This paper analyzes three recently-published English-for-Academic-Purposes textbooks in terms of their objectives，holistic and modular designs，choice of themes，types of exercises，etc． and reaches the following conclusions: ( 1) The textbooks，being academically-oriented，all have very clear objectives，i． e． to help students develop English skills to meet the needs of English-as-a-medium-of-instruction settings; ( 2) The overall design of these textbooks is multidimensional， incorporating written，multimedia and internet materials，tasks and exercises; ( 3) The choice of themes takes into consideration the psychological and cognitive traits of college students and conforms with the principles of content-based teaching and critical thinking development; ( 4 ) The exercises combine the modern as well as traditional approaches to linguistic comptence development，including language skill training items，communicative activities and tasks，to enable students to use language appropriately．