Literacy–based education is the goal of the current educational system. Curricular material plays a critical role for the effectiveness of language teaching and learning. As a major medium of teaching and learning reading, could the current selected texts in Chinese subject textbooks achieve the goal of literacy-based education? If not, what kind of texts could achieve that goal is worthwhile for researchers to investigate. Evidence-based research is an indispensible foundation for educational policies. Adopting a mixed-method approach by incorporating discursive and cognitive research method that take care of texts and readers, the current research aims to explore the relations between textual features of the current Chinese subject textbooks and educational goals, as well as their impacts on teaching and learning.
