教育部2018年颁布的《中国英语能力等级量表》对英语语用能力进行了概念界定、能力框架分解与分级能力水平描述。学生语用能力培养的主要载体就是英语教材,而目前指向中学生二语语用能力培养的英语教材编制研究依旧匮乏。本文以言语行为经典分类与2018年版《中国英语能力等级量表》为研究框架,分析了2019年新版国内某出版社高中英语教材(A)、2019年新版国内另一社高中英语教材(B)及2017年版英国某出版社的中学英语教材(C)在言语行为及语用能力培养上的异同与优劣。研究发现相较于英国出版社,国内两出版社的教材均未使用足量的言语行为,而国内外三家出版社在听力和阅读材料的语用能力编制上也存在不同程度的缺陷。三本中学英语教材在语用能力编制上的研究对教材改版、教材研究及师生的教材使用均有一定的启示指导意义。

China’s Standards of English Language Ability (CSE) issued by the Ministry of Education of China in 2018 is the national language standard of teaching and testing English in China. The CSE document defines pragmatic competence with an accurate, classified framework. In fact, to cultivate students’ pragmatic competence, the textbooks in use are excellent sources which play a vital role in achieving this goal. EFL secondary students’ L2 pragmatic competence has been groomed in many ways and mostly by means of classroom learning of textbook contents. To date there is still a scarcity of EFL secondary English textbook materials research in regard to how materials play a role in the pragmatic competence of EFL secondary students. By adopting a mixed methodology, the present article reports a comparative study of three publishers’ textbooks of English: one UK textbook (published in 2017) and two of China’s textbooks (all published in 2019). The working analytical frameworks in the present study are based on Searle’s classification of speech acts and CSE. It is found that three publishers’ textbooks have performed differently and each has its merits in certain aspects in providing contents that are helpful to students’ pragmatic competence as well as demerits in lacking of doing so. For example, findings reveal that the UK publisher has excelled in sufficient and all five categories of speech acts in its textbook materials (reading and listening researched only). Based on the specific findings, this article offers realistic implications and suggestions to the three publishers in their future revised editions of English textbooks for EFL students. For instance, it is suggested that Chinese publishers should update its contents to focus on cultivating students’ pragmatic competence of understanding oral description, understanding written description and understanding written instruction.