Abstract
Environmental issue is one of the public concerns pertaining to human welfare. English language education is supposed to take its part to contribute to the sustainable development. In this study, a corpus comprising 12 series of English language textbooks used in Chinese universities (48 volumes/books) was constructed to examine the extent to which the textbooks cover the content of environmental education, and how these topics are presented. The large volume dataset was explored by corpus linguistic tools and the in-depth discourse analysis and findings were reported and discussed within the theoretical framework of critical discourse analysis. The results suggested that some key environmental semantic domains, such as “Green issues” (e.g., nature, environment, ecology), “Substances and materials” (e.g., pesticide, chemical, carbon dioxide), “Science and technology” (e.g., technologies, nuclear, biotechnology), “Farming & Horticulture” (e.g., farming, crop, agriculture), “Living creatures” (e.g., endangered species, animals, wildlife) were evident. Some topics within these domains such as sustainable environmentalism, energy efficiency and sufficiency were presented and discussed critically. The textbooks are expected to help learners develop knowledge, competencies and futuristic attitudes needed to meet the sustainability challenges in various contexts.
Plain language summary
This study built a corpus of 12 series of Chinese university English language textbooks (48 volumes/books) in order to investigate to what extent the textbooks encompass the content of environmental education, and how these topics are presented. These textbooks were approved by the Ministry of Education of China, and were distributed nationally and adopted widely by most Chinese universities. The study based on critical discourse analysis theoretical framework adopts corpus linguistics approach to explore the environmental sustainability education in these textbooks. The findings show that the textbooks as a whole include rich semantic domains relevant to environment education. The textbooks are expected to help learners develop knowledge, competencies and futuristic attitudes needed to meet the sustainability challenges in various contexts.
Keywords
Introduction
In 2017, the UNESCO published the “Education for Sustainable Development Goals,” in which the Global Education 2030 Agenda and 17 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 were proposed. To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), new skills and technology, values and attitudes of developing more sustainable societies are essential. Seen from this aspect, education is a means for achieving these SDGs. “Integrating ESD in curricula and textbooks” is one of the five strategies of implementing learning for the SDGs through Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) (UNESCO, 2017, p. 49). ESD has to be integrated in all curricula of formal education, ranging from preschool care and education to higher education. Mainstreaming ESD requires integrating sustainability topics into curricula and textbooks but also sustainability-related intended learning outcomes (ibid). The content of textbooks thus is expected to exert enormous influence on learners’ cognitive outcomes.
China’s higher education system had approximately 39 million students enrolled across 4,356 institutes in 2010, as reported by the Educational Statistics Yearbook of China (2011). This implies that China has the most significant number of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in higher education worldwide, whose language study is mainly based on textbooks (Y. Liu, 2017). Textbooks, thus, have huge impact on learners’ linguistic knowledge, values and attitudes.
A total of 12 series of English language textbooks (48 volumes) had been developed and published between 2010 and 2022. These textbooks were widely adopted by Chinese universities and distributed throughout the country, aiming to fulfill China’s English language education requirements. They received approval from the Ministry of Education (MoE) of the People’s Republic of China and were incorporated into the national development project in the Education sector—“The Twelfth Five-Year Plan.” According to UNESCO (2017), education must play a vital role in shaping a new vision of sustainable development worldwide. English language education is supposed to take its part to contribute to attaining the SDGs. However, whether these Chinese mainstream English textbooks include the themes of sustainable development remains unclear. The sustainability development consisting of 17 goals is a comprehensive concept. To narrow down the research scope, this study focuses on the topics relating to environmental education.
Literature Review
The critical role of language textbook was early identified by Dendrinos (1992) as “the basic medium of education” (p. 13), and its authority is considered “beyond criticism” (Luke et al., 1983). Due to this significance, an increasing number of studies into English language textbooks have been reported since the 1960s. The early studies mainly explored the criteria both for textbook evaluation and material development, and produced some checklists (e.g., Cunningsworth, 1995; Gray, 2010; Harwood, 2010; McDonough & Shaw, 1993; Newton & Newton, 2009; Tomlinson, 2003). While checklists can assist educators in determining whether materials are appropriate and effective, textbook analysis focuses on the specific content and the way of presentation (Tomlinson, 2012).
Language Textbook Studies Worldwide
Textbooks, which are usually authorized by government bodies, are considered official texts that frequently have either a hidden or apparent agenda for promoting or demoting certain ideologies and cultural values (Curdt-Christiansen, 2015). Thus, the studies of the representation (what textbooks contain) and the ideological underpinnings (how the topics are presented), have been accumulating in the literature, particularly studies on EFL textbooks. This is because English language textbooks play a crucial role in language education within Expanding Circle countries, where English is commonly learned as a foreign language, and the process of learning and teaching heavily relies on the materials provided in textbooks.
Lee (1999) conducted a historical discourse analysis on Korean textbooks, examining the ideological construction of culture within textbooks in different periods, ranging from pre-colonial to globalized periods. The findings indicated that the values and interests of dominant powers such as Japan and American were evident in the textbooks, while local Korean historical and cultural dimensions were either inaccurately depicted or excluded altogether.
Researchers from Singapore (Curdt-Christiansen, 2015; Gupta & Lee, 1990) have provided valuable insights into the use of English language textbooks in Singapore’s multicultural and multilingual context. Curdt-Christiansen’s (2015) study analyzed two sets of English language instructional materials used in Singaporean primary schools and revealed the absence of local children’s literate identities and the high profile of idealized models of Western middle-class children. The lack of representation of “self” in the textbooks hinders the provision of culturally relevant capital and necessary language for communication with the world.
Several studies, such as Hino (1988) and Yamanaka (2006), have been conducted in Japan to investigate the cultural content presented in textbooks. Matsuda’s (2002) investigation into the representation of English speakers in EFL textbooks was another influential study of national identity. She used “nationality” as a category to classify the types of people who were represented as English speakers in Japanese English textbooks.
Textbook Investigation in China
Language textbook study in China is still in its infancy, although China has the largest number of EFL learners (Y. Liu, 2017). The empirical studies into EFL textbooks in China mainly focused on linguistic components (e.g., Y. Liu et al., 2015; Zhang & Liu, 2015). Regarding to the investigation of cultural representation and ideological underpinnings, several attempts have been made by some academics. Y. B. Liu (2005a, 2005b) conducted three critical discourse analyses of a 12-volume series of Chinese language textbooks for primary school students. He translated the texts of these textbooks from Chinese to English, and analyzed them within the frame of critical discourse analysis and critical curriculum theory. Through analysis, some cultural values and beliefs, and proscience and technology were identified as dominating the textbooks.
Yuen (2011) examined the constellation of foreign cultures in Hong Kong’s secondary school EFL textbooks. The study discovered that foreign culture was presented in fragments and once again, Inner-circle countries’ cultures were prioritized in the textbook, while Asian, African, and other global cultures were marginalized.
You (2005) and Xiong (2012) analyzed two Chinese English language textbooks respectively, one is an English composition textbook for tertiary education, and the other is an English language textbook for secondary school. Xiong argued that the textbooks in question were sufficiently responsive to the ideological and cultural agenda of the state (Xiong, 2012).
A review of the literature, it is found that while the language textbook studies worldwide have explored language textbooks from many perspectives, however, the research on environmental education in EFL textbooks is rarely found. There is a paucity of research on environmental education in textbooks of other subjects or teaching systems. Some studies investigated the presentation of ESD in mathematics textbooks for primary students in Chile (Vásquez et al., 2021) and in Spanish geography textbooks (García-González et al, 2021). Other studies explored the web geographic information system in high school geography education in China (Li et al., 2022), and evaluated the usefulness of digital textbooks for sustainable development in Korean primary schools (Lim et al, 2022). English language education, an important part of ESD, is supposed to take its part to be in gear with the challenges and aspirations in the new century.
In order to examine the presentation of environmental education in mainstream university English language textbooks in China, this study employed a combination of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and corpus linguistics to evaluate these texts and answer the questions:
To what degree do the Chinese university English language textbooks include content of environmental education?
How are the topics presented?
Methodology
The analysis of textbook texts was conducted at two levels: the quantitative analysis at the first level is to study the characteristics of the whole texts and suggest the linguistic features needed to be examined further at qualitative level; the qualitative analysis was discourse analysis focusing on the texts related to those linguistic features. The mixed method offsets the weaknesses of both quantitative and qualitative research. Finally, text features and linguistic findings are interpreted and explained from a critical perspective (Fairclough, 1995) by connecting discourse and social context.
Data: University/College English Textbooks Corpus
A corpus named University/College English Textbook Corpus (CETC) was created using digital plain texts from 12 textbook series (1,064,568 running words). These textbook, developed and published between 2010 and 2022, were approved by China’s MoE, and included in China’s “The Twelfth Five-Year Plan” for the education sector. The CETC was used for corpus-based discourse analysis in this study. Textbooks’ information is shown in Table 1.
Twelve Series of English Language Textbooks.
Theoretical Framework
Critical discourse analysis theoretical framework (Fairclough, 1995) was adopted in the present study. Critical language awareness highlights that texts are created, and therefore can be deconstructed and analyzed. Examining the texts helps us become more aware of the choices made by the writer or speaker in constructing the text. These choices bring attention to what was included and silenced (Janks, 2000).
Studies relating “language” and “discourse” to “ideology” have become increasingly numerous (e.g., Fowler, 1991; Y. Liu et al., 2015; Y. Liu, Zhang, & May, 2022; Weninger, 2021). This is because language is a social activity, and any examination of language is inherently critical (Rogers & Wetzel, 2013) to explore the way how ideologies are built (Foucault, 1980). CDA bases its approach on Systemic Functional Grammar, and proposes three stages of analysis—from micro-to-macro, specifically text analysis, processing analysis and social analysis. The integration of CDA with corpus-assisted method in this study mainly worked at the first stage—the text analysis. Based on the finding of discourse analysis, the interpretation of the discursive practice and the socio-cultural practice were discussed.
Data Analysis
Fairclough’s CDA framework, which regards language use as a social practice influenced by and influencing social identities, relations, and knowledge systems, is applied in this study to analyze the data. The first stage involves examining linguistic and textual features. In the second stage, potential text interpretations are provided, and final stage involves discussing the relationship between social and cultural contexts.
Wmatrix (Rayson, 2003) as a corpus linguistics tool used in discourse analysis in the first stage is a valid means of studying the semantic fields in literature. The URL to the Wmatrix is https://ucrel-wmatrix4.lancaster.ac.uk/wmatrix4.html. Its popularity and credibility have been proved by a range of studies across various research domains (e.g., Afida, 2007; Balossi, 2014; Hu, 2015; Leech, 2008; Y. Liu, Zhang, & Yang, 2022; Potts & Baker, 2012; Walker, 2010). Wmatrix can help in demonstrating a comprehensive overview of the semantic fields or trends in textbooks. The ideological underpinnings of environmental education could be sorted out by analyzing some significantly overused or underused semantic fields in the quantitative analysis, and concordance examination of the constituents of these semantic fields in the qualitative analysis. That is the examination of the sentences and usage contexts representing the constituents of these semantic fields. If the whole text is needed, click the constituents, then the context can be displayed with the constituent words highlighted.
Findings and Discussions
Textbook texts were uploaded into Wmatrix 4, and processed automatically. The datasets were obtained from the semantic output. The ideologies or concepts of the textbook corpus were captured and ranked by LL values (log-likelihood). For 1 df, the p < .0001 indicates the critical value 15.13, giving 135 significant USAS (UCREL Semantic Analysis System) tags overused shown in the “Item” column, which correspond to each semantic fields displayed in the rightmost column. The top 30 overused semantic fields are shown in Table 2.
The Top 30 Key Semantic Domains in 12 Textbook Series.
From Table 2, it can be seen that the 28th semantic difference (LL value 180.60) suggests the overuse of the concept of “Green issues” in CETC. By clicking the leftmost column “List,” the constituents of the semantic domain “Green issues” were displayed. The high frequency members include: nature (189 times), environment (s)/environmental/environmentally/environmentalist(s)/(218 times), pollution/polluted (27 times); conservation/conservationist (16 times); ecology/ecosystem(s)/ecological (19 times), among others. This result can answer the question of what key concepts are most often selected within the domain of “Green issues.” Specifically, the above concepts related to environment are valued in the textbooks in question. However, the answer to what specific topics within this semantic domain were included and how they were presented are still unclear. An in-depth analysis is thus needed in the following stage.
The high frequency constituents of the semantic domain “Green issues” mainly appear in 32 texts across the textbook corpus. These 32 texts were selected and built a sub-corpus for further exploration. Given the limited length, the most significant 20 semantic domains were presented. The statistical information of the linguistic features is presented in Table 3, and the significance of dominant concepts is visible in Figure 1. The key semantic fields were analyzed in depth in order to address the second question. The larger the items present, the more significant the semantic domain is. Semantic cloud figure provides a visual representation of the level of the significance.
The Top 20 Key Semantic Domains of the Sub-Corpus “Green Issues.”
Key domain cloud for the sub-corpus “green issues.”
For 1 df, at the p < .0001 level, the critical value is 15.13, indicating 46 tags overused. The top 20 overused tags in this retrieval are shown in Table 3 and the Wmatrix visualization of the resulting key domain cloud is shown in Figure 1, in the profile larger items are more significant. The top significant semantic domains were explored in depth in order to see how the relevant topics are presented.
Key Semantic Domain of “Green Issues”
The most significant semantic field “Green issues” involves texts such as “Caring for Our Mother Earth,”“Achieving sustainable environmentalism,”“A green deal,”“Thomas L. Friedman-I came to Shangri-La,”“Protecting Our Natural Inheritance,” and “Man in the Realm of Nature.” They mainly discuss the relationship between man and environment and nature. The 12th key semantic field “Change” can be analyzed together because the texts of this data set “Climate shock” and “Ecotourism: the promise and perils” are also about the reciprocal impact they exert on each other and the changes they brought. The example as follows: Excerpt 1: From the text “Caring for our mother earth”: The biggest threat to
If the text is analyzed from a functional perspective, its purpose and intended audience would be seen more easily. Functional grammar (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004) demonstrated that there are three meta-functions: ideational, interpersonal and textual. The ideational meta-function, made up of experiential and logical metafunctions, involves the information or ideas represented in language. Consider the extract to see how these meta-functions are realized. It shows flow of ideas and grove of meanings around the theme of the issue of environment (pronouns are underlined and in Italic), the interpretation of processing analysis is as follows:
In excerpt 1, there are 28 pronouns with, surprisingly, 24 first person pronouns. The full text, from which the extraction is taken, consists of a multitude of clauses containing pronouns we, our and us. Most of the pronouns are subjects of these clauses or the concern of the sentences. Various interpretations have grown up around the subject notion and different functions are ascribed. Three broad definitions are summarized as follow: (1) That which is the concern of the message; (2) That of which something is being predicated (that is, on which rests the truth of the argument); (3) The doer of the action (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004, p. 55). In these clauses, it is reasonable to claim that most of the first person pronouns are the subject in clauses, as they represents the person with whom the message is concerned: we are the persons that the predication can be made based on; and we is represented as having performed the action of ignoring, abusing, being greedy and the problem. The roles of Theme, Subject, and Actor are combined in one element we. From the perspective of “Theme,” here we is “the point of departure for the message” (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004, p. 58), indicating the significance of we. The “Subject function” sees clause, as exchange, is a transaction between a speaker and listener where the Subject serves as a guarantee for the validity of the speaker’s statement. . The “Actor function” refers to Actor as the element responsible for performing the action (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004).
Through these functions, the writer expresses that it is we who have caused all the environment problems and we are the persons who have to suffer from the consequences our behavior brings to us. By employing these functions, the writer of the text wanted to point out, or warn the readers, that they are the cause of the ailing planet, and the victims, instead of the government or other groups. The readers would understand the text in the way it is intended, that they are responsible instead of blaming on others. The awareness of environmental protection thus is raised.
Key Semantic Domain of “Living Creatures: Animals, Birds, Etc.”
The semantic domain “Green issues” is about the relationship between man and environment and nature, similarly, the semantic field of “Living creatures: animals, birds, etc.” features the relationship between man and living creatures. Apart from some mentions of living creatures in sub-corpus, there are two texts concentrate on presenting both the positive and negative relationships between humans and animals. The word “frog” was mentioned 20 times in the text of “Frog story,” and the expressions “endangered species/animal(s)/wildlife” were used 95 times. Two excerpts are provided to see the different relationships.
Excerpt 2: From “Frog story”: I have a tree frog that has taken up residence in my studio. How odd, I thought, last November when I first noticed him sitting atop my sound-board over my computer. I figured that he would be more comfortable in the greenhouse. So I put him in the greenhouse. Back he came. And stayed. After a while I got quite used to the fact that as I would check my morning email and on-line news, he would be there with me surveying the world… Excerpt 3: From “Our disappearing wildlife”: …Some animals have disappeared altogether, destroyed by the advance of civilization… the tremendous expansion of modern civilization now threatens to upset this natural balance, putting unprecedented pressure on the survival of our wildlife. This imbalance can be traced to many causes. Most arise in the poor planning of man himself. With each increase in man’s population, the wilderness areas where the animals live get smaller. The use of pesticides to control injurious insects also harms wild birds and animals. Water pollution kills fish in our rivers, lakes, and oceans. Hunters have almost exterminated many of the larger animals like the bighorn sheep and the grizzly bear. And farmers destroy smaller animals like the prairie dog and the coyote… Overhunting an animal is an obvious form of extermination, but there are more subtle processes that often have the same fatal result. One of these is destruction of habitat. Beyond economics and human well-being, however, the rapid extinction of so many creatures on our planet raises profound ethical and moral questions. What sort of world will our children inherit? Do we want the future to be a place where pandas and gorillas only exist in captivity in zoos?
Excerpt 2 told a story about the harmonious coexistence of humans and tree frog. A healthy relationship between them is advocated. And in excerpt 2, the biodiversity is reduced when ecosystems are altered and habitats of animals and plants are destroyed because of human’s civilization. Expressions such as “
Key Semantic Domain of “Science and Technology in General”
The semantic domain of “Science and technology in general” ranks No. 3 (LL 368.50) in Table 3. The constituents of the semantic domain “Science and technology in general” such as technology/technologies/technological/technologically, scientists, science/sciences/scientific, biologists, geology, botany, biology, biotechnology etc. are mentioned due to the close relationship between environment protection and the technology advances. For example, “Fuel consumption and pollution might be reduced” is one of the characteristics promoted in the text “Intelligent Vehicles.” The semantic field of “Vehicles and transport on land” thus can be discussed together. The texts of this semantic field include: “Inventor of the future,”“The coming energy crisis,”“Silent spring,” and “A green deal.” The text “The coming energy crisis” elaborates the approach of energy crisis, and the calls for “new energy” technologies.
Excerpt 4: Some sentences or paragraphs relating to green technology are as follows (key words underlined): •The big trade-off question then is how these costs compare to the benefits of action, both because of lower carbon pollution and because of economic returns from investing in cleaner •…nuclear •How will we meet the sky-rocketing •China would use 50% less coal if it simply installed today’s energy-efficient technologies. •…safe and environmentally acceptable energy sources like wind, solar and perhaps nuclear. This means solving the real problems involved with storing and distributing power…… wind converts rotary force into •…buying us the time to bring solar power, hydrogen fuel cells and other futuristic technologies on line.
The texts represented by these excerpts instilled in learners the need for new and innovative technologies and showed the way how science and technology can encourage and promote sustainable development, and help humans solve the problem of green issues. Especially the great changes technology brought to the use of natural resources, such as wind, hydrogen and solar power. They helped learners know about the respective advantages and disadvantages of renewable and non-renewable energy resources such as their environmental impacts, nuclear energy safety, and health issues. The textbook texts thus advocate the concepts of “environmentally acceptable energy sources” and “futuristic technologies.”
At the same time, some texts advised shift away from environmentally dead-end technologies and emphasized an eco-social understanding. Some texts conveyed a concept of “all big changes come from little ones” by suggesting some socio-technical strategies to help achieve energy efficiency and sufficiency. Taking some expressions for example: Excerpt 5: Some expressions relating to green lifestyles. •Turn off the clocks on your microwaves, they use as much power as if you were cooking something. Turn off all your standbys. Replace your light bulbs… •A low-energy light bulb library has been started…”10 most effective ways to reduce CO2,” which includes home insulation, composting, solar panels, fewer trips to the supermarket and, most importantly for some and the hardest for others, cutting down on trips by plane.
The texts containing these excerpts may have some influence on learners in developing a sustainable way of living and working out more sustainability practices and principles.
Key Semantic Domain of “Farming and Horticulture”
The semantic field “Farming and Horticulture” in Table 3 is significant because there are some texts proposed new perspectives for future agriculture. Two texts, “Farming for the Future” and “Could Vertical Farming Be the Future,” discussed some methods to tackle the problem that more people face poverty and hunger and more of the earth’s resources are ruined.
Excerpt 6: Some sentences or paragraphs relating to the concept of “Farming for the future” •The ideal agricultural system should be •First of all, farmers everywhere need to develop methods that are •If the soil were treated better, farmers would not need to use chemical fertilizers. They could use •To save water, they could plant more Excerpt 7: Some extracts from the concept of “Could Vertical Farming Be the Future” •Vertical farms, where staple crops could be grown in environmentally-friendly skyscrapers, exist today only in futuristic designs and on optimistic Web sites. Despite concerns over sky-high costs, however, an environmental health expert in New York is convinced the world has the know-how to make the concept a reality—and the imperative to do so quickly. •“The reason why we need vertical farming is that horizontal farming is failing,” he said. “If current practices don’t change by mid-century,” he points out, “an area bigger than Brazil would need to become farmland just to keep pace with the demand.” •Despommier argues that the price of crop failure is growing ever steeper as the global population mushrooms. “The world,” he said, “is running out of resources faster than what it can replace.”
The extracts from “Farming for the future” provided some practical approach to sustainable farming in the future. The text called for big changes in how they think about agriculture, food, and our planet, including the change from single crop farming to a mixed crop system; the change from chemical fertilizers to natural animal and vegetable products; the change from toxic chemical insecticides to biological methods of controlling insects and disease. The text also advised some methods of saving energy and reducing the need for forests. Unlike the text of “Farming for the future” providing practical methods for future farming, the text “Could vertical farming be the future” gave us some conceptual and promising design for farming in the future.
Key Semantic Domains of “Substances and Materials”
The semantic domains of “Substances and materials generally” (LL 223.26) and “Substances and materials_gas” (LL 119.30) in Table 3 can be examined together because “Substances and materials_gas” is the sub-category of “Substances and materials generally.” The constituents of these semantic domains include: chemical/chemicals (33 times), fuel/fuels (20 times), material/materials (20 times), pollutant/pollutants (5 times), air (25 times), gas/gases (15 times), carbon dioxide (10 times), and ozone (5 times). These words or expressions mainly appear in the texts such as: “Excerpts from Silent Spring,”“Climate shock,”“When being green raises the heat,”“China to reward localities for improving air quality,”“Achieving sustainable environmentalism,” among others. Excerpts are provided to glance at the semantic flows in these texts.
Excerpt 8: Paragraphs from the text of “Excerpts from Silent Spring” •…The most alarming of all man’s assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible… chemicals sprayed on croplands or forests or gardens lie long in the soil, entering into living organisms, passing from one to another in a chain of poisoning and death. •Or they pass mysteriously by underground streams until they emerge and, through the magical power of air and sunlight, combine into new forms that kill vegetation, sicken cattle, and work unknown harm on those who drink from once pure wells. As Albert Schweitzer has said, “Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.” •Since the mid-1940s over 200 basic chemicals have been created for use in killing insects, weeds, rodents, and other organisms described nowadays as “pests”;…The whole process of spraying seems caught up ill an endless spiral. Along with the possibility of the extinction of mankind by nuclear war, the central problem of our age has therefore become the contamination of man’s total environment with such substances of incredible potential for harm — substances that accumulate in the tissues of plants and animals and even penetrate the germ cells to shatter or alter the very material of heredity upon which the shape of the future depends.
The environmental science book, Silent Spring, was published in 1962 by Rachel Carson. She showed her great concerns about the detrimental effects of the pesticides on the environment. The book received around support, and the scientific chapters of the book were reviewed by scientists. The book has received so widespread attention and raised people’s awareness of environment protection around the world to different levels that two series of textbooks, CE and NCE-SFLEP included excerpts from this book. The texts helped learners realize the importance of air and water quality, and create a holistic understanding of the causes, effects and consequences of water pollution, as well as the understanding of life and health.
Excerpt 9: Extracts from the text of “China to reward localities for improving air quality” •Chinese officials announced Thursday that they were offering a total of 10 billion renminbi, or $1.65 billion, this year to cities and regions that make “significant progress” in air pollution control, according to a report by Xinhua, the state-run news agency. •“Control of PM2.5 and PM10 should be a key task,” the State Council said in a statement, referring to two kinds of particulate matter that are deemed harmful to human health. … The announcement of the financial incentives revealed how difficult it has been for some leaders in Beijing to get many Chinese companies and government officials to comply with environmental regulations. •On Thursday, Chinese news organizations reported that the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences had deemed Beijing to be “almost unfavorable for human living.”…Beijing ranked second worst in environmental conditions, and Shanghai was the fifth worst. … The three cities with the best environmental rankings were Stockholm, Vienna and Zurich. Moscow had the lowest ranking. •The State Council announcement said that nationwide coal consumption must be controlled, more vehicles should run on high-quality gasoline, energy use in the construction industry should be lowered, and cleaner boilers should be used. •In July 2013, the Ministry of Environmental Protection ordered more than 15,000 companies regarded as major sources of pollution to report pollutant discharge levels starting this January. The companies account for more than 80% of pollution of various kinds in China, according to one official news report.
This textbook text is the original news report in the New York Times, February 13, 2014. At the beginning of the text, concerns were raised over the impact of air pollution on Chinese cities. Looking at the following expressions such as “Beijing to be ‘almost unfavorable for human living’,”“Beijing ranked second worst in environmental conditions, and Shanghai was the fifth worst,” we can see that textbook compiler did not attempt to cover up China’s environmental problems by editing the report, but made a sharp contrast by listing the top three cities with best environmental rankings. The text promoted transparency efforts in solving the problem of air pollution. University students who use this textbook are expected to learn to face the problem and develop a sense of air pollution control.
Limitations
Corpus method can help the researcher find out the “aboutness” of text or textbooks by identifying their keywords, but it is not necessarily sensible to assume that the word with the highest keyness value must be the most outstanding, since keyness is computed only statistically. The researcher can thus not depend on finding out every single keyword without missing out any with corpus tools. There might be cases where some items are key (to the human reader) but might be potentially omitted because they do not quite meet the standard of probability, or the general statistical setting is not applicable to the text the word is key in. It rarely happens, but these exceptions do exist and need to be taken into account. In addition, some data processed by corpus linguistic analysis can be interpreted, but providing data does not automatically decode social meaning for the researcher, anything more than the data still has to be theorized and explained, for example, the overuse of pronouns “we, us, our” might be overlooked if the researcher cannot interpreted them from the linguistic and social-cultural perspectives. Therefore, the corpus method serves researchers best with critical minds and critical eyes.
Pedagogical Implications
English language instructors may integrate the findings of this study in their teaching practice in the following ways. First, the instructors are supposed to produce/provide supplementary materials for existing textbooks with reference to the findings of this study, for example, textbook A emphasizes semantic domains such as “green technology” or “green lifestyles” while textbook B values the concepts of “modern farming” or “less pollution.” The instructors can make use of multiple textbook resources accordingly. In addition, the findings may raise instructors’ awareness of critical discourse analysis because the textbooks serve instructors best with critical minds and critical eyes. Textbook compilers can also update their current editions for future release. Educational institutions can reassess what are the most appropriate and useful textbooks for teaching materials, while scholars and the MoE can continue to refine the guidelines for English education in light of these findings as well.
Conclusion
This study aimed to investigate the content of environmental education in 12 series of mainstream university English textbooks and how the topics within this semantic domain were presented. Regarding the first research question, the statistical results of the discourse analysis showed that the textbook in question valued environmental education by highlighting some key sustainability and environmental themes, including: “Green issues” (nature, environment, pollution, conservation, ecology, ecosystem, energy resources, etc.), “Substances and materials” (pesticide, chemical, fuel, pollutant, carbon dioxide, air, ozone, etc.), “Science and technology” (radiation, technologies, nuclear, geology, botany, biology, biotechnology, genetic engineering, biotech, genomics, etc.), “Farming and Horticulture” (farming, crop, planting, agriculture, livestock, farmland, grazing, fertilizers, compost, milking, pastures, etc.), “Living creatures” (endangered species, animals, wildlife, birds, insect, frog, cattle, fish, etc.)
The topics of environmental education in these textbooks were included in individual-local-national-global dimensions. For example, in individual dimension, the text of “A little can go a long way” suggested some socio-technical strategies, such as “Turn off the clocks on your microwaves, turn off all your standbys, replace your light bulbs, take fewer trips to the supermarket, cut down on trips by plane….” The text conveyed a concept of “all big changes come from little ones,” which may make the learners reflect on the effect of human activities on climate change. This also makes the learners evaluate whether their daily activities are climate friendly or not. These cognitive activities can help learners develop a sustainable way of living and working out more sustainability practices and principles to achieve energy efficiency and sufficiency.
In the local dimension, the text “Ecotourism: the promise and perils” discussed the conflicts between the environment and development. In national dimension, the text of “China to reward localities of improving air quality” pinpointed China’s environmental problems and highlighted its transparency efforts in solving it. Regarding the content in international dimension, “A Global Green Deal” called for multilateral cooperation frameworks to deal with green issues in group, and to promote collaborative problem solving. This endeavor “should appeal across political, class and national boundaries, for it would stimulate both jobs and business throughout the world in the name of a universal value: leaving our children a livable planet.” By reading these texts, the learners may know more about the main ecological, cultural, social and economic consequences of environmental issues locally, nationally and globally.
The in-depth discourse analysis on the texts under these semantic domains showed that a variety of key concepts such as sustainable environmentalism, energy efficiency and sufficiency, vertical farming, and smart vehicle are presented and critically discussed. To take texts within the domain of “Science and technology” for example, some texts showed that new and innovative technologies can support and promote sustainable development in exploring renewable energy resources, meanwhile, some texts also discussed some issues of energy safety of nuclear energy and toxic e-waste. These texts together demonstrated the advantages and disadvantages of technologies in sustainability development and proposed the concepts of “environmentally acceptable energy sources” and “futuristic technologies.”
It can be expected that the university students who use these textbooks have a better understanding about the interconnectedness between human’s activities and some anthropogenic phenomenon (e.g., climate change). The text may help learners develop the knowledge, competencies and attitudes needed to meet the sustainability challenges in the future, and make prevention, mitigation and adaptation strategies for current and future generations in various contexts.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Professor Lawrence Jun Zhang for his unfailing support for this study.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the 14th Five Year Plan of Shandong Education Science Plan, English Teaching in Higher Education Special (Key) Project: “Theoretical and Practical Research on the Reform of College English Reading Teaching in the Age of New Media” (Grant Number: 2021WZD002). This study was supported by National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No.23BYY155).
Ethical Approval
This study does not involve any animal and human studies.
Data Availability Statement
Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.