New Trend College English - Comprehensive Textbook (Third Edition)

Author: Ji Rongqin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-12-01
Features: New Trends in College English is a newly developed series of textbooks designed in accordance with the Teaching Requirements for College English Courses (Trial Version) issued by the Higher Education Department of the Ministry of Education (hereinafter referred to as Teaching Requirements), the Basic Teaching Requirements for English Courses in Higher Vocational and Technical Education (Trial Version) (hereinafter referred to as Basic Requirements), and the current practical teaching realities of college English in China. This innovative series of textbooks is specifically designed for use in regular universities and higher vocational and technical colleges across the country. It strictly adheres to the objectives of the new syllabus while also incorporating the latest requirements of the country for college English teaching, emphasizing practical English instruction. It particularly highlights the training and development of communicative skills, which have long been neglected in college English teaching. This serves as an opportunity to further update concepts, requirements, content, and systems in the textbook design, striving for both practicality and innovation. New Trends in College English covers the practical English language knowledge and communicative skills required, with a strong emphasis on the principle of "practicality first."
I. Overall Features of New Trends in College English
New Trends in College English follows the philosophy of student-centered development, reflecting the guiding principles of new college English teaching, which emphasize the cultivation of students' English listening and speaking skills, as well as their comprehensive application of reading, writing, and translation. It advocates for teaching materials that are based on students' learning interests, life experiences, and cognitive levels, encouraging experience, practice, participation, collaboration, and communication to develop students' comprehensive language proficiency. New Trends in College English particularly strengthens practical English instruction, focusing on the training and development of students' listening, speaking, and communicative skills. While laying a solid foundation in English language skills, it places greater emphasis on cultivating students' applied language abilities, especially their ability to use English for international communication. While developing students' reading skills, it also strengthens the integrated training of listening, speaking, writing, and translation, with a particular focus on the training and development of practical oral and written expression skills.
II. Framework Structure of New Trends in College English
New Trends in College English is divided into four levels, with Level (Preparatory Level) being the introductory level. The four levels correspond to Levels 1–4 of the College English Teaching Syllabus and are designed for use in the foundational stage of college English teaching. The four textbooks in New Trends in College English are both independent and interconnected, forming a cohesive system. Each level of the textbook is divided vertically into the Comprehensive Textbook for students and the Listening and Speaking Textbook for students, as well as the Teacher's Book for teachers. New Trends in College English is accompanied by textbooks, audio cassettes, and CDs to meet the needs of teachers in teaching and research.
III. Relationship Between the Comprehensive Textbook and the Listening and Speaking Textbook
The Comprehensive Textbook and the Listening and Speaking Textbook of New Trends in College English serve as the main teaching materials for the course. Each Comprehensive Textbook contains eight units, organized around thematic content. However, the genres of the two texts in each unit may not be identical, emphasizing the ideological depth, modernity, interest, informativeness, operability, and linguistic norms, practicality, and stylistic diversity of the selected materials. The thematic framework facilitates flexible use in thematic teaching, allowing teachers to adjust the content of each unit's sections for in-class and extracurricular activities. Classroom training primarily focuses on listening and speaking integration, emphasizing the improvement of these skills. Each unit's theme is of interest to students, composed of two texts on the same subject. Text A is intensive reading material, accompanied by exercises such as reading comprehension, vocabulary, structure, and translation; Text B is extensive reading material. This design aims to integrate intensive and extensive reading, allowing the training and development of listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translation skills to revolve around the intensive reading text, with a focus on cultivating comprehensive language application skills. The Comprehensive Textbook provides multiple practice opportunities in vocabulary, grammar, structure, translation, and reading. Through this learning process, students not only familiarize themselves with thematic content but also improve their language knowledge and skills simultaneously. Additionally, the Comprehensive Textbook includes writing practice for practical English documents in each unit, training students in the skills of reading and writing commonly used documents in international communication, further highlighting the "practicality first" principle of this series. The selected examples of practical documents reflect the actual needs of Chinese college students. They involve filling out forms and writing simulated practical documents. The key feature of practical documents is their relatively fixed format and style, which cannot be altered arbitrarily. Therefore, in teaching, special attention should be paid to learning and mastering the relevant formats, styles, and common vocabulary and sentence structures of practical documents. Since practical documents can only be "simulated" and not "freely created or modified," students must first learn to "read" practical documents before they can "write" them. The New Trends in College English (Comprehensive Textbook) provides various formats and examples of practical documents to facilitate students' mastery. The Listening and Speaking Textbook of New Trends in College English allows for a teaching time of 4 class periods per unit, with classroom organization primarily focused on small group activities to ensure that every student has the opportunity to speak. The listening materials in the Listening and Speaking Textbook are authentic and natural, with accompanying audio cassettes and CDs offering excellent pronunciation and intonation. The Listening and Speaking Textbook introduces learning through listening and aims for speaking proficiency. Through a variety of listening, reading aloud, and communicative exercises that gradually increase in difficulty and specificity, students' listening and speaking skills are systematically improved. New Trends in College English uses the Comprehensive Textbook and the Listening and Speaking Textbook as its main framework, and in each level, it provides appropriate and up-to-date tests aligned with the new College English Test, aiming to cultivate and assess students' comprehensive language application skills. Teachers can arrange these tests according to teaching progress and students' learning needs.
IV. Writing Features of New Trends in College English
The writing of New Trends in College English emphasizes the cultivation of productive language skills. Previous textbooks often focused on receptive language skills, emphasizing the presentation and listing of language knowledge while neglecting practice, resulting in poor oral expression, writing ability, and practical English application skills among students. In contrast, this series of textbooks incorporates the cultivation of productive language skills in its unit design. New Trends in College English consistently emphasizes the leading role of output in the writing process, strengthening both oral and written output exercises, aiming to provide a new trend in textbooks to address issues such as "high scores but low ability," "silent English," and "time-consuming and low-efficiency" in college English teaching. The writing of New Trends in College English focuses on cultivating students' listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translation skills, ensuring they are integrated, interpenetrating, and fully mastered in each unit to improve their practical language application abilities. The textbook also pays great attention to cultivating students' correct learning strategies to enhance their learning efficiency and ability. It emphasizes a student-centered approach, with classroom activities designed to be engaging and diverse, greatly increasing students' interest in learning. The exercises are carefully designed to help students master and consolidate the content they have learned while developing good learning habits. New Trends in College English emphasizes the importance of language learning and cultural acquisition. Its selected materials are reasonable and appropriate, covering various aspects of economics, politics, science and technology, culture, and daily life in different countries. This allows students to not only grasp the language but also fully experience foreign cultures. The integration of language and culture in the book is natural and seamless, providing students with more authentic language contexts and stimulating their interest in learning the language.