Features of Instructional Language for Cultivation of Creative Thinking: A Data-driven Analysis of Chinese Senior High School English Textbooks

As a key component of the 21st Century competencies, creativity has been highly promoted in school education. The latest senior high school English curriculum of mainland China also emphasizes the cultivation of thinking skills and new sets of English textbooks have been published which claim to incorporate the idea in their material selection and design. Based on a data-driven analysis of the features of instructional language in three sets (i.e., nine volumes) of the 2019 editions of English textbooks for senior high school learners in mainland China, the study reveals that the new textbooks reflect the idea of English teaching reform and are aligned with the latest national English curriculum standards which focus on developing students’ thinking quality along with their English language ability. This study also sheds light on how English teachers can analyze the linguistic features of instructional language in teaching activities, expecting to offer insights on how corpus-assisted textbook analysis is helpful concerning English teaching practice.