haiphong private university Department of foreign languages ISO 9001: 2008 Scientific research EVALUATING AND EDITING THE CURRENTLY USED TEXTBOOK “ENGLISH OF CIVIL ENGINEERING” FOR THE FOURTH-YEAR STUDENTS OF CONSTRUCTION AT HAIPHONG PRIVATE UNIVERSITY (Đánh giá và chỉ nh sửa giáo trình “English of Civil Engineering” cho sinh viên ngành Xây dựng năm thứ tư của trường Đại học Dân lập Hải Phòng) By: Nguyễn Thị Phương Thu, M. HAIPHONG 2010 1 Acknowledgement During the process of completing this study I was really lucky to receive great encouragement, support, and assistance. Firstly, I benefited much from talks and discussions with my colleagues so let me thank all of them for what they have directly or indirectly contributed. Secondly, it is also my pleasure to express my special thanks to all the last-year students of Construction Department at Haiphong Private University who enthusiastically took part in answering the questionnaires and helped me collect the results of the surveys.
Haiphong, December 2010 Nguyen Thi Phuong Thu 2 Table of contents Acknowledgements.i Table of contents. 2 2 Objectives of the study. 2 3 Methods of the study.3 Chapter one: Literature review.1 Textbooks, course books and materials.2 The role of materials in a language program.1 Definition of materials evaluation.2 Types of materials evaluation.3 Criteria for materials evaluation. 7 Chapter two: An investigation into the situation of the Current teaching and learning English of Construction at Haiphong Private University.1 An overview of the teaching staff and the teaching of ESP at HPU.2 An overview of the current students of Construction at HPU.3 Materials currently used for the ESP course and general evaluation.
8 3 Chapter three: Data collection, findings and discussions.1 Defining target students.2 Formal interviews and class observation.2 Preliminary results and analysis.1 Analysis of the survey questionnaires for the students.1 The students’ evaluation on their study of General English .2 The students’ evaluation on their study of English for Specific Purposes.3 The students’ expectation from an ESP course.4 The students’ evaluation on the teacher’s teaching methods.5 The students’ evaluation on content and methodology of current textbook.6 The students’ evaluation on the design of the current textbook.7 The students’ evaluation on the timetable and the effectiveness of the textbook.8 The students’ proposed changes to the current textbook.2 Analysis of the survey questionnaire for the ESP teachers.1 The teachers’ evaluation on the students’ general English level.2 The teachers’ ideas on the students’ biggest challenge in their ESP course.3 The teachers’ expectation from the students after the ESP course.4 The teachers’ method to make the students interested before a lesson.5 The teachers’ evaluation on the design of the course book.6 The teachers’ evaluation on the effectiveness of the current textbook. 21 Chapter four: An analysis on the newly-edited textbook.2 The outline of the newly-edited textbook. 22 Chapter five: An evaluation on the newly-edited textbook.2 An analysis of the findings. Students’ ideas on the new textbook.
25 Question 1: How much do you like the new book? .25 Question 2: What do you like in the new book? .26 Question 3: How much does the new book interest you to learn?. 26 Question 4: How much effective is the new textbook in helping you learn the subject? .2 Teachers’ ideas on the new textbook. 27 Question 1: How much do you like the new book?. 28 Question 2: What do you like about the new textbook?.
28 Question 3: How much effective is the new textbook in helping the students learn the subject?. 28 Question 4: What are your ideas to better the new book?. ix 6 List of tables and charts I. List of tables Table 1: The students’ evaluation on their study of general English Table 2: The students’ evaluation on their study of English for Specific Purposes Table 3: The students’ evaluation on the teacher’s teaching methods Table 4: The students’ evaluation on the design of the current textbook Table 5: The teachers’ evaluation on the students’ biggest challenge in their ESP course Table 6: The teachers’ evaluation on the design of the current textbook Table 7: How much effective the new textbook is in helping students learn the subject Table 8: How much the teachers like the new textbook II.
List of charts Chart 1: The students' expectation from an ESP course Chart 2: The students’ evaluation on content and methodology of the current textbook Chart 3: What the student like most about the current textbook Chart 4: The students’ evaluation on the timetable and the effectiveness of the current textbook Chart 5: The students’ proposed changes to the current textbook Chart 6: The teachers’ evaluation on the students’ general English level Chart 7: The teachers’ expectation from the students after the ESP course Chart 8: The teachers’ method to make the students interested before a lesson Chart 9: The teachers’ evaluation on the effectiveness of the current textbook Chart 10: How much the students like the new textbook Chart 11: What the students like about the new textbook Chart 12: How much the new textbook interests the students to learn Chart 13: What the teachers like about the new textbook Chart 14: How much effective the new textbook is in helping the students learn the subject 7 1. Rationale The world has witnessed the increasing development of English teaching and learning for many years since the global integration, especially since English was used as the common language worldwide. The trend to communicate in English has a great effect on many countries including Vietnam because it has become a fact that being fluent in English greatly contributes to one’s success in applying for a good job. Like at many other universities nationwide, at Haiphong Private University learning general English for several terms has been regarded compulsory for all the non-major students right after they enter school.
In addition, when these students begin their last- year study they have to attend a course of English for Specific Purpose (ESP) in which the learning time is equivalent to 60 periods of forty-five minutes. This is the next step which they have to take to be successful in their job hunting later. Having been experienced in teaching English for the students of Construction Department at HPU for over the past many years, the author of this research has realized that the ESP textbook, which is currently used, has both advantages and disadvantages. In particular, when being asked for ideas on its quality in general, both teacher and student expressed different opinions in which the positive ones towards the current textbook did not outnumber the negative ones.
From this fact, she feels it is the very current textbook which needs evaluating then editing. Hopefully, the new book will partly make a positive change in the ESP learning of the students of Construction at HPU in the future to come. Objectives of the study The study is carried out with the aims at: -looking into the students’ English background -finding out the difficulties met by the students when learning with the current materials -evaluating the currently-adopted textbook English of Civil Engineering from the viewpoints of both ESP teachers of Department of Foreign Languages and last- year students of Construction at Haiphong Private University. -setting criteria for editing the book -editing the current textbook.
-assessing the newly-edited book 8 3. Methodologies To successfully complete the study, the following methods are employed: - Survey questionnaires designed for both ESP teachers and last-year students of Construction at Haiphong Private University who have experienced in using the book. - Formal interviews with those teachers and students regarding their experience in teaching and learning the textbook. - Direct class observations.
Among the above methods, survey questionnaire is the major instrument for data collection whereas the interviews and direct class observation serve as supplementary techniques with a view to getting more information for any further confirmation of the evaluation findings. 9 Chapter one Literature review 1.1 Textbook, course book and materials The commonly used terms in English Language Teaching are textbook, course book and materials which are defined differently by different authors. Generally, textbook is defined as a teaching tool which presents the subject matter set by the curriculum. A university textbook is required to contain the complete overview of the subject, including the theories, as well as to be of a more permanent character.
Therefore, a textbook is closely related to the fixed curriculum and it functions as the basis in the teaching and learning process. According to Tomlinson (1998, p.xi), materials is understood in a broad sense because it covers both textbook and course book, “materials is anything which is used to help teach language learners”. It can be “in the form of a textbook, a workbook, a cassette, a CD-Rom, a video, a photocopied handout, a newspaper: anything which presents or informs about the language being learned.” The term “course book” can be understood as “a textbook which provides the core materials for a course.” A course book is specifically selected by a teacher to suit the teaching and learning purposes in a certain teaching context, in other words, a particular course. A course book may be accompanied by other supplementary materials.
However, the three terms textbook, course book and materials can be used interchangeably; therefore, in the study, “English of Civil Engineering” can be referred to as the above mentioned terms. The roles of materials in a language program When discussing the roles of materials in a language classrooms, different authors express different attitudes, either positive or negative. Particularly, Littlejohn (in Hutchinson & Torres, 1994, p.316), a representative for the group of authors who have negative attitudes towards the role of textbooks in a language program, claims that textbooks “reduce the teacher’s role to one of managing or overseeing preplanned events”. However, there are still quite a number of scholars recognizing the importance of textbooks.
A textbook can serve different purposes for teachers: as a core resource, a source of supplementary materials, an inspiration for classroom activities and even the curriculum itself (Garinger, 2002). Richards and Rodgers (cited 10 in Nunan, 1991) view instructional materials as detailed specifications of content, and guidance to teachers on both the intensity of coverage and the amount of attention demanded by particular content or pedagogical tasks.66) explains that materials provide a basis for the content of the lesson, the appropriate proportion of skills taught, and the type of language practice students take part in. Besides, useful teaching materials provide great assistance to inexperienced teachers or poorly trained teachers (Nunan, 1991, in McGrath, 2002, p. It is obvious that in many cases, teachers and students rely much on textbooks and the textbooks control the content, method as well as procedure of learning and teaching.
Therefore, to some extent, materials are the center of instruction and one of the most important factors influencing what happens in the classrooms.1 Definition of materials evaluation In his overview, Hutchinson (1987, p.96) claims that “evaluation is a matter of judging the fitness of something for a particular purpose”. And by extension, materials evaluation is a matter of judging the fitness of materials against specific teaching and learning goals. More specifically, Tomlinson.xi) defines materials evaluation as “the systemic appraisal of the value of materials in relation to their objectives and to the objectives of the learners using them”. The focus of materials evaluation in this point of view is put on measuring the value of materials in a systemic approach to work out whether or not the language points of the materials are potentially suitable to the learners and whether the materials can meet the demands of learners.
Obviously, with his learner-centered approach, the learners’ opinion plays an important part in the process of evaluating the materials.28) states that “evaluation is a whole process which begins with determining what information to gather and ends with bringing about the change in current activities or influencing future ones”.