VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES **************** TRẦN THỊ THU TRANG AN EVALUATION OF THE MATERIAL “ENGLISH WRITTEN PROFICIENCY – INTERMEDIATE 1” FOR FIRST YEAR STUDENTS OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES FACULTY, THAINGUYEN UNIVERSITY (Đánh giá giáo trình “English Written Proficiency – Intermediate 1” dùng cho sinh viên năm thứ nhất tại khoa Ngoại Ngữ, Đại học Thái Nguyên ) M.A Minor Thesis Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60. 10 Hanoi - 2011 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES **************** TRẦN THỊ THU TRANG AN EVALUATION OF THE MATERIAL “ENGLISH WRITTEN PROFICIENCY – INTERMEDIATE 1” FOR FIRST YEAR STUDENTS OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES FACULTY, THAINGUYEN UNIVERSITY (Đánh giá giáo trình “English Written Proficiency – Intermediate 1” dùng cho sinh viên năm thứ nhất tại khoa Ngoại Ngữ, Đại học Thái Nguyên ) M.A Minor Thesis Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60. 10 Supervisor: Vũ Thị Thu Thuỷ, M.A Hanoi - 2011 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CANDIDATE'S STATEMENT .iii TABLE OF CONTENTS. iv LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES.
Aims of the thesis. Significance of the thesis. The research questions. Scope of the thesis.
Methods of the thesis. Organization of the thesis. 4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .1 Textbook, Course book, and Materials .2 The roles of teaching materials in a language program .1 Definitions of materials evaluation .2 Types of Materials Evaluation .3 Purposes of Materials Evaluation .5 Models for Materials Evaluation .6 Criteria for Materials Evaluation .3 The Writing Skill .1 Components of the Writing Process .2 Approaches to Teaching and Learning Writing. 19 CHAPTER 3: THE STUDY.
The Current Teaching and Learning Situation at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, TNU. 25 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. The data collection procedure. 25 Chapter 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION.
The Course Objectives. Data collation and analysis. 33 Chapter 5: RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS .2 Suggestions for further study. Error! Bookmark not defined.
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vi LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Figure 1: The materials evaluation process (by Tom Hutchinson & Alan Waters (1987:98). 12 Figure 2: Producing a piece of writing by Raime A. 16 Figure 3: Martin’s model of genre. 21 Figure 4: The data of organization content.
28 Figure 5: The data of content criteria. 31 Figure 6: The data of methodology criteria. 35 Table 1: Example of holistic scale for writing ability (Harris, M. 18 Table 2: Example of analytic scale for writing ability (Hedge, 1988: 55).
19 Table 3: The data of organization criteria. 28 Table 4: The data of content criteria. 30 Table 5: The data of methodology criteria. 35 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Rationale English language teaching materials in general and textbooks in particular, together with students, teachers, teaching methods and evaluation, are the five important components in language instruction. Although some scholars argue that textbooks limit teachers and students’ creativeness, few teachers entering a classroom without a textbook which provides them with contents and learning activities to be conducted in the class. According to Hutchinson and Torres (1994), a text book is “an important means of satisfying the range of needs that emerge from the classroom and its wider context.” Since English was introduced in Vietnam, it has played an undeniably vital role in the society and become a compulsory subject at schools and universities. Together with this fact, English textbooks and materials have made a big business for publishing houses.
However, not many attentions have been paid to the evaluation of such textbooks and materials. Unlike the situations in high schools, where a textbook is used nationwide, university lecturers often compile teaching materials of their own by referring to different sources of English books; this leads to a fact that for the same objectives of the course, different universities use different learning and teaching materials. It is believed that in so doing, students will study at their best levels. Nevertheless, investigations on how and why materials are selected by lecturers are surprisingly little.
Most of the teachers are subjective in the materials selection process and they may be unaware of how to judge which texts best suit their situation. This has inspired me to choose materials evaluation as the theme for my master thesis. The second reason for this option lies in the fact that the material I choose to evaluate, “English Written Proficiency Intermediate 1”, has been in use for two years for freshmen of English in the Faculty of Foreign Languages (FFL), Thainguyen University, but there have been no feedbacks from both teachers and students on its effectiveness. Meanwhile, students’ scores in the final exam on writing skills in previous years were way lower than their teachers’ expectations with myriad mistakes found on students’ exam papers.
It is essential, therefore, to establish and apply a wide variety of relevant and LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 contextually appropriate criteria for the evaluation of the material to assess its appropriateness and effectiveness. Aims of the thesis The thesis is aimed at evaluating the material of current use at FFL in terms of organization, contents, teaching methods commonly used in classroom and at deciding whether the material is suitable for the students of the faculty with regards to their real level of English. Hopefully, the findings of this research will provide useful data so that the researcher can make some decisions on whether to continue using the material for other generations of students or to make some changes to improve its effectiveness. Significance of the thesis Despite some scholar’s arguments on the usefulness of textbooks to be employed as instructional material in language learning and teaching, their enormous popularity still undeniably maintains.
The language teachers will then have to assure that “the material selected closely reflects [the needs of the learners and] the aims, methods, and values of the teaching program” (Cunningsworth, 1995: 7). However, such a task will not be fulfilled if there is no thorough evaluation on the material. Under theoretical significance, this thesis will cater for the methods to evaluate a teaching material effectively. The researcher will move from subjective assessments to objective ones.
Furthermore, this is the first time a teaching material used in FFL has been evaluated, so the theoretical background of the thesis will be of some help for other teaching materials evaluations in the future. Besides, “even though teachers will not evaluate to adopt materials, they may well be interested in evaluation as a useful process in its own right, giving insight into the organizational principles of the materials and helping them to keep up with developments in the field” (Mc Donough and Shaw, 1993: 65). Under practical significance, the findings of this study will be beneficial to both the researcher, the teachers who are teaching writing skills for first year students and the students themselves in FFL. All the strengths and weaknesses of the “English written proficiency 1” are identified so that optimum use can be made of such strong points, whilst the weaker areas can be strengthened through adaptation.
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. The research questions This thesis is to find out the answers to the following questions: 1. Does the material “English written proficiency – intermediate 1” for first year students at FFL meet the requirements of the course in terms (i) Content and the suitability with students’ real level of English? (ii) Methodology and the suitability with students’ real level of English? 2. Is the material attractively and logically designed? 3.
What should be done to help improve the material? 1. Scope of the thesis The focus of this thesis is the criteria set up for evaluators to assess the teaching material. It includes criteria of format/organization, content and methodology. The subjects of this thesis are the freshmen of English who have finished their first term at Faculty of Foreign Languages, Thainguyen University.
The subject also includes the material called “English Written Proficiency – Intermediate 1”, which consists of four units – each unit is subdivided into two main parts: the reading part and the writing part. The reading part aims at not only improving students’ reading skills and widening their vocabulary but also assisting the writing part by providing it with relevant input. The writing part helps learners develop their competence in writing paragraphs of three types namely descriptive, narrative and expository. Methods of the thesis In order to achieve the objectives of this thesis, the researcher applies qualitative research methods.
Data are collected through questionnaires and interviews with both teachers and students. Questionnaires are an important factor in the process of having an objective evaluation. The questions are designed to gather data about the teachers’ and students’ ideas on the intended criteria. Information gained from interviews will be recorded, analyzed and used for reference in making recommendations to improve the quality of the material.
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Organization of the thesis The thesis comprises five chapters: Chapter one gives general introduction about reasons for choosing the topic of study, aims, significance, research questions, scopes, methodology and organization of the thesis. Chapter two is devoted to the literature review on materials evaluation. Firstly, a clear distinction among textbook, course book and materials are made.
Then, it discusses the role of teaching materials in language programs. In the next part, some major issues in the evaluation of teaching materials, including definitions of materials evaluation, approaches to materials evaluation, types of materials evaluation and the roles of evaluation in materials development are presented. The chapter also mentions methods to evaluate materials and some criteria to be applied in materials evaluation. In addition, as the book is mainly used to develop students’ writing skills, aspects such as components of the writing process and approaches to teaching and learning writing are also discussed.
Chapter three presents an overview of the current teaching and learning at FFL, Thainguyen University and describes the methodology employed in this study, research methods, data collection procedure, participants, setting as well as data analysis. Chapter four expounds the collected data, analyzes them and discusses the findings of the study. Chapter five offers conclusions on the results obtained and highlights some recommendations for developing the material. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 5 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter provides an overview of the theoretical background to the research.
It is divided into three sections. The first section, as the background to the study, briefly discusses the concepts as well as the distinctions among the term “textbook, course book and materials”; it also mentions the roles of teaching materials in a language program. These are the initial steps that help the researcher get to know where to start. The second section gives an overview of materials evaluation to provide the fundamental basis and important factors for the researcher to conduct this study.
The last section states the components of the writing process and some approaches to teaching and learning writing.1 Textbook, Course book, and Materials 2.1 Definitions The terms textbook, course book and materials are most commonly found in learning and teaching. Authors, teachers and learners use them interchangeably; however, are these terminologies the same? Oxford Advanced Learners’ English-Vietnamese Dictionary explains textbook as books giving instruction in a subject. This term is also defined by Microsoft Encarta (2005) as a book that treats a subject comprehensively and is used by students as a basis for study. For many teachers, textbooks are the instruments that help them to explain and express their teaching ideas.
In most courses, there is a single textbook used as the core, while teachers can supply other materials at their wishes.