Investigation on the Redeveloping Strategies of English Textbooks Employed by Senior High School Teachers in Qiannan

【Abstract】This paper chose 151 English teacher in Qiannan， it mainly aims to investigate the redeveloping strategies used by the English teachers.The research results showed that the frequency of the English teachers overall strategy use was at the high use level.The mean frequency scores of the English teachers redeveloping strategy use in adding， modifying， replacing and rearrangement categories， were at the high use level， but in deleting category， was at the medium level.The research results also indicated that the redeveloping strategies employed by the English teachers had significant differences with the four variables， i.e.regions of school， grades difference， levels of education and years of teaching. According to the research results， the researcher put forward some suggestions for the relevant departments and the English teachers.

【Key words】English textbook； English teacher； redeveloping strategies； investigation

【作者簡介】李双苗（1992.09- ），女，仡佬族，贵州石阡人，硕士，黔南民族医学高等专科学校，从事英语教学及研究方向。

1. Introduction

The textbook is the most important curriculum resource of English teaching. The teacher needs to be an ‘ideal person and a ‘rational person， there is a potential need for ‘ideal books and ‘rational books， （Allwright， 1980）.The teachers should redevelop the textbook to improve as well the students English proficiency as the teaching efficiency.

2. Research Methodology

2.1 Research Questions

（1） What is the frequency of the redeveloping strategies employed by the English teachers at different levels， i.e.Overall， category？

（2） Do the redeveloping strategies employed by the English teachers vary significantly in terms of their regions of schools， grades difference， levels of education， and years of teaching？ If they do， what are the main patterns of variation？

（3） Why do the English teachers adopt certain redeveloping strategies frequently and infrequently？

2.2 Participants

151 English teachers of the senior high schools in Qiannan， of 18 English teachers for the semi-structured interviews.

2.3 Instruments

The questionnaire is adapted from Dingjie （2009） and the author developes the questionnaire with 5-point rating scale.Reliability of the research instruments has been examined by SPSS16.0.The data shows that the Cronbachs alpha was 0.94.The semi-interview is used to collect the qualitative data.

2.4 Data analysis

Descriptive statistic has been used to answer the first question， T-test and ANOVA for the second question， and semi-structured interviewers for third question.

3. Results

3.1 Frequency of teachersredeveloping strategies use at different levels

The mean frequency scores are used to analyze the studentsfrequency of redeveloping strategy use at the overall， category levels.Figure 1 demonstrates the applied measure.

Table 1 shows that the holistic mean frequency score of the redeveloping strategy use reported by 151 English teachers.

Table 2 demonstrates the frequency of the English teachers redeveloping strategy use in the five categories.

*Note： ASC： Adding Strategy Category；

DSC： Deleting Strategy Category；

MSC： Modifying Strategy Category；

RSC： Replacing Strategy Category；

ReSC： Rearrangement Strategy Category

3.2 Variations in Frequency of English Teachers Strategy Use

3.2.1 Variations in Frequency of English Teachers Overall Redeveloping Strategy Use

In table 3， the English teachers overall redeveloping strategy use does not vary by the grades difference.Theres no significantly different in the overall redeveloping strategy use.

The results of the ANOVA shows that the English teachers overall redeveloping strategy use varies significantly according to the regions of schools （P<.05）.According to this table the English teachers who work in city reported employing redeveloping strategies significantly more frequently than those who in countryside.

The results of the ANOVA and the Post hoc Scheffe tests show that the English teachersredeveloping strategy use varies significantly according to their levels of education（P<.05）.The frequency is ：AD>BD（the mean frequency scores： 4.12>3.50）.Similarly， MD>BD（the mean frequency scores：3.99>3.50）.Significant variation does not exist between the English teachers who have the AD and MD.

According to the results in the Table 4.9， the ET and the NT vary significantly （P<.05） and the ET reports employing redeveloping strategies more than the NT（mean frequency scores：3.81>3.54）. The ET and the GT also vary significantly （P<.05） and the ET reports employing redeveloping strategies more than the GT（mean frequency scores：3.81>3.27）

Novice Teachers（NT）： Years of Teaching ≤3

Growing Teachers（GT）： 3

Experienced Teachers（ET） ： Years of Teaching>5

3.2.2 Variations in Frequency of English Teachers Redeveloping Strategy Use in Categories

3.2.2.1 According to Regions of School.

The results of the ANOVA reveal that the frequency of English teachers redeveloping strategy use in the Deleting Strategy Category and Rearrangement Strategy Category does not vary significantly.However， the English teachers use of redeveloping strategies in Adding Strategy Category， Modifying Strategy Category， and Replacing Strategy Category are found to vary significantly， with the English teachers from city reporting employing the redeveloping strategies significantly more frequently than those who in countryside.

3.2.2.2 According to Grades Difference.

The results of the ANOVA in Table 5 show that the English teachers redeveloping strategy use varies significantly in the all five categories except Deleting Strategy Category and Modifying Strategy Category.In Adding Strategy Category， the frequency of English teachers who report employing redeveloping strategies significantly as follows： grade1> grade 2> grade 3（the mean frequency scores 4.15>3.79>3.76）.Replacing Strategy Category is the same with Adding Strategy Category， but with the different mean frequency scores of 4.08， 3.73， 3.60 respectively. About the Rearrangement Strategy Category， the frequency of English teachers who report employing redeveloping strategies significantly as follows：grade1> grade 3> grade 2（the mean frequency scores 3.74>3.46>3.40）.

3.2.2.3 According to Levels of Education.

Table 6 shows that the English teachers redeveloping strategy use varies significantly in the AS Category， MS Category and RS Category. Firstly， in AS Category， the English teachers who have AD report employing redeveloping strategies significantly more frequently than those who have BD （the frequency mean scores are： 4.79>3.73）， and those who have MD report significantly more frequently than those who have BD （the frequency mean scores are： 4.24>3.73）.Secondly， the result in MS Category is the same with AS Category （AD>BD， the frequency mean scores are： 4.40>3.78；MD>BD， the frequency mean scores are： 4.33>3.78）.Thirdly， in the RS Category， the English teachers who have AD report employing redeveloping strategies significantly more frequently than those who have BD （the mean frequency scores are： 4.48>3.64）， and the English teachers who have MD report employing redeveloping strategies significantly more frequently than those who have BD （the mean frequency scores are： 4.26>3.64）.No significant variation is found between DS Category and ReS Category.

3.2.2.4 According to Years of Teaching.

In Table 7， significant variations were found in all the five categories except Deleting Strategy Category. Firstly， as the Adding Strategy Category， the NT reports significantly more frequent use of redeveloping strategies than those who are GT（mean frequency scores：3.85>3.35）. And the ET reported significantly more frequent use of redeveloping strategies than GT too（mean frequency scores：4.15> 3.35）. Similarly， the variation patterns of the Modifying Strategy Category are the same with Adding Strategy Category（mean frequency scores：3.75>3.40）.Thirdly， as the Replacing Strategy Category， the ET reports significantly more frequent use of redeveloping strategies than GT（mean frequency scores：4.15>3.35）.And then， as the Rearrangement Strategy Category， the ET reports significantly more frequent use of redeveloping strategies than the NT（mean frequency scores：3.74>3.35）.And the ET reports significantly more frequent use of redeveloping strategies than the GT（mean frequency scores：3.74>3.28）.

According to Table 8 the English teachers uses of redeveloping strategies in the MS Category vary significantly according to their regions of school， levels of education and years of teaching. The English teachers uses of redeveloping strategies in the ReS Category vary significantly according to their regions of school， what grades they teach and their years of teaching.

Table 8 Summary of Variations in Frequency of Redeveloping Strategy Use in Five Categories According to the Four Variables

4. Conclusions

4.1 Conclusions of the Research Findings

4.1.1 Findings in Relation to Research Question One

The research findings reveal that the holistic frequency mean scores reported by the 151 English teachers are 3.61.It indicates that the frequency of the English teachers overall strategy use is at high use level. The same with the strategies use in Adding， Modifying， Replacing and Rearrangement Strategy Categories.The Deleting Strategy Category is at the medium level.

4.1.2 Findings in Relation to Research Question Two

Regions of Schools

At the overall level， the results show that the English teachers overall redeveloping strategy use varies significantly according to the regions of schools.By the multiple comparisons of the Post hoc Scheffe tests， the significant variations are found between the teachers who work in city and countryside.

At the category level， the results reveal that the frequency of English teachers redeveloping strategy use in Deleting Strategy Category and Rearrangement Strategy Category do not vary significantly， that is to say， the English teacher who work in city and in countryside are not significantly different. However， the English teachers use of redeveloping strategies in Adding Strategy Category， Modifying Strategy Category and Replacing Strategy Category are found to vary significantly， with the English teachers who work in city reported employing the redeveloping strategies more frequently than those who work in countryside.

Grades Difference

At the overall level， there is no significance according to the grades difference.At the category level， the English teachers redeveloping strategy use varies significantly in all the five categories except Deleting Strategy Category and Modifying Strategy Category according. In Adding Strategy Category and Replacing Strategy Category， the frequency situation is：English teachers who teach grade 1 >those who teach grade 2>those who teach grade 3.In Rearrangement Strategy Category， the the frequency situation is：English teachers who teach grade 1> those who teach grade 3>those who teach grade 2.

Levels of Education

Regarding the variations of the English teachers overall redeveloping strategy use， the ANOVA results reveal two significant variation patterns： ‘AD> BD and ‘MD> BD .It indicates that the English teachers who have AD and MD report employing such redeveloping strategies more frequently than those who have BD.

At the category level， no significant variation patterns are discovered in Deleting Strategy Category and Rearrangement Strategy Category but are shown in the Adding Strategy Category， Modifying Strategy Category and Rearrangement Strategy Category.

Years of Teaching

According to the results of ANOVA， the English teachers overall strategy use varies significantly in this variable， with the experienced teachers reported employing redeveloping strategies more frequently than the novice teachers and the growing teachers.

At the category level， the results reveal that the frequency of English teachers redeveloping strategy use in the five categories does vary significantly， except the Deleting Strategy Category， which means， the novice， growing and experienced teachers are not significantly different with each other during employing the deleting strategies.

Two variation patterns are found in the rest four categories： ‘NT>GT and ‘ET>GT.The two patterns coexist in Adding Strategy Category， Modifying Strategy Category and the Rearrangement Strategy Category， which means that the novice and experienced teachers report employing such redeveloping strategies more frequently than the growing teachers.Then the experienced teachers report employing such redeveloping strategies more frequently than the growing teachers in Replacing Strategy Category.

4.1.3 Findings in Relation to Research Question Three

Reasons for using certain strategies frequently

1）Preparing for new lesson

2）Promoting attention

3）Enhancing comprehension

4）Increasing teaching efficiency

5）Overcoming learning anxiety

6）Cultivating interests

7）Making the learning easier

Reasons for using certain strategies infrequently

1）Being unnecessary

2）Wasting time

3）Having little help for teaching

4）Being unaware of certain strategies

5）Influencing progress

6）Lacking of hardware resources

7）Different levels of learning efficiency

4.2 Implications

4.2.1 The government should release more and better policies for high-level talents， cultivate the cooperation with advanced cities and provide more opportunities for the teachers.

4.2.2 Education departments should pay more attention to cultivate the English teachers awareness of redevelopment of textbooks， create more curriculum resource to satisfy the needs of local English education and encourage educators to integrate relevant teaching materials.

4.2.3 The schools in Qiannan should improve the cooperation with each other.

4.2.4 The English teaching and research group in each school should carry out relevant meetings at regular intervals to find out the problems on English teaching and analyze these problems on purpose.

References：

[1]Allwright.R.L.（1980）.What do we want teaching materials for ？ ELT Journal，36（2），15-18.

[2]丁潔.中学英语教师对教材“二次开发”现状的调查研究[D].华东师范大学，2009.