ĐÁNH GIÁ CHƯƠNG TRÌNH dạy đọc 1 CHO SINH VIÊN năm THỨ NHẤT hệ CHẤT LƯỢNG CAO KHOA NN&VH ANH mỹ ĐHNN ĐHQGHN

The reading course for the first year fast track students in Hanoiuniversity of Languages and International Studies HULIS hasbeen adapted many times since the establishment of the Depart

Evaluation plays a crucial role in the teaching and learning activity

In its narrow sense, evaluation involves teachers’ assessment ofstudents’ achievement and students’ judgment of teachers’performance More broadly, evaluation can provide a helpfuldatabase for teachers to build up their initial lesson plans, forexternal assessors to judge the components of a course and forresearchers to start their work Therefore, in order to build up validdata folder, evaluation should be treated seriously and carefully

The reading course for the first year fast track students in Hanoiuniversity of Languages and International Studies (HULIS) hasbeen adapted many times since the establishment of the Department

on the way of finding an ideal course satisfying the expectation ofthe teaching staff The course introduced this year is the latestversion resulted from the innovation of the two previous theme-based and task-based ones The evaluation of the course helps to

identify the strength and the weakness of the course, contributing tothe staff’s decision-making about the ideal one.

It is in this view that the study seeks to evaluate the reading course 1for the first year fast track students at HULIS Specifically, itinvolves the evaluation of the course syllabus and the coursematerial with a view to confirming the potency of the course as well

as proposing implications to innovate the course Hopefully, theinnovation would bring the course closer to the ideal one expected

by the teaching staff of the Department

First of all, I owe my indebtedness to my supervisor Ms Phung Ha Thanh, MA for her valuable guidance throughout the process of this research.

I would like to express my sincere thanks to the teaching staff of the Fast track program, especially to Ms Nguyen Thu Trang for their providing

me with related documents and suggestions for my research, without which the project would not have been accomplished.

A special thank would also go to the two groups of first year fast track students who took part in the lessons, contributed to the idea budget and spent time completing my questionnaires The information collected was

a precious source of data to make the research fruitful.

Lastly, I would like to express my gratitude to my family for their support and encouragements from the beginning to the end of the research process.

PART 1 INTRODUCTION

Evaluation is especially important in education, or morespecifically, in the teaching and learning of a language At theoutset, the evaluating process helps teachers and students determinelearning achievements or satisfaction Later on, the evaluationoutcomes offer a good data base for novice teachers to developinitial lesson plans and teaching practice, and for interested teachers

to conduct further research and improvement (Kiely and Dickins, 2005, p 5)

Rea-For this reason, evaluation must be done in a well-planned validway For example, in order to judge the value of a language course

or program, the evaluation must “include all the practices andinstruments involved in gathering and compiling the data necessary

to make judgments” about it (Brown and Rodgers, 2005, p 227).Teachers may do evaluation to check the effectiveness of the coursematerials, of the classroom activities, of the students’ learning or

such (Brown and Rodgers, 2005, p 228) Only by doing this wouldthe evaluation “confirm the validity of the classroom practice” whenany partial elements of the course are satisfactory and “form abasis” for changes when they are not (Germaine et al., 1992).

Knowing the importance of course evaluation, the current researchwas conducted to evaluate Reading course 1 – the first readingcourse for first year students in the fast-track program, University oflanguages and International Studies The evaluation based itself onthe following context

Reading, in the belief shared among the teaching staff of the fasttrack program, is of great importance to Fast-track students In theera of informatization when knowledge has a short life, studentsneed to read well to form a good basis for their self-study as well asfor their study in class Therefore, since its establishment in 2001,the fast track teaching group has piloted many versions of readingcourse for their freshmen A skill-based reading course applied inthe beginning years succeeded in providing students with sufficient

reading sub-skills to develop reading on their own, yet at the sametime it failed to boost their background knowledge A theme-basedreading course that followed produced students with a goodvocabulary pool but without an adequate understanding of thereading strategies to become critical readers All the precedingversions of the reading course showed their deficiencies, whichurges the staff to come up with a new one capable of combining theadvantages of its elder brothers and efficiently dealing with theirdisadvantages

Reading course 1 is the newest version resulted from the piloting ofdifferent types of prior versions The course is the meeting point of

a skill-based approach and a theme-based one Whether this would

be the ideal course in demand to be continued in the following years

is open to question An evaluation of the course is, therefore, calledfor as a “means analysis” to gain information for the answer(Germaine et al., 1992)

The research aims at analyzing and evaluating the reading coursefor first-year fast track students Specifically, it consists of an

evaluation of the syllabus and the material.

Hopefully, the research would find answers to the followingquestions:

In terms of the satisfaction of students’ needs:

 To what extent does the course meet students’ need in terms of language providing and skills developing, from the perspective of the students?

 To what extent does the course meet students’ need in terms of language providing and skills developing, from the perspective of the teacher?

In terms of achievements of objectives:

 To what extent does the course satisfy all the objectives set by the teaching staff of the Fast-track Program, from the perspective of the students?

 To what extent does the course satisfy all the objectives set by

the teaching staff of the Fast-track Program, from the perspective of the teacher?

In terms of course assignments:

 How effective are the assignments in helping the students achieve their goals, from the perspective of the students?

 How effective are the assignments in checking students’ progress, from the perspective of the teacher?

In terms of course book:

 How suitable is the course book to the learners’ level, from the perspective of the students?

 How suitable is the course book to the learners’ level, from

the perspective of the teacher?

 How effective is the course book in helping the students achieve the goals and objectives, from the perspective of the students?

 How effective is the course book in helping the students achieve the goals and objectives, from the perspective of the teacher?

The research was conducted to evaluate the first reading course,specifically the syllabus and the course book, for first year fasttrack student at University of Language and International Study(HULIS), Vietnam National University (VNU) Participating inthe research are 50 fast track freshmen of the two school years:2007-2008 and 2008-2009, the researcher as the course designerand another teacher in charge of teaching it The evaluation tookplace in the first semester of the school year 2007-2008 in theduration of 4 months from September to December (phase 1:initiation) and repeated itself in the first semester of the school

year 2008-2009 (phase 2: adaptation) It was expected to workout the data to validate the good elements of the course and pointout the place for course adaptation and innovation.

PART 2 DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

Theoretical background for the thesis arose from works of Williams(1984), Aeersold (1997), Nuttall (2000), Aebersold, 1997, Breen,1984

Reading has been approached in view of the Bottom up, the Topdown and the Interactive school The Bottom up theory (Aebersold,

1997, p.18) sees the text as the combination of phrases, which,similarly, are composed of words The Top down approach arguesthat readers are those who have their own background knowledge,their own assumptions and expectations that they bring along andrefer to when reading a text The interactive school, which is

currently approved of by many researchers as well as educators, saythat the reading process is made up from both the Bottom up andTop down approach, either alternately or at the same time(Aebersold, 1997)

Evaluating a course, which includes the evaluation of its content,design and methods, is an important component that needs to bebuilt into the structure of the course itself With course evaluation, ateacher can find out the way to “develop courses and modifyexisting ones” “in ways that reflect her experience and the valuesand priorities that are products of her experience as well as theprevailing wisdom around her” (Graves, 2006, p.1-2)

Both teachers and learners need to evaluate the learning activity, thesyllabus and other aspect of the learning and teaching activity.Narrowly, it is for students to judge, to make comments on theteaching and learning activity (which is important for the teachers tolook at for making changes/ innovations) and adjust their ownlearning More broadly, teachers needs evaluation “because it can

provide a wealth of information to use for the future direction ofclassroom practice, for the planning of the courses, and for themanagement of learning tasks and students” (Germaine et al., 1992,

COURSE DESCRIPTION: PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION AND ACTION PLAN

2.1 Action research

Action research, whose main function is to assist the “reflectivecycle”, was chosen in the current study (Wallace, M 1998, p 18).Firstly, action research is the more suitable research methodologybecause the core purpose of the study is to “evaluate” the courseespecially when it is done by practitioners or insiders in the setting(Nunan, 2005) Secondly, according to Dick and Swepson (1997),action research methods are most likely to be appropriate whenteachers have to be responsive to the changing demands of asituation- in this case is the constant call for an official readingcourse for first year fast track students Thirdly, action research is awise choice for this study because it involves “small-scaleintervention” when specific problems are identified; specific actionsare implemented to bring about the changes and solutions to solvethe problems (Nunan, 2005) Specifically, in the current research,all the interesting/problematic area of the course are stored andviewed in a structured way for “small group professional practice”(Wallace, M 1998, p 18) Finally, the context of the research cansatisfy the multi-source requirement of doing an action researchwhen teachers and students can collaborate with each other to carryout many research instruments to evaluate the course In brief, the

action research approach is carefully chosen for and applied in thestudy with a hope to bring out a full picture of the course, formingthe “action research spiral” in the fast track program (Howard &Eckhardt, 2004).

Mixed methods

Mixed-methods, as stated by Teddlie and Tashakkotri (cited inMertens, 2005), include both quantitative and qualitative features inthe design, data collection and analysis Researchers have beenusing mixed methods in cases when the purpose of the research iscomplex and when one single method cannot provide them withvarious dimensions of the research problem (Morse, Newman,Ridenour, Newman and DeMarco) In this current research, theresearch applies mixed methods with a hope to have a “completepicture” of the data (Morse, 2002, cited in Mertens, 2005, p 292).The researcher has her own reasons for orientating this mixedmethod

2.2 Participants

The research was conducted with 50 fast track freshmen of the twoschool years: 2007-2008 and 2008-2009, the researcher as thecourse designer and another teacher in charge of teaching it

2.3 The setting of the research

The Fast track Program in ULISVNU is a special programsponsored by Vietnam National University The teaching andlearning in the Fast track program follow the learner-centerapproach, aiming at developing students’ English proficiencythrough the four skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking.Because of its significance, the teaching of the reading skill in theFast track program forms for itself a unique set of requirements As

a result, the school-year 2007-2008 saw the introduction of the newreading course for first-year students – Reading 1 An evaluation iscalled for to validate the new course

2.4 Course Designing Process

The course was designed following the framework of coursedevelopment processes in Graves (2006, p 13)

2.5 Design of the course in the initiation phase

Reading 1 is a course that sets the foundation for the next readingcourses in the Fast track program and that targets at PET level Thecourse adopts the learner-centered approach and learning – by –doing theories supported by Felder and Brent (2003).The course

was designed following the eight principles proposed by Brown(2002)

2.6 Design of the course in the adaptation phase

The majority of the course features are kept unchanged in theadaptation phases, including the course objectives, the facilities, thecourse principles, and the framework of the syllabus Alterationswere made to some certain items of the course

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY

The research was done with the help of the following instruments

self-Interview

Test score analysis

The steps of the research were summarized as follows:

Questionnaires Students’ diaries Test score analysis

CHAPTER 4: RESULT FINDINGS, IMPLICATION AND FUTURE ACTION

4.1 Summary of findings for the Initiation phase

Finding 1: A small number of students could not identify theirneeds

Finding 2: Students thought their attitude goals were well met,followed by the reading strategies goals However, they were notsatisfied with the World knowledge goals

Finding 3: A number of students were not aware of the facilities,thus, could not utilize them to support their study

Finding 4: The group project was highly appreciated whereas theIndividual Portfolio was problematic

Finding 5: With regard to the course book, all reading strategieswere well chosen;, two topics in the course were too difficult to thestudents (namely Science and Technology); especially, thegrammar really needed consideration

Reflection for the Initiation phase

From the researcher’s own evaluation, the course can be marked asgood, but subject to adaptation and improvement

4.2 Summary of findings for the Adaptation phase