英语专业不同年级综合英语教程难易度对比研究A Contrastive Analysis of the Difficulty Levels of English Integrated Courses for English Majors across Grades开题报告

1. 研究目的与意义（文献综述包含参考文献）

1.introduction1.1 research backgroundwith the quick progressing of globalization, english plays a signigicant role in various fields. in order to make sure english majors have the language ability to match the actual needs, many rectifications have been made since the early 2000s.vandeweerd input hypothesisthe input of foreign language should be i 1, which means students are exposed to the language materials slightly more than the current language. inspired by krashen, textbook researchers increasingly emphasize that contents in textbooks are gradient in accordance with step-by-step principles.however, as textbooks widely used in higher education for english majors, theres still no measurement of text difficulty for an integrated english course between book1 and book2. therefore, the research is committed to comparing the difficulty of these four books. the result of comparison is hopeful to help the arrangement of textbook content so that the freshmen english majors can lay a solid foundation step by step and scientifically.additionally, with the development of science, computer and language learning research are more and more closely combined. for this reason, more and more attention has been paid to the use of computers and information technologies in second langauage acquisition research with the purpose of greatly improving the quality and efficiency of second language teaching and learning. in recent years, corpus has been used a lot in the area of linguisitics as well as education, but little in the field of textbook arrangement. therefore, the research uses r software to make a comparative analysis of an integrated english course between book1 and book2.1.3 research purposesaccording to krashens input hypothesis we have mentioned before, the research is aimed at demonstrating whether the main textbooks for english majors at the basic level obey the learning regularity and step-by-step principle. by analyzing the data from difficulty and gradient perspectives, this study is hoped to point out some problems about the selection and arrangement of materials in these four textbooks, and so make a contribution to further research for textbook designers.second, the difficulty of teaching materials is one of the important indicators for the evaluation of teaching materials, and the gradient comparison of the difficulty of teaching materials is also one of the bases for evaluating the quality of teaching materials (kong, 2015). this study starts with the set of textbooks in the comprehensive curriculum of english majors acorss grades, and the ultimate purpose is to help english majors in lower gradesto lay a good foundation, and then promote the educational effect of english majors inchinese universities.1.4 organization of the researchthe whole thesis is divided into five chapters. chapter one introduces the basic background of this research, and outlines the need, aims and organization of the study. the review of some theories relevant to the study and the critical summary of previous studies are presented in chapter two. chapter three illustrates research questions, the experimental design, implementation and data analysis. chapter four presents the results and discussion. chapter five illustrates the major findings, implications and limitations of the study, and provides some suggestions for future research.2. literature reviewthis segment will be devided into three parts which include english textbookevaluation, text difficulty as well as the strengths and limitations of previous studies.2.1 english textbook evaluation at home and abroadthe history of the evaluation of english textbooks can be traced back to the 1960s, whenthe evaluation mainly involved listening and speaking teaching method and traditional grammar translation method. the evaluation of english textbooks in the 1980s has attracted the attention of many foreign scholars.2.1.1the theoretical basis of textbook evaluation abroadbreen and candlin (1987) put forward that the evaluation of textbooks should combine the methods of students' learning, skills training and classroom learning and they expand the evaluators from teachers to students. grant (1987) divided textbook evaluation into initial evaluation, detailed evaluation and in-use evaluation. he adopts the method of questionnaire survey and closely links with teaching to evaluate the teaching materials. hutchinson (1987) put forward the comparative method of textbook evaluation, that is, the evaluation method of mutual comparison between subjective needs analysis and objective analysis. first, the evaluator listed the purpose and demand for the textbook, and then listed the characteristics of the selected textbook. after that, the evaluator should make the evaluation by comparing the two results. as a matter of fact, this method emphasizes the content and difficulty of the textbook should be in line with the development requirements of learners.sheldon (1988) begins the overall impression evaluation and qualitative evaluation of the textbook. his qualitative evaluation involves theoretical, feasible and educational aspects. mcdonough and shaw's (2003) teaching evaluation was quite influential. the evaluation model proposed by mcdonough and shaw included two stages--external evaluation and internal evaluation, which aroused people's attention to the arrangement of teaching materials. according to mcdonough and shaw, the purpose of the evaluation is to check the internal cohension and organization of the language items.with the progress of computer technology and the emergence of teaching material corpus, database and analysis software, teaching material evaluation has gradually formed the research of vocabulary, word density, sentence length, reading difficulty analysis and so on. this method of combining quantitative evaluation with traditional qualitative evaluation has gradually become a new trend.2.1.2 studies on english textbook evaluation in chinaearly chinese scholars' evaluation of english textbooks was greatly influenced by thesyllabus. zhou (1996) believes that textbooks should reflect the latest achievements of teaching theory research and meet the needs of learners. however, scholars gradually found that it was too rigid to follow the syllabus completely and there were few constructive suggestions. since then, more and more chinese scholars have introduced the abroad research on the evaluation of textbooks into the evaluation of chinese english textbooks. for example, cheng xiaotang used the mcdonough and shaws evaluation model for reference to classify teaching material evaluation methods in his book analysis and design of english teaching materials.with the increase of the types of english textbooks in chinese colleges and universities,the amount of comparative analysis and evaluation of textbooks also gradually increased. yang (2018) conducted a comparative study of the comprehensive course and the new english course from multiple perspectives, such as theme and genre. the horizontal comparison between these different textbooks and the vertical comparison between different editions are more based on qualitative analysis of textbook, which easily leads to the vague and unconvincing results. in recent years, although statistical data has received much attention in china, it is seldom used in the evaluation of english textbooks.2.2 text difficultywhen scholars appealed to consider text-reader factor to explore appropriate text, researchers began to focus on the notion of text difficulty (mesmer average syllables per 100 words.however, the readability of the text difficulty alone is one-sided. the combination of qualitative research and quantitative research is more likely to be scientific.graves (2003) points out that the determination of the text difficulty requires a comprehensive "text-intrinsic factors" affecting the text difficulty and a "reader-related factors" for contacting the text. in addition, the definition of text complexity in the american language curriculum standard（common core state standards） is clearer, which is divided into three factors: reader factor, readability measurement, and qualitative analysis of the text.in conclusion, after a hundred years of research, the determination of text complexity is increasingly mature and is frequently used in the field of educational research. there are also more and more scholars in china to analyze the text complexity of various textbooks, but these liberal arts subjects like english still focus more on qualitative analysis.therefore, there is still great room for the quantitative evaluation of text complexity in english textbooks.2.3 strengths and limitations at present, the corpus has not only become one of the important means of linguistics research, but also been applied by more and more people in language teaching.studying corpus retrieval software for writing vocabulary selection in college english textbooks and how to use software to analyze college english textbooks can help us to better evaluate the textbook and serve for better textbook writing. in addition, statistics are more intuitive as research results, more likely to convince readers and more scientific than qualitative evaluation.however, there is no denying that studies on . based on the definition of american curriculum standards and text difficulty, this study only focuses on some aspects of text readability measurement. although the research have considered the learners, but only limited to the age of learners, while their motivation, knowledge and experience can not be considered during the study process. therefore, there are still a lot of room for development on the basis of this study.referencesbetts, e. a. (1949). readibility: its application to the elementary school. journal of education research, 42,439-59.dechant, e. v. smith, h. p. (1977). psychology in teaching reading. new jersey: prenticehall, inc.fry, e. (1968). a readibility formula that saves time. journal of reading, 11 (7), 513-578.fry, e. (2002). readibility versus leveling. the reading teacher, 56 (3).grant, n. (1987). making the most of your textbook. new york: longman group uk limited press.hutchinson, t. (1987). english for special purpose:a learning centered approach.shanghai: shanghai foreign language education press.krashen, s. (1982).principles and practice in second language learning and acquisition. oxford: pergamon.mcdonough, j. shaw, c. (2003). materials and methods in elt. oxford: blackwellpublishers.sheldon, l. e. (1988). evaluation elt textbook and materials. elt journal, 42 (4), 237-246.vandeweerd, n. keijzer, m. (2018). j ai iimpression que: lexical bundles in the dialogues of beginners french textbooks. canadian journal of applied lingusitics, 21 (2), 80-101.华维芬(2014)，两套综合英语教材问卷调查结果与分析《现代大学英语：精读》和《综合教程》的分析比较，《外语研究》，4：53-57。

孔凡哲、张怡（2015），教科书研究方法与质量保障研究，长春:东北师范大学出版社。

李晓静（2021），课程思政视域下大学综合英语课程的教学路径探索与实践，语言与文化论坛(02):70-81。

2. 研究的基本内容、问题解决措施及方案

1. Research questionsThe thesis is aimed at investigating the selection and arrangement of the materials in the comprehensive English textbooks by comparing and analyzing the difficulty of the four books. It will find the answers to the following research questions:1) Does the lexical readability in textbooks increase with grade increase？2) Does the lexical density in textbooks increase with grade increase？3) Does the lexcial sophistication in textbooks increase with grade increase？2. Research Methods The observation subject in this study is the first and second grade textbooks English majors-- An Integrated English Course between book1 and book2. The measurement of text difficulty will be conducted by the measurements of lexical readability, lexical density and lexical sophistication.2.1 The measurement of lexical readabilityLexical readability will be measured by Flesch test formula designed by Rudolf Flesch, which is mainly used to meausre the difficulty of American contemporary English teaching materials.2.2 The measurement of lexical density and lexical sophisticationLexical Density and lexical sophistication are calculated by R software. The package called KoRpus is of multitydinous functions to analyze texts.2.3 t testThe obtained samples will be tested by t test to yield associations between the samples.