Abstract

In March 2014, the Ministry of Education issued Suggestions about Deepening Comprehensive Reform and Implementing the Task of Cultivating Virtues and Personalities and firstly put forward the Chinese special concept of key competences formally, which indicated that the development of students’ key competences would become one of the most important focuses in Chinese new education reform. From the perspective of the cultivation of key competences, this study tries to make an analysis of middle school English textbooks, Go for it!, in order to see whether the current textbook meets the training requirements of the new reform 

    From the four aspects of key competences in English subject (language ability, learning ability, thinking quality and cultural consciousness), this study has found that the cultivation of key competences is embodied in Go for it! to some degree, but there are also many deficiencies. As far as the language ability is concerned, Go for it! has professional training on the knowledge and skills of English language, but it ignores the cultivation of students' ability to understand and express language in social situations. In the aspect of learning ability, although Go for it! encourages students to combine theory and practice together consciously, it should also try to cultivate students' ability to use effective strategies and methods. In thinking quality, it cultivates students' divergent thinking and general thinking ability well, but it is lack of the cultivation of innovation ability and analysis ability. Finally, in terms of cultural character, although Go for it! has made great efforts to train the student's ability of cross culture communication, it has the insufficiency in the cultural dissemination as well as students’ multicultural values training. All deficiencies will affect the improvement of students' key competences. 

Keywords: Go for it!; key competences; language ability; learning ability; thinking ability; culture character

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

1.-Introduction-1

2.-What is Key Competences-2

2.1 Key Competences Abroad-2

2.2 Key Competences at Home and in China’s English education-4

3.-A Brief Introduction to Go for it!-6

4.-Analysis of Go for it! based on Key Competences-7

4.1 Language Ability-7

4.2 Learning Ability-7

4.3 Thinking Ability-9

4.4 Culture Character-11

5.-Conclusion-13

References-14