VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES DEPARTMENT OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGO THI MY BINH AN EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE MATERIALS ON “ENGLISH FOR TOUR GUIDES” FOR THE 3 RD YEAR STUDENTS OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND TOURISM DEPARTMENT AT SAO DO INDUSTRIAL COLLEGE AND SUGGESTIONS FOR ADAPTATION §¸nh gi¸ hiÖu qu¶ cña gi¸o tr×nh TiÕng Anh chuyªn ngµnh H-íng dÉn Du lÞch cho sinh viªn n¨m thø 3 khoa Du LÞch – Ngo¹i ng÷ tr-êng Cao ®¼ng C«ng nghiÖp Sao §á vµ gîi ý cho viÖc hiÖu chØnh M. Minor Thesis Field: English teaching methodology Code: 60 14 10 Hai Duong – 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES DEPARTMENT OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGO THI MY BINH AN EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE MATERIALS ON “ENGLISH FOR TOUR GUIDES” FOR THE 3 RD YEAR STUDENTS OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND TOURISM DEPARTMENT AT SAO DO INDUSTRIAL COLLEGE AND SUGGESTIONS FOR ADAPTATION §¸nh gi¸ hiÖu qu¶ cña gi¸o tr×nh TiÕng Anh chuyªn ngµnh H-íng dÉn Du lÞch cho sinh viªn n¨m thø 3 khoa Du LÞch – Ngo¹i ng÷ tr-êng Cao ®¼ng C«ng nghiÖp Sao §á vµ gîi ý cho viÖc hiÖu chØnh M. Minor Thesis Field: English teaching methodology Code: 60 14 10 Supervisor: MA. Nguyen Thi Thom Thom Hai Duong – 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Contents Page Candidate’s statement i Table of contents ii Acknowledgements iv List of figures, tables and charts v List of abbreviation vi Abstract vii PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 I.
Rationale and aims of the study 1 II. Scope of the study 2 III. Methods of the study 2 IV. Statement of the problem 4 VI.
Design of the study 4 PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5 CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 5 1. Teaching Materials in Language Teaching and Learning 5 1. The Roles of Teaching Materials 5 1. Types of Materials 6 1.
Reasons for Materials Evaluation 7 1. Definitions of Materials Evaluation 7 1. Types of Materials Evaluation 8 1. Sources of the Data 10 1.
Models for Materials Evaluation 11 1. Criteria for Materials Evaluation 13 1. Previous Research on Materials Evaluation 15 1. Reason for adapting 16 1.
Summary 18 CHAPTER II: EVALUATION ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE MATERIALS “ENGLISH FOR TOUR GUIDES”- PART IV 19 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Method of data collection and procedures 19 2. Participants of the survey 19 2. Description of the survey questionnaires 20 2.
Formal interview to teachers, students and class observations 20 2. Findings and Discussion 21 2. The evaluation of the teachers in terms of audience, aims, content, 21 methodology, and other criteria 2. The evaluation of the teachers in terms of speaking lessons 24 2.
The suggestions of the teachers in terms of speaking lessons 24 2. The suitability of the course to the audience 25 2.2 The suitability of the objective’s course in terms of skills 27 2.3 The suitability of the course’s content in terms of the speaking lessons 28 2. The suitability of the speaking lessons in terms of methodology. Students’ suggestion for the speaking lessons 30 2.
Evaluation findings 31 CHAPTER III: SUGGESTIONS FOR THE TEXTBOOK’S ADAPTATION 34 3. Suggestions for the adaptation of speaking lessons 34 3.1 Suggestions for the adaptation of speaking lesson in Unit 2: Hai Duong’s 34 attractions 3. Suggestions for the adaptation of speaking lesson in Unit 3: Hanoi’s 35 attractions 3. Suggestions for the adaptation of speaking lesson in Unit 6: National parks 37 in Vietnam 3.
Suggestions for the adaptation of speaking lesson in Unit 8: Museums in 38 Vietnam 3. Suggestions for the adaptation of speaking lesson in Unit 10: Ha Long Bay 39 3.2 Evaluation of the adaptation 40 PART C: CONCLUSION 41 REFERENCES 43 APPENDIX 1 I APPENDIX 2 IV APPENDIX 3 VII APPENDIX 4 VIII LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com v LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Figures Page Figure 1 The Materials Evaluation Model of Hutchinson and Waters (1993:98) 13 Figure 2 Preparing a presentation 36 Tables Page Table 2.1 Students' results of learning tourism English in the previous term 25 Table 2.2 Students' attitudes towards an “English for Tour guides” course 26 Table 2.3 Students' expectations from an “English for Tour guides” course 26 Table 2.4 Students’ opinion on skill’s importance 27 Table 2.5 Students’ opinions on their skills need to improve in the course 27 Table 2.6 Students’ opinion on the suitability of the speaking lessons 28 Students’ opinion on the methodology’s suitability of the speaking Table 2.8 Students’ suggestion for the speaking lessons 30 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS SIC Sao Do Industrial College FLTD Foreign Languages and Tourism Department ETP English for Tourism Purpose EFT English for Tour guides ESP English for specific purposes ELT English language teaching LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 1 PART A: INTRODUCTION I. The rationale and aims of the study There are three reasons why I choose to carry out the research called “An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of the Materials on “English for Tour guides” for the 3rd year students of Foreign Languages and Tourism Department at Sao Do Industrial College and suggestions for adaptation”. The first reason is in the importance of a material or a text book in the process of learning and teaching foreign languages.
ELT materials in general and textbooks in particular serve as tool and tutor, guidebook and gauge. The American Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development asserted that teachers throughout the world use texts to guide their instruction, so textbooks greatly influence how content is delivered. Schmidt, McKnight, and Raizen (1997) identified textbooks as playing an important role in making the leap from intensions and plans to classroom activities, by making content available, organizing it, and setting out learning tasks in a form designed to be appealing to students. Therefore, they may be considered “the visible heart of any ELT program” Sheldon (1988:237).
Especially in Vietnamese context, textbooks are regarded as a staple in almost every EFL class. With the growth of computer-assisted language learning, the role of this material may be changing, but it is unlikely that it will ever disappear. Therefore, it is necessary for teachers to be well-equipped with the assessment tools to evaluate materials to ensure that students are using the highest quality texts possible and that their language learning experience is enhanced, not hindered, by the book used in their classrooms. However, there has been surprisingly little investigation done in terms of how and why materials are selected by teachers.
Moreover, most of them have not been adequately trained in the selection process and may be unaware of how to judge which texts best suit their situation. That research gap has propelled me to choose materials evaluation as the theme for this master thesis. The second reason for this option lies in the fact that in recent years there have emerged diverse opinions of both the learners and teachers on the actual effectiveness of the materials “English for Tour guides”- an in-house materials used in teaching ESP for the third year students at FLTD at SIC in Hai Duong. Arguments have encompassed both the potentials and the limitations of the materials for guiding students through the learning LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 process as well as the needs and preferences of the teachers and learners who are using it.
Other issues that have lately arisen include the textbook content, the methodology validity, the role of textbooks in innovation, the authenticity of materials in terms of their representation of language and the appropriateness of some speaking lessons. It is essential, therefore, that we should establish and apply a wide variety of relevant and contextually appropriate criteria for the evaluation of the textbook to assess its appropriateness against the learning purposes. The last but not least, being a teacher of foreign languages and having taught the course of “English for Tour guides” at SIC more than two years, I have found out that there are some problems with the materials of the course which are needed to be adapted. With the hope of improving the quality and minus the limitation of the materials to benefit both the learners and teachers, I conduct this research to discuss and describe the evaluation process that is to be undertaken at the FLTD at SIC of the textbook “English for Tour guides” used in this particular learning environment and thus lead to further thought on improving the quality of the materials by suggestions for the textbook’s adaptation especially in speaking lessons.
These are also the aims of the study. Scope of the study The study is about the evaluation of effectiveness of the in-house materials “English for Tour guides” - Part IV – Tourism destinations in Vietnam. Its curriculum consists of 120 periods for the third year Tour guide students of FLTD at SIC. In the scope of this study, the evaluation of the effectiveness of the materials only focuses on evaluation of the suitability of the materials’ content and methodology to the course’s requirement and students’ need.
It bases on the evaluation of teachers and students at the school. From these, I give out suggestions for adaptation especially in speaking lessons to improve effectiveness and learning motivation for Tour guide students and better serve for teaching job this subject at SIC. Methods of the study To achieve the above aim, the study employs qualitative and quantitative research method. The research methods employed were document analysis, survey questionnaire, informal interviews and class observation.
Of these methods, document analysis was one of the main instruments with a thorough objective analysis of the textbook under evaluation. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 3 Survey questionnaire also plays an important role in the study. According to James H Mc Millan & Sally Schumacher (1993) “in survey research, the investigator selects a sample of subjects and administers a questionnaire or conducts interviews to collect data. Surveys are used frequently in educational research to describe attitudes, beliefs, opinions and other types of information”.
In this study, survey questionnaire was used to collect the data that relate to the teachers' and students' perspectives and attitudes towards the textbook they have just finished. Informal interviews were employed to clarify information collected in the survey. Lastly, class observation was used to get student’s responses to the speaking lessons after adaptation. These are effective way of collecting data for this study.
The purposes of this evaluation research were to evaluate the effectiveness of the in-house materials “English for Tour guides” in terms of its objectives, content and methodology especially the content of the speaking lessons in the materials. This summative evaluation was conducted right after the teachers and students have just finished the textbook to determine whether the material has worked well. The researcher employed a method which was a combination of document analysis, survey questionnaires, informal interviews and class observation. The researcher's belief was that a combination of different methods to collect data could provide more reliable and valid information for the evaluation.
Research questions The study is to find out the answers to the following research questions: 1. How do the materials “English for Tour guides” used at SIC meet the requirements of the course and meet the demands of students in terms of objectives, content, and methodology especially the content of the speaking lessons? 2. What suggestions should be made to contribute to the improvement of the speaking lessons in the materials?