1　Introduction

This section introduces the publication background, positioning, and core objectives of the *Understanding Contemporary China* textbook series, noting that current research on textbook usage has focused primarily on macro-level analyses or translation instruction, with a scarcity of classroom-based empirical studies, particularly those addressing the unique challenges of integrating China-specific political discourse into English public speaking. On this basis, the paper clarifies its focus on the challenges of comprehension, transformation, and output in the use of *A Public Speaking Course*, adopting a dialectical research approach to distill an enabling instructional framework and develop corresponding teaching activities in response to two core research questions: the challenges students face and effective pedagogical pathways.

2　Analysis of Challenges in Textbook Usage

This section analyzes threefold challenges that *A Public Speaking Course* poses for student users: at the text comprehension level, the English-medium China-specific political discourse is densely packed with terminology and highly abstract, making it difficult for students to grasp conceptual connotations in depth; at the text transformation level, the grand narrative perspective and documentary discourse features of the texts differ significantly from students' individual narrative styles, requiring teachers to guide students through adaptive adjustments; at the output skills level, classroom instruction has paid insufficient attention to public speaking techniques for political topics, and how to achieve effective cross-cultural communication remains to be explored in practice.

3　Dialectical Research

This section explores how dialectical research methods can be employed to address systematic problems in the use of *A Public Speaking Course*. Grounded in the "enabling" theory of the Production-Oriented Approach, the study constructs an enabling instructional framework for integrating political discourse into public speaking courses, comprising a "comprehension—transformation—output" pedagogical pathway and targeted strategies, which underwent two rounds of iterative research across the 2022–2024 academic years.

At the learning and referencing stage, the study draws upon the concept of "enabling" from the Production-Oriented Approach and its effectiveness criteria of "precision," "progression," and "diversity," arguing that although these principles originate from Production-Oriented Approach research, they are equally applicable to general instructional contexts. At the theory construction stage, horizontal arrows establish the pedagogical pathway of "comprehension first, then transformation, followed by output," while vertical arrows propose strategies for addressing three types of difficulties: using concrete cases to facilitate understanding of key terminology, establishing connections between social current affairs and individuals, and cultivating the ability to "tell China's stories well."

In the practical implementation, Unit 4 "People-Centered Development" from *A Public Speaking Course* was selected as the instructional unit, with a communicative scenario designed around "a volunteer guide at a China poverty alleviation exhibition responding to foreign friends." The overall task was subdivided into three sub-tasks: describing changes in Atulie'er Village, introducing poverty alleviation measures, and presenting poverty alleviation achievements. The study focuses on presenting the implementation of Sub-task 2: at the comprehension level, three progressive activities—"analyzing causes of poverty," "learning poverty alleviation measures," and "connecting attribution with measures"—use the Atulie'er Village case as a vehicle to promote understanding of the concept "targeted poverty alleviation"; at the transformation level, the activity "talking about poverty alleviation from 'my' perspective" guides students to establish connections between social current affairs and young individuals, transforming grand narratives into individual narratives; at the output level, the activity "substantiating with cases and data" enhances persuasive power by centering on the deductive logic of "measures—cases—data."

At the reflective interpretation stage, the teacher analyzed the logical relationships among instructional activities, confirming that the five activities sequentially address challenges at three levels, with the comprehension-level activities being the most elaborately designed, as understanding "China-specific political discourse" constitutes the most challenging task. Student speech outputs demonstrated that students were able to introduce poverty alleviation measures in specific temporal and spatial contexts and present individual voices, but also revealed problems of inappropriate word choice and inarticulate expression when discussing specific measures, pointing directions for subsequent optimization.

4　Conclusion

Focusing on challenges in textbook usage at three levels—comprehension, transformation, and output—this study employs dialectical research methods to propose theory and reflect on instructional practice, thereby offering three recommendations for frontline teachers: taking accurate understanding of contemporary China as the prerequisite, avoiding evenly distributed effort on terminology by adopting combined in-class and out-of-class approaches, and conducting refined instructional design for different speech types.