This paper reports the results of a project on exploring the language input of reading texts in a book series used in teaching reading for first-year English-major students at University of Foreign languages, Hue University. It aims at investigating text topics, genres, length, language difficulty level, and students’ as well as teachers’ perceptions of the studied texts in an attempt to facilitate students’ reading comprehension. Thirty-two reading texts were studied by using a descriptive-analytical approach. Individual and focus group interviews were implemented with 15 students and 7 lecturers. The findings show that textbooks incorporate a wide variety of topics, which are interesting and familiar to students. Articles are the most popular text genre. The text length and language difficulty level prove to be appropriate to students’ capacity. The lecturers and students’ perceptions of the texts also support the textbook analysis findings. These findings implicate that the selected textbooks could be kept in the curriculum but need further adaptation. Besides, some suggestions were made to help ELT lecturers modify the text input effectively. |
