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A Comparative Analysis of Critical Thinking Cultivation in the Reading Sections of Old and New Senior High School English Textbooks Published by People’s Education Press

Author(s)

Han Xu, Hongqing Qin*

Affiliation(s)

School of Foreign Languages, Liaocheng University, Liaocheng, Shandong, China *Corresponding Author

Abstract

Based on the Curriculum Standard for Senior High School English (2017 Edition, Revised 2025) and the critical thinking skills analytical framework proposed by Chen Zehang, Zou Min, and Su Xiaoli, this study conducts a comparative analysis of critical thinking in the reading sections of the old and new senior high school English textbooks published by People’s Education Press. The research adopts textual analysis for quantitative and data analysis. The findings reveal that compared with the old textbooks, the new textbooks pay more attention to the cultivation of critical thinking in the reading sections, especially making remarkable progress in the design of reasoning and evaluation tasks. Although the new textbooks have achieved breakthroughs in cultivating critical thinking, it is still necessary to further improve students’ critical thinking and comprehensive literacy by optimizing task structure, strengthening grade cohesion, and deepening the design of evaluation tasks.

Keywords

High School English Textbooks; Textbook Comparison; English Language Teaching Materials; Textual Analysis

References

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