading texts in global EFL textbooks. In essence, the rationale for undertaking such an investigation is the crucial role that reading and questions play both in learning per se and in language learning in particular and the still dominant place that textbooks hold in many classrooms. I have identified the different types of comprehension questions and tasks in textbooks and created a taxonomy which consists of two tiers: the first tier represents pre-reading question types and is composed of five different types, and the second tier, which will be the focus of this chapter, represents post-reading comprehension and task question types (comp-qs). The latter, the comp-q types, comprises eight different question types, and these are grouped into three categories: Content, comprising three question types spanning lower to higher order thinking; Language, comprising three question types, not hierarchical; and Affect, two question types, one lower order and the other higher order. I then apply this taxonomy to the questions and tasks accompanying the readings in four series of global intermediate-level EFL textbooks, each of which has undergone at least one revised edition: Cutting Edge (Cunningham and Moor, 1998, 2005), English File (Oxenden and Latham-Koenig, 1999, 2006), Headway (Soars and Soars, 1986, 1996, 2003, 2009), and Inside Out (Kay and Jones, 2000, 2009). I have considered the distribution of the question types in terms of frequency, which measures how many of each question type is asked; in terms of their occurrence, which measures which question types are present or not in a given reading, regardless of how many times they appear; and in terms of their range, which measures how many different question types there are in any given text, edition or series (that is, how many out of the eight possible comprehension question types are used, irrespective of how many of each type, or which type). The results contain a combination of the expected – the existence of very basic, lower order questions – and the perhaps less anticipated – the proportion of questions that promote higher order thinking and linguistic skills. Across all ten textbooks in the study, the most widely used comprehension question types are those that require inferential comprehension, although different series demonstrate their own preferences. In order to provide an informed discussion of these results, I held semi-structured interviews with the writers and editors of the series in this study. This has allowed me to gain an insight into the approaches and priorities these writers have when they are creating the reading skills elements of their textbooks.

Teaching English Reading: What’s Included in the Textbooks of Pre-Service General Education Teachers?

L. Quentin Dixon, Shuang Wu, Renata Burgess-Brigham, R. Malatesha Joshi, Emily Binks-Cantrell, and Erin Washburn

作者简介

L. Quentin Dixon is Assistant Professor of English as a Second Language and Reading at Texas A&M University.

Shuang Wu is a PhD student in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture at Texas A&M University, specializing in English as a Second Language.

Renata Burgess-Brigham is a doctoral student and a graduate assistant in the College of Education and Human Development, Texas A&M University.

R. Malatesha Joshi is Professor of Reading/Language Arts Education, ESL and Educational Psychology at Texas A&M University.

Emily Binks-Cantrell is Clinical Assistant Professor in the Departmentof Teaching, Learning, and Culture at Texas A&M University and teaches reading education courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Erin Washburn teaches courses in literacy education at Binghamton University.

内容概要

With changing demographics, pre-service general education teachers in many English-speaking countries will face the challenge of effectively teaching English language learners (ELLs) when they enter the classroom. Research into how to teach English reading has emphasized the importance of five essential components as summarized by the National Reading Panel, or NRP (2000): phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension. Other research suggests spelling and assessment are additional important components of reading instruction (Coltheart and Prior, 2007; Geva, 2000). Furthermore, pre-service teachers in countries with substantial numbers of ELLs need to learn strategies that are effective for teaching reading to ELLs (August and Shanahan, 2006).

As reading in English may be taught differently in different countries, this article examines what pre-service general education teachers in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Singapore may be learning from their text books assigned for courses in reading instruction. These courses, and thus the textbooks, include both the theory and practice of reading, so pre-service teachers can build both a theoretical understanding of how reading skills develop and a practical knowledge of how to implement instructional activities that will promote their future students’ reading development. The article details the amount of inclusion of the NRP’s five components, plus spelling, assessment, and English as a second language (ESL), in 39 English reading textbooks for pre-service general education teachers. Page counts quantify how much each component was covered. Results showed that spelling and assessment are included most often, followed by phonics (decoding) and text comprehension, whereas fluency is the least likely to be included. Coverage of all five NRP components ranged from 5 percent to 59 percent of textbook content. Regarding content specific to second language learners, 74 percent of the textbooks included coverage, ranging from 0.2 percent to 74 percent of the textbook content, with most below 20 percent coverage. With the global increase of students learning English, this article highlights areas needing improvement in textbooks for classes that prepare pre-service general education teachers to teach reading to their students, including ELLs.

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《英语教材研究：内容、使用与出版》已由外研社于2021年9月出版，有意购买本书的读者可点击阅读原文直接购买。

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