Environmental Sustainability Education in Twelve Series of Chinese University English Language Textbooks

Bibliographic Data

ID16914616
AuthorsYanhong Liu (0000-0002-1251-1700, Yangzhou University), Lin An (0000-0002-8555-5800, Shanghai International Studies University, corresponding author), Shan Chen (0000-0003-2138-4851, Weifang University)
Year2024
Volume14
Issue3
Publication date2024-07-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSAGE Open (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2158-2440 • E-ISSN: 2158-2440
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/21582440241266829
OpenAlexW4401063713
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited30

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

English language · Environmental education · Linguistics · Mathematics education · Pedagogy · Sociology · Sustainability · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Philosophy · Psychology · Geology

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access