VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HOÀNG YẾN AN EVALUATION OF THE CURRENT TEXTBOOK OF THE ENGLISH COURSE FOR GRADE 2 STUDENTS AT A PRIMARY SCHOOL IN HUNG YEN CITY (Đánh giá về sách giáo khoa đang được sử dụng cho khóa học tiếng Anh của học sinh lớp 2 tại một trường Tiểu học ở Thành phố Hưng Yên) M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231.01 Hanoi - 2022 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HOÀNG YẾN AN EVALUATION OF THE CURRENT TEXTBOOK OF THE ENGLISH COURSE FOR GRADE 2 STUDENTS AT A PRIMARY SCHOOL IN HUNG YEN CITY (Đánh giá về sách giáo khoa đang được sử dụng cho khóa học tiếng Anh của học sinh lớp 2 tại một trường Tiểu học ở Thành phố Hưng Yên) M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231. Hoàng Văn Vân Hanoi - 2022 DECLARATION I certify that the thesis entitled “An evaluation of the current textbook of the English course for grade 2 students at a primary school in Hung Yen city” is the result of my own research and has not been submitted partially or wholly to another degree or diploma at any universities or other institutions.
Hanoi, 2022 Student Nguyễn Thị Hoàng Yến i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am, first of all, particularly indebted to my supervisor, Prof. Hoàng Văn Vân for his invaluable advice, instructions, correction, excellent and constant encouragement during the research period. Without his guidance and help, this work would not have been accomplished. I would also like to express my profound thanks to all the M.
TESOL lecturers at VNU University of Languages and International Studies who have provided me invaluable source of knowledge for my completion of this thesis. My special thanks also go to the leaders and my colleagues at English teachers of Hoang Le Primary School for their support and encouragement. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the teachers and students who have participated in this research. I would like to send my sincere thanks to my friends and classmates for their enthusiasm and advice while the work was in progress.
Finally, yet importantly, I would like to convey my deepest gratitude to my husband, my children and my parents for their constant support and thorough understanding. Their great encouragement and love have helped me to overcome the difficulties during my study. ii ABSTRACT English textbook evaluation is one of the important steps to ensure the quality of English teaching at primary schools. It can be done by teachers and students with objective opinions in order to improve the contents of English textbook.
For that reason, this thesis was written to make an assessment of the “Next Stop 1” English textbook for grade 2 students at Hoang Le primary school and provide solutions to make learning experiences of students by this textbook better. In this study, the researcher used both qualitative and quantitative methods with a combination of two data collection instruments as document analysis and questionnaires. The results showed that the aims, contents and methodology of the “Next Stop 1” were mostly appropriate to the students’ needs and help to improve the study level of students. However, a few contents of this textbook are not suitable and it creates less excitement for the students.
Therefore, it is suggested that the “Next Stop 1” should be put into a specific context, the contents of the textbook ought to be simplified and more game play activities should be adopted. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS. iv LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES .vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION.
Aim of the study. Scope of the study. Significance of the study. Overview of the thesis.
3 CHAPTER 2: LTERATURE REVIEW. Materials in English language teaching. Types of materials. Role of materials.
Key components of materials. Definitions of materials evaluation. Reasons for materials evaluation. Types of materials evaluation.
Models for materials evaluation. Criteria for materials evaluation. Research instruments employed for materials evaluation. Data collection instruments.
Subjects of the study .1 Respondents of the questionnaire as students. Respondents of the questionnaire as teachers. Data collection procedures. 36 CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS.
Satisfactoriness of the aims of textbook “Next Stop 1”. Results obtained from document analysis. Results from questionnaires. Satisfactoriness of the textbook contents.
Content items of the textbook. The content sequence of the textbook. Satisfactoriness of the methodology of the textbook. Data from document analysis.
Data from the teachers and students’ questionnaires. Improvement of language skills. 52 CHAPTER 5: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. Summary of analysis.
Aims of the textbook “Next stop 1”. Contents of textbook “Next stop 1”. Methodology used with the textbook “Next stop 1”. On the aims.
On the contents. On the methodology. Implications of the study. Limitations of the study.
Suggestions for further research. 64 APPENDIX 1: CHECKLIST FOR EVALUATION BY HUTCHINSON AND WATERS (1987). I APPENDIX 2: CHECKLIST FOR EVALUATION AND SELECTION OF COURSE BOOKS BY CUNNINGSWORTH (1995). VIII APPENDIX 3: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS.
XI APPENDIX 4: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR TEACHERS. XVII vi LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Figures Figure 1: The materials evaluation model by Hutchinson and Waters 16 (1987) Tables Table 1A Students’ opinions of aims of the textbook “Next stop 1” 40 Table 1B Teachers’ opinions of aims of the in textbook “Next stop 1” 41 Table 2A Students’ opinions about the level of suitability of the textbook 43 content items Table 2B Teachers’ opinions about the level of suitability of textbook 45 content items Table 2C The degree of correlation between the teachers’ and students’ 47 opinions about the suitability of the content items Table 3A Students’ opinions about the sequence of contents in the 49 textbook “Next Stop 1” Table 3B Teachers’ opinions about the sequence of contents in the 49 textbook “Next Stop 1” Table 4 Students’ and teachers’ opinions on the textbook guidance for 51 doing the types of tasks Table 5A Students’ opinions about the improvement of skills after 52 studying the textbook Table 5B Teachers’ opinions on the textbook guidance for doing the types 53 of tasks vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale English has not been taught for grade 1 and grade 2 students at a primary school in Hung Yen City for some years. An education company has been cooperating with the school to teach students in these grades to help them become familiar with English.
The textbook named “Next Stop 1” is written by Amanda Cant and Mary Charrington and printed by Macmillan Education. The book includes ten units for teaching 2 grades: grade one and grade two students. Each grade consists of 5 units with detailed topics and 5 final units are for grade 2. These courses are expected to provide students with knowledge of English grammar, vocabulary and phonetics.
In every unit of the book, students are required to take part in vocabulary and grammar lessons. These units are expected to be helpful for them in continuing to learn in the next grades. According to Mathans (2020), textbook plays an important role in the process of language teaching and learning. Textbook can motivate learning, help learners achieve their goals and objectives and also enhance teaching.
In order to have a successful language teaching program, the textbook, after having been selected or designed, needs to be carefully evaluated to check whether the textbook accomplishes its job of enabling teaching and learning. The textbook “Next Stop 1” has been taught since the school began teaching English for grade 2 students. In the process of teaching and learning, the researcher and other teachers have noticed some weaknesses with the textbook during their practical teaching experience. For example, it mainly focuses on theory but there are few model exercises for the students to practice.
Moreover, some students complained that several grammar lessons were too difficult and confusing. At the same time, some teachers wondered whether the selected textbooks were suitable to the students’ level. They said that sometimes the lessons were too long for them to 1 complete within the allocated time. However, this textbook has never been evaluated to examine if it really meets the students’ needs in terms of aims, contents and methodology.
Therefore, it is quite reasonable for the researcher to conduct this evaluation research. The researcher hopes that the findings of the study will show the strong points as well as the weaknesses of the textbook so that the publishers will improve it for better teaching and learning. Aim of the study The aim of the study is to evaluate the textbook “Next Stop 1” for grade 2 students at a primary school in Hung Yen City to determine whether it matches the students’ needs in terms of the aims, contents and methodology. The researcher hopes that the findings of the thesis will play a role in deciding whether the textbook can be used again in the future and what changes should be made to improve the quality and the suitability of the textbook.
To achieve the aim of the study, the following research questions have been raised: • To what extent does the current textbook meet the students’ needs in terms of the aims, contents and methodology? • To what extent is the current textbook suitable for grade two students at the school? 1. Scope of the study This study is limited to evaluation of the current textbook “Next Stop 1” for grade 2 students at a primary school in Hung Yen province. According to Brown (1995), within an evaluation, each of curriculum components can be viewed from two major viewpoints: Were they suitable and what were participants’ attitudes toward them? 2 In the scope of this study, the textbook would be investigated based on participants’ attitudes toward it. The participants are 60 students of grade two and 8 English teachers at a primary school in Hung Yen city.
Significance of the study The research will be carried out with the hope that the findings of the study will help the teaching and learning of English to the students in grade 2 at the primary school to be more effective. In addition, further research work in evaluating the suitability of the textbook for teaching English can be made afterwards. The significance of this study is practical. It provides Vietnamese primary teachers of English with the inappropriate points of the textbook they are using to teach their students.
In addition, it helps publishers see the strengths and weaknesses of the textbook so that they will make changes to improve for better learning experiences. Overview of the thesis The thesis is divided into 6 chapters as follows: Chapter 1 (Introduction) provides rationale of research, aim of study, scope of study, significance of study and structure of study. Chapter 2 (Literature Review) presents an overview of theoretical basis of textbook evaluation including textbook in English language teaching in which the definition, role of textbook, types of textbook are presented, textbook evaluation, reasons for textbook evaluation, types of textbook evaluation, types of research instruments, criteria for textbook evaluation and overview of some previous studies on textbook evaluation. Chapter 3 (Methodology) presents a description of the methodology used in the study consisting of four sections: research questions, a description of data collection used in this thesis, subjects of the study and data collection procedures.
Chapter 4 (Data Analysis) describes the analysis of data in details including 3 results from document analysis and questionnaires. Chapter 5 (Finding and Discussion) reports the results found out from Chapter 4 and gives some discussions of the results.
