英语教科书的开发是实施基础英语素质教育的基础工程。自2001 年新课程改革以来，国家审定通过了多套中小学英语教科书，但对一线英语教师的调查发现，现行教科书在趣味性、系统性、知识性等方面存在问题。笔者全面分析了产生这些问题的原因，并结合调查结果和相关理论，提出并重点讨论了编制英语教科书应该遵循“有趣”、“有意”和“有理”的选材原则。

In primary and secondary school English classrooms，textbooks remain a major source of input and a guidebook for teacher's instruction． Since the English curriculum reform for basic education was put into effect in 2001，many sets of English textbooks have been put into use． However，the findings of the present survey suggest that most teachers of English hold fairly negative view on the textbooks they are using． They complained that these textbooks do not hold students' interest nor do they offer a variety of useful information． Most texts are unrelated and do not finally form a coherent whole． This paper discusses these problems and puts forward three guiding principles concerning material selection for EFL textbook development．