203 / 2018-08-15 16:58:54

The application of CSE reading scale in textbook evaluation

China’s Standards of English; reading descriptors; grounded theory; textbook evaluation

全体主题 > 语言能力标准在教学和测试中的应用

This study explores how CSE reading subscale can be used in evaluating the reading tasks in English textbooks. By adopting grounded theory, 5 categories are extracted from CSE reading descriptors, which act as annotation framework in coding the reading tasks in representative English textbooks at the levels from CSE 3 to 7. Results show that in most of the textbooks, the proportion of representative topics and text types of reading passages have great correlation with those described in the scale. However, reading skills and reading aims in the tasks concentrate on a relatively small scope compared with the description in the reading scale. As to the dimension of language complexity, context analyzer is employed to generate detailed information in complementing the general description in the scale. This study is expected to offer insights for CSE reading scale revision, textbook design and evaluation.