An Evaluation of Teaching Grammar as Ability in the Integrative Textbooks for Chinese EFL High School Students

Abstract

Thi s paper aims to evaluate whether and to what extent the integrative textbooks for Chinese EFL learners in high schools refl ect the principles for teaching grammar as ability. Based on the principles proposed by Richards and Reppen [1] and relevant literature, six principles have been identified and employed to evaluate three most popular integrative textbooks for senior 1 students. The results show that Textbook C (published by Beijing Normal University Edition) performs the best in terms of teaching grammar as ability with a score of 15 (18 in total) while Textbook A (published by People’s Education Publishing House) and Textbook B (published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press) have just reached the borderline (i.e., 9). Although the editors of these three textbooks have attached importance to cultivating students’ grammar ability with the focus on text to a varying extent, it is suggested that teachers should also critically evaluate the integrative textbooks as not all the texts and tasks contained in these books are suffi cient and effective to facil itate cultivating students’ grammatical ability.