An evaluation of the material reward for the first-year non-English major students at Hai Phong Private University = Đánh giá giáo trình reward dành cho sinh

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Figure 1: The materials evaluation process by Tom Hutchinson & Alan Waters Table 1: Students’ English learning time Table 2: Teachers’ and students’ assessment

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ MINH NGUYỆT

AN EVALUATION OF THE MATERIAL “REWARD” FOR THE FIRST-YEAR NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS

AT HAIPHONG PRIVATE UNIVERSITY

(Đánh giá giáo trình “Reward” dành cho sinh viên năm thứ nhất không chuyên

của trường Đại học Dân lập Hải Phòng)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology

Code: 60 14 10

HA NOI, 2010

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ MINH NGUYỆT

AN EVALUATION OF THE MATERIAL “REWARD” FOR THE FIRST-YEAR NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS

AT HAIPHONG PRIVATE UNIVERSITY

(Đánh giá giáo trình “Reward” dành cho sinh viên năm thứ nhất không chuyên

của trường Đại học Dân lập Hải Phòng)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology

Code: 60 14 10

Supervisor: Vũ Thị Thu Thủy, M.A

HA NOI, 2010

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION ……… i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……… ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS……… iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS……… vi

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES……… vii

Part A: Introduction……… 1

1 Rationale of the study……… 1

2 Aims of the study……… 1

3 Methods of the study……… 2

4 Scope of the study……… 2

5 Design of the study……… 2

Part B: Development……… 4

Chapter 1: Literature review……… 4

1 Textbook, course book and materials……… 4

1.1 Definitions……… 4

1.2 The role of materials in a language program……… 4

2 Materials evaluation……… 5

2.1 Definition……… 6

2.2 Types of materials evaluation……… 6

2.3 Criteria of materials evaluation……… 7

2.4 Materials evaluation procedure……… 8

3 Materials adaptation……… 8

4 An overview of Communicative Language Teaching……… 9

4.1 Communicative competence……… 9

4.2 Communicative Language Teaching……… 10

4.2.1 Definition of CLT……… 10

4.2.2 Principles of CLT……… 11

4.2.3 Good points and limitations of CLT……… 11

Chapter 2: The study……… 13

1 Description of data collection instruments and procedures……… 13

1.1 Survey questionnaires……… 13

1.1.1 Participants……… 13

1.1.2 Description of the survey questionnaires……… 13

1.2 Formal interviews and class observation……… 14

2 Preliminary results and analysis ……… 14

2.1 Students’ English background and their expectations from the course…… 14

2.1.1 Students’ English learning time and their results ……… 14

2.1.2 Students’ difficulties in learning English……… 16

2.1.3 Students’ expectations from an English course……… 17

2.2 Students’ improvement after learning the textbook……… 17

2.2.1 Students’ level of fluency in language points……… 17

2.2.2 Students’ tasks completion ……… 19

2.2.2.1 Students’ reading tasks completion……… 20

2.2.2.2 Students’ writing tasks completion……… 20

2.2.2.3 Students’ speaking tasks completion……… 22

2.2.2.4 Students’ listening tasks completion……… 23

2.2.2.5 Students’ satisfaction level in each skill and teachers’ assessment on their skill improvement……… 24

2.3 Teachers’ and students’ evaluation on the content of the materials……… 25

2.3.1 Topics of the textbook……… 25

2.3.2 Skills allocation ……… 26

2.3.3 Aims of the units……… 26

2.3.4 Tasks and exercises in the textbook……… 27

2.4 Teachers’ and students’ evaluation on the methodology of the book……… 28

2.5 Teachers and students’ opinions on the textbook’s appearance and current time for teaching and learning the textbook……… 29

Chapter 3: An evaluation of the textbook “Reward” for the first-year non-English major students at Haiphong Private University……… 31

1 Materials requirements of the course……… 31

1.1.Objectives……… 31

1.2.Contents……… 31

1.3.Methodology……… 32

2 Analysis of the material “Reward Pre – intermediate” ……… 33

2.1 Objectives of the material……… 33

2.2 Contents of the material……… 34

2.3 Methodology of the textbook……… 35

3 Evaluation findings ……… 36

4 Suggestions for the textbook’s adaptation……… 38

4.1 Supplementing……… 38

4.2 Editing……… 39

4.3 Expanding……… 39

4.4 Personalizing……… 40

4.5 Simplifying……… 40

4.6 Localizing or modifying cultural/ situational content……… 41

PART C: Conclusion……… 42

REFERENCES ……… 43 APPENDICES……… I

Appendix 1……… I

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CLT: Communicative Language Teaching

ELT: English Language Teaching

ESP: English for Specific Purposes

GE: General English

HPU: Haiphong Private University

Ss: Students

Ts: Teachers

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure 1: The materials evaluation process (by Tom Hutchinson & Alan Waters)

Table 1: Students’ English learning time

Table 2: Teachers’ and students’ assessment of students’ results in learning English Table 3: Students’ difficulties in learning English

Table 4: Students’ expectations from an English course

Table 5: Students’ level of fluency in language points

Table 6: Students’ reading tasks completion

Table 7: Students’ writing tasks completion

Table 8: Students’ speaking tasks completion

Table 9: Students’ listening tasks completion

Table 10: Students’ satisfaction level in each skill

Table 11: Teachers’ point of view on students’ improvement in each skill

Table 12: Students’ point of view on the aims of the units

Table 13: Teachers’ and students’ opinions on the tasks and exercises of the textbook Table 14: Teachers’ and students’ points of view on the methodology of the book Table 15: Teachers’ and students’ opinions towards the layout of the textbook and the

current time for teaching and learning the book Table 16: The distribution of tasks in each unit

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

Responding to the changes brought by the international integration tendency, mastering

foreign languages, especially English, has become one of the prerequisites for success English

is, hence, necessary for both undergraduates and on-the-job employees The demand of English study has resulted in the development of ELT industry as well as ELT materials Publishing commercial textbooks is considered a million – dollar industry and serves as an abundant materials resource so that English teachers and learners have quite a wide range of selection of the textbooks that are suitable for their own purposes

Regarded as “an inevitable teaching partner” and “the visible heart of any ELT program” by Sheldon (1988, p.237), ELT materials in general and textbooks in particular have been proving themselves one of the most important factors in every English class, functioning as the teaching and learning tool, the tutor, guidebook as well as gauge However, among various textbooks commercially available in the market, choosing the one that is appropriate to the students‟ learning purposes and that can help students enhance their communicative competence is not an easy job It is, therefore, necessary for the teachers to be good at assessment skill for the evaluation of materials so as to ensure that their students can get much benefit from their textbooks The importance of materials evaluation to the teachers of English

in an ELT program has urged me to choose it as the theme of this study

The second reason for this choice originated from the fact that in the recent two years, there have been different opinions of both teachers and learners on the actual effectiveness of the

textbook Reward Pre – intermediate by Simon Greenall currently used in teaching English for

first – year non – English major students at Haiphong Private University The textbook itself has revealed many potentials as well as shortcomings in the teaching and learning environment of HPU It is really essential that we should conduct an evaluation of the textbook to assess its appropriateness against the learning purposes and then find out the solutions to improve the quality of English teaching in the university

2 Aims of the study

The purpose of the research projects are:

- To investigate the evaluation methods discussed by a number of researchers and choose the most appropriate one for the project

- To evaluate the currently-adopted textbook Reward Pre – intermediate from the viewpoints

of both teachers of Foreign Languages Department and first – year non - English major students at Haiphong Private University

- To give suggestions for the textbook‟s adaptations

3 Methods of the study

The following methods are employed to collect data for the study:

- Survey questionnaires designed for both teachers and first – year non – English major students at Haiphong Private University who have experienced using the book

- Formal interviews with the teachers and students regarding their experience in teaching and learning the textbook

- Direct class observations

Among these, survey questionnaire serves as the major instrument for data collection while the interviews and direct class observation are applied with an aim to get more information for any confirmation of the evaluation findings

4 Scope of the study

The study limits itself at evaluating the student‟s book, excluding the accompanied teacher‟s book, workbook and cassette tape with the focus on the evaluation of post-used textbook The evaluation criteria enclosed in the thesis is largely based on Communicative Language Teaching approach and the objectives set in the syllabus of the first and second semester designed for first – year non - English major students at Haiphong Private University

5 Design of the study

The thesis is divided into three parts:

Part A Introduction presents the rationale, aims, scope, methods and design of the study

Part B Development consists of three chapters

Chapter 1 handles the literature review of the issues relating to materials, materials evaluation and adaptation and CLT approach Definitions of materials, materials evaluation, evaluation types, models and criteria, its role in materials development and materials adaptation have been discussed there Also, readers are provided with a brief introduction of communicative language teaching, the approach that is applied in the evaluation of the textbook Reward Pre – intermediate, in this chapter

Chapter 2 is devoted to the analysis of the survey questionnaire of the textbook evaluation implemented at Haiphong Private University in which objectives, description, data collection and analysis are discussed in detail

Chapter 3 deals with the evaluation of the textbook Reward Pre – intermediate for the first – year non – English major students at Haiphong Private University in terms of the

materials requirement of the course, the analysis of the textbook, and gives out the evaluation

findings as well as encloses suggestions for the textbook adaptation

Part C Conclusion summarizes all the obtained results and includes suggestions for further study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: Literature review

1 Textbook, course book and materials

1.1 Definitions

Textbook, course book and materials are commonly - used terms in ELT and they are defined

in many ways by different authors

Textbook is generally 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 A textbook seen from this view is closely related to the fixed curriculum and it serves as the basis in the teaching and learning process

The term “course book” is used by Tomlinson (1998, p.ix) to refer to “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 Regarding the definition of materials, Tomlinson (1998, p.xi) claims that 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.” From his viewpoints, materials can be understood in a broader sense because it covers both textbook and course book

The three terms textbook, course book and materials can be used interchangeably; therefore, in the thesis, the subject Reward Pre – intermediate by Simon Greenall can be referred to as the above mentioned terms

1.2 The role of materials in a language program

The role of materials in language teaching has been discussed by different authors with two main opposing points of view For some, commercially available materials may “deskill teachers and rob them of their capacity to think professionally and respond to their students

(Crawford, 2002, p.80) 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 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 Richards (2001, p.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.11) 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

Confirming the important role of teaching materials, Hutchinson and Torres (1994, p 315) state “…No teaching-learning situation, it seems, is complete until it has its relevant textbook”, adding that textbooks can support teachers through potentially disturbing and threatening change processes, demonstrate new and/or untried methodologies, introduce change gradually, and create scaffolding upon which teachers can build a more creative methodology of their own

2 Materials evaluation

Despite the acknowledged importance of materials, Cunningsworth (1984, p.15) warns

“course materials for English should be seen as the teacher‟s servant and not his master”, which means that materials should not be regarded as a controller but an assistant of the teaching activities It is the teachers, those in a crucial position in language teaching and learning, who are responsible for choosing suitable content and teaching methods to their students Their assessment skill is, therefore, becoming more and more important in sorting out the most appropriate materials among the masses of books available in the market

2.1 Definition

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

Similar to Hutchinson (1987, p.96) but more specifically, Tomlinson (1998, p.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

Let us have a look back Hutchinson‟s viewpoint (1987, p.96) He affirms that “evaluation is not simply a process of obtaining information; it is also a decision – making process” while Dudley-Evans and St John (1998, p.28) claim “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” Generalizing from many opinions of different researchers regarding the definition of materials evaluation, it is viewed as a process of deciding whether the materials is suitable to the teaching and learning objectives based on collected data and suggesting actions to make changes

2.2 Types of materials evaluation

A number of researchers including Tomlinson, McGrath, Ellis and Cunningsworth use the similar terms when discussing the types of materials evaluation

According to Tomlinson (1998, p.xi), evaluation can be “pre – use” and focused on

“prediction of potential value”, it can be “whist – use” and focused on awareness and description of what the learners are actually doing whilst the materials are being used”, and it can be “post – use” and focused on analysis of what happened as a result of using the materials McGrath (2002, p.14) offers the way of classifying materials evaluation as a cyclical process including pre-use, in-use and post-use evaluation According to him, pre-use evaluation establishes potential suits, in-use evaluation gathers data on planning decisions,

implementation and response and this may stimulate preliminary reconsiderations and post-use evaluation, considered “the most reliable when it draws on the experiences of several teachers and several groups of learners” by McGrath (2002, p.15), uses data on in-course use and data

on effects to assess the suitability of selection

The focus of the thesis is put on post – use evaluation to work out the value of the materials by drawing on the teaching and learning experience of teachers and first – year non – English

major students at Haiphong Private University

2.3 Criteria of materials evaluation

One of the most difficult problems of any materials evaluators is to identify the evaluation criteria

According to Ur (1996, in McGrath, 2002, p.31), there are two types of criteria including

general (i.e the essential features of any good teaching – learning material) and specific (or context-related) criteria

For more specific criteria, Tomlinson (1999, in McGrath, 2002, p.32) suggests the four categories including media – specific criteria which relate to the particular means used, content – specific criteria which relate to the nature of the materials, age – specific criteria, or

in other words, the suitability of the materials and lastly local criteria which means the appropriateness of the materials for the particular environment in which it is to be used

Hutchinson (1987, p.99-104) suggests a very detailed evaluation checklist with five main

criteria regarding audience, aims, content, methodology and other criteria According to Hutchinson (1987), the criterion of audience refers to the target learners‟ background including ages, gender, nationality, major, interests, etc., aims refer to the purpose of learners‟ course and materials, content refers to language points, proportion of work on each macro and micro-skill, text-types and the subject matters, methodology is concerned with learners‟

expectations from the course, kinds of tasks, teaching techniques and the aids available for use,

and other criteria include price range and the possibly available quantities of the materials

The evaluation checklist in the thesis is largely based on the above five criteria with some suitable adjustments so as to fit the research setting

2.4 Materials evaluation procedure

Hutchinson (1987, p.97) suggests the following materials evaluation process

Figure 1: The materials evaluation process (by Tom Hutchinson & Alan Waters (1987, p.97)

In order to carry out the above evaluation process, it is necessary to work out the objective and subjective criteria Then, Hutchinson (1987, p.104) also suggests some other steps that need to

be followed in using the checklist, that is, identifying the evaluator‟s requirement, analyze the materials and compare the findings from objective and subjective analyses by awarding points

At the same time, he reminds that the highest number of points does not necessarily indicate the most suitable materials as the points may be concentrated on one area

What realizations of the

criteria do you want in

your course?

Objective analysis How does the material being evaluated realize the

criteria?

Matching How far does the material match your needs?

the inappropriateness of the materials such as “lack of authenticity, out-of-datedness, linguistics inaccuracies, etc.” (Madsen & Bowen, 1978, in McGrath, 2002, p.64)

Tomlinson (1998, p xi) defines materials adaptation as an act of “making changes to materials

in order to improve them or to make them more suitable for a particular type of learner Adaptation can include reducing, adding, omitting, modifying and supplementing Most teachers adapt materials every time they use a textbook in order to maximize the value of the book for their particular learners”

There are also a number of other techniques for teachers to employ when they want to adapt materials such as “supplementing, editing, expanding, personalizing, simplifying, modernizing, localizing or modifying cultural/ situational content” (Madsen and Bowen, 1978, in McGrath,

2002, p.64) or “retaining, rejecting, re-ordering and modification” (Ellis,1986, p.47, in McGrath, 2002, p 64)

4 An overview of Communicative Language Teaching

Emerging in the 1970s and 1980s, a new teaching style namely CLT has been widely adopted

by many educators around the world It is currently used as a dominant approach in teaching

English in Haiphong Private University and the evaluation criteria in the checklist are also largely concerned with this approach; therefore, a brief introduction of CLT is absolutely necessary

4.1 Communicative competence:

Informed by Hymes (1972), the notion of communicative competence is viewed as the contrast

to Chomsky‟s theory of competence Chomsky (1965, p.3) claims that

Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker – listener, in a completely homogeneous speech community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions … in applying his knowledge of language in actual performance

(in Brumfit, C J & Johnson K., 1979, p.5) For Chomsky, “competence” is simply understood as “knowledge of language system”, or in other words, “grammatical knowledge” This point of view seems to be much narrower than Hymes‟s when he claims that “rules of use without which the rules of grammar would be useless” (Hymes , 1972, p.15, in Brumfit, C J & Johnson K., 1979, p.14) Put it in other words, if a speaker made grammatical sentences without considering the circumstances in

which they were being used, he would be considered deranged The notion of “communicative

competence” offered by Hymes includes several sectors such as possibility (or grammaticality

used by Chomsky) which is concerned with whether a language permits a structure as

grammatical or rejects it as ungrammatical, feasibility which is concerned with whether a grammatically possible structure can be feasible, appropriateness which is concerned with

whether a grammatically possible and feasible structure can be appropriate to a certain context

and accepted usage which is concerned with whether a sentence which is possible, feasible,

appropriate in fact occurs

4.2 Communicative language teaching

… The weak version… stresses the importance of providing learners with opportunities to use

their English for communicative purposes and, characteristically, attempts to integrate such activities into a wider program of language teaching The strong version….advances the claim that language is acquired through communication, so that it is not merely a question of activating an existing but inert knowledge of the language, but of stimulating the development of the language system itself

(in Le Van Canh (2004, p.80) Most of the definitions of CLT are based on the “weak version” of CLT “favoring interaction among small numbers of learners in order to maximize their talking time” (Le Van Canh, 2004,

p 80) Inferring from the literature, CLT can be defined as “an approach that focuses on the interaction among learners to achieve the goal of developing their communicative competence”

CLT is developed basing on the theory of language as communication, therefore, its goal is to

create a realistic teaching and learning environment where learners can develop their communicative competence as well as develop procedures for teaching of the four language skills that acknowledge the interdependence of language and communication (Le Van Canh,

2004, p.79) In this approach, it is believed that “skill” is much more important than “content”

4.2.2 Principles of CLT

Three major principles of CLT include communication principle, task principle and

meaningfulness principle, of which, the first emphasizes activities that involve real communication promote learning, the second stresses that activities in which language is used for carrying out meaningful tasks promote learning and the third claims that language that is meaningful to the learners support the learning process (Le Van Canh, 2004, p.83)

More specifically, Richards and Roger (2001, p.172) suggest a diverse set of principles that reflect a communicative view of language and language learning as follow

- Learners learn a language through using it to communicate It is obvious to see that this principle is quite necessary in CLT because its goal is to develop learners’ communicative competence How is it enhanced without communication?

- Authentic and meaningful communication should be the goal of classroom activities One

way to assist learners in promoting their competence is to involve them in the classroom activities that are realistic and meaningful

- Fluency is an important dimension of communication In the light of CLT, much attention is

paid to fluency but not accuracy like other approaches

- Communication involves the integration of different language skills, that is, CLT focuses on

the combination of all the language skills without any special priority given to a particular skill

- Learning is a process of creative construction and involves trial and error Applying this approach, teachers may become facilitators assisting the communication process among participants in the classroom and helping learners correct their mistakes in an appropriate way Errors made by learners are welcome because that serve as a good way to promote their fluency

4.2.3 Good points and limitations of CLT

CLT has manifested itself to be the most productive approach in ELT till now because it incorporates many of the progressive characteristics of the previous applied methodologies while at the same time avoiding their disadvantages In the light of CLT, the traditional

“presentation – practice – production” model is recommended to be replaced by a more top –

down model where learners begin with a communicative task which is monitored by the teacher who is also responsible for error correction (Le Van Canh, 2004, p.85)

It is undeniable that CLT has quite a lot of advantages in promoting learners‟ ability in using language to communicate, however, some limitations of the approach also need to be taken into consideration According to Le Van Canh (2004, p.86-87), firstly, it is obvious that CLT

is not always appropriate in any contexts and cultures A school culture of teacher – centered classrooms with a focus on transmission of knowledge will have been influenced in part by wider cultural notions of the teacher‟s authority as expert and leader Secondly, things like rote-learning, memorization, display questions and teacher talk mean bad with CLT while in fact none of them is bad Thirdly, the notion of “communicative competence” only applies to the competence in the first language of native speakers and cannot be transferred to foreign language teaching contexts Put it in other way, communicative competence can mean different things for different groups of foreign learners Finally, even though CLT rejects the theory of “structuralism” which was supposed to be based on behaviorism, its communicative goals are all described in typical behaviorist terms

No teaching method or approach proves itself to be the best Consequently, when applying CLT to ELT, teachers should use their knowledge of context, goals and characteristics of a specific groups of learners so as to take advantages of CLT‟s benefits in motivating learners in their study

Chapter 2: The study

1 Description of data collection instruments and procedures

The author also found it necessary to give a brief introduction of the surveyed teachers and students as well as the English course in the university itself Non – English major students at Haiphong Private University are scheduled to study English in five terms, two of which are for general English with the materials “Reward Pre – intermediate” by Simon Greenall and the last three are spent on their ESP Regarding surveyed students, they come from class QT1301, XD1303, MT1301 and VH1302 Those students are from different cities and provinces in the country; consequently, their level of English is not the same Ten teachers taking part in the survey are all experienced in teaching general English using the textbook “Reward Pre – intermediate” by Simon Greenall for two years in a row In addition, they have all completed

or pursuing master courses Though being young at age, the teachers have been adequately trained to teach and evaluate the materials; therefore, their answers to the questionnaires are reasonably reliable

1.1.2 Description of the survey questionnaires

The survey questionnaires are designed for the teachers and students separately

Questionnaire 1 (for the students) includes five sections Section 1 with three questions aims

at discovering the students‟ English background and their expectations from the English course at the university Meanwhile, the last four sections deal with the materials‟ appropriateness in terms of objectives, contents, methodology and some other aspects in

comparison with the course as well as the students‟ expectations Section 2 with three

questions tries to find out the students‟ improvement in language points, tasks completion and

their satisfaction level towards their advance in each language skill Section 3 consists of five

questions aiming at getting the students‟ opinions about the content of the materials including

the topics, skills allocation in each lesson and practice exercises Section 4 puts its focus on

finding out the appropriateness of the methodology of the assessed textbook Finally, the students‟ opinions about some other features of the book such as its layout, its organization,

the usefulness of its appendices and vocabulary list are all surveyed in section 5 with three

questions

Questionnaire 2 (for the teachers) is the same to the students‟ in terms of the objectives

1.2 Formal interviews and class observation

As mentioned above, the survey questionnaire serves as the key research method; however, in order to be able to get firm conclusion from the questionnaire results, it is essential to conduct formal interviews with teachers and students as well as class observation in the class QT1301, XD1303, MT1301 and VH1302 where the survey questionnaires are completed by the students

Formal interviews and class observation will be employed as the supplementary methods to ensure that the results of the survey as well as the findings of the study are reasonably reliable

2 Preliminary results and analysis

The results of the survey and analysis are to be viewed basing on the criteria of target learners, objectives, content, methodology and some other aspects as ordered in the questionnaires, accompanied with the comparison between the teachers‟ and students‟ answers towards each item in the questionnaire

2.1 Students’ English background and their expectations from the course

2.1.1 Students’ English learning time and their results

It is necessary for the teachers to get to know their students‟ background in English so as to find out the most appropriate teaching methods One of the main factors affecting the English learning results is the length of time they study English, which is clearly shown in Table 1 below

Ss‟ starting point Primary school Secondary school High school Never

Table 1: Students’ English learning time

From Table 1, it can be seen that the students‟ factual time of English learning is quite different Only five of 110 students affirmed that they had started learning English since they were at their primary schools 19 students, making up 17 %, studied English at their secondary schools while a large number of the surveyed students (67 %) said that they learnt English at their high schools There are even seven students, equivalent to 6%, who have never experienced learning English When being interviewed, those students said that it is, for example, French or even Russian to be their compulsory subjects at school but not English With the above information about the students‟ English learning time, it is much easier to understand their own assessments on their English level

Degree Excellent Good Average Under average

Table 2: Teachers’ and students’ assessment of students’ results in learning English

Table 2 figured out the fact that both teachers and students had a similar assessment on the starting point of English learning at university, that is, the high percentage is put on the levels

of average and under average; however, the students seemed to be more self-confident in themselves when some of them believed that they were good and even excellent at English In

the students‟ assessment, the number of those excellent at English was extremely small (only 1%) while 51% confirmed that their English was average Only 25% of the students affirmed that they were good at English whereas 23 % admitted that they were still bad at this subject when they entered the university The teachers, more pessimistically than their students, with their pedagogical knowledge in teaching and evaluating, claimed that none of their students had excellent or good background knowledge of English Most of them (70%) judged the students‟ English level was at average while there are even three teachers, making up 30% of

the group surveyed, reflecting that their students‟ English level was even under average To

the three teachers in the interview with the author, they asserted that many of their students were really bad at English and that they were not able to catch up with the learning speed of the others Obviously, it is definitely possible to say that the students‟ English background in general is average

2.1.2 Students’ difficulties in learning English

Even though the students‟ English level may meet the requirements of the course as well as the materials, the students themselves still pointed out a number of difficulties when learning English as can be seen from table 3 below

Difficulties in using English in daily conversations 90% 40%

Table 3: Students’ difficulties in learning English

As what is stated in Table 3, 90% of the students confirmed that their vocabulary was not sufficient enough for them to confidentially complete their tasks in class 85 % got into trouble with grammatical structures A similar rate (87%) also admitted their poor pronunciation, which is one of their biggest problems when learning English Listening skill appeared to be the most challenging to the students when 95 % divulged that they were bad at it Many students were honest to say that they found listening really difficult and they could not fulfill any listening exercises without the teachers‟ assistance It seems that the lack of vocabulary, poor grammatical structures, bad listening skills and pronunciation has led 40 % of them to the failure of using English in their daily conversations

Similarly, all ten teachers taking part in the survey complained that the students were confronted with difficulties in listening and insufficient vocabulary Additionally, most of the teachers (90%) maintained that poor pronunciation and difficulties in using English in daily conversations were some other problems that the students encountered in their English learning while 70% revealed the fact that the students were also not good at grammatical structures Apart from main problems mentioned in the table, the teachers gave out some other

problems of the students such as their lack of confidence in speaking English, the influences of

their mother tongue on their English acquisition and their low motivation in English classes, etc

2.1.3 Students’ expectations from an English course

Getting to know and bettering grammatical structures 80% 90%

Communicating in English in daily conversations 100% 100%

Writing some normal types of documents in English

(such as informal letters, short paragraphs about given

topics)

Table 4: Students’ expectations from an English course

Looking at Table 4, it can be seen that understandably the surveyed students hoped that they could be good at communicating in English in daily conversations, which is also considered the final goal of GE course in the university Most of the respondents (90%) wanted to know how to make grammatically correct sentences The percentage of the students who wished to

be able to develop their reading skills and write some normal types of documents in English is quite big, 80 % for the former and 75% for the latter At the same time, some others expressed their hope that they could not only widen their vocabulary in daily topics but also familiarize themselves in specialist terms which they are going to study in the following semesters However, there is a discrepancy between the teachers‟ and students‟ opinions While the students (80-85%) were ambitious to be able to develop their basic reading and writing skills, only 20-30% of the teachers thought that developing reading skills and writing some normal types of documents in English are appropriate for the students‟ needs in a general English course They just believed, similarly to the students‟, that communicating in English in daily conversations and then getting to know and bettering grammar are the most appropriate objectives to meet the students‟ needs

2.2 Students’ improvement after learning the textbook

2.2.1 Students’ level of fluency in language points

Language points

Present simple tense 100(%) 71(%) 0(%) 18(%) 0(%) 11(%)

Table 5: Students’ level of fluency in language points

The data displayed in Table 5 above showed a close convergence between two groups of respondents The results indicated that the language points that a high percentage of the

students admitted that they could use them fluently include simple present tense (72%), conditional sentence type 1 (61%), possessive‘s/ possessive adjectives (70%) Whereas, the low percentage put on such language points as comparison, past perfect, present perfect and simple past tense Such structures as conditional sentence type 2, expressions of future time,

prepositions of place and time appeared not to be so difficult to them In addition, when being

interviewed, a large number of the students confirmed that the reason why they could successfully used simple present tense, conditional sentence type 1 and possessive’s and

possessive adjectives was that those structures were simple enough for them to remember and

put them into practice At the same time, they blamed the complexity of verbs and adjective

forms in the structures of comparison, past perfect, present perfect, etc for their failure in

using them Also, many of the interviewed students admitted that they did not often learn to

memorize the irregular verb forms which are considered the key to the success of using perfect tense

At the same time, most of the teachers seemed to be proud of their students‟ competence in

using such language points as present simple, possessive’s/ adjectives, present continuous, preposition of place and time, modal verbs, expressions of quantity and conditional sentence type 1 apart from past perfect (0%), conditional sentence type 2 (0%), present simple passive (20%), relative clauses (20%), comparison (30%), articles (30%), and present perfect (30%)

The teachers then stated that the students faced a lot of difficulties in transforming a verb from infinitive to irregular past forms or changing the forms of adjectives and adverbs in comparison patterns In fact, many teachers supposed that the current timetable for teaching the book should be modified so that they would have more time to help students revise their grammar

The statistics above are clues for a deduction that students really need more teachers‟ attention

to grammatical consolidation in the class so that students are sure about and confident of the structures they are applying in the real – life communication and the question relating to the current timetable needs to be taken into consideration

2.2.2 Students’ tasks completion

2.2.2.1 Students’ reading tasks completion

Reacting to a passage and comparing

information in a passage with personal opinion 40 29

Predicting 20 32

Table 6: Students’ reading tasks completion

As can be seen from Table 6, 83% of the students confidently chose reading and answering a questionnaire to be the task they could complete with little or no difficulty They said that the

questionnaires in the textbook were so simple and interesting that they could easily complete

them The students who could fulfill the tasks of reading for specific information, reading about safety instructions and reading for main ideas take lower percentage of 78%, 60% and 53% respectively Inferring and predicting appeared to be the most challenging of the seven

mentioned reading tasks because only 32 – 33% could complete them When being asked, the students said that it is their limited imagination as well as the lack of socio-cultural knowledge that prevented them from making inference and prediction

The tasks of reacting to a passage and comparing information in a passage with personal opinion, predicting and inferring, which were previously stated by the students to be the most

difficult to them, were once again claimed by the teachers to be unsuccessfully completed by their students The teachers further explained that the tasks might be so difficult and complicated for the students at this level

2.2.2.2 Students’ writing tasks completion

Writing simple sentences with adverbs of frequency 90 62

Writing connected sentences about daily routines

Writing a story about something went wrong using

Writing a paragraph describing recent changes in

Writing a description of your hometown 80 58

Writing a paragraph about what people think about

Writing a paragraph describing an important national

Writing a story using suddenly, fortunately,

Table 7: Students’ writing tasks completion

In regard to the students‟ writing tasks completion, as revealed in table 7, there emerged a coincidence in the teachers and students‟ assessment The data has shown that 79% of the students found it easy to write connected sentences about daily routines using “and” and

“then”, the very popular conjunctions to them while the percentage of those who could handle the tasks of writing sentences with adverbs of frequency, writing a description of your hometown, a description of your appearance and writing and replying an invitation is between

52 – 62%, which are deemed not to be so difficult tasks to the students At the same time, a minority of the students (35%, 33% and 32 % respectively) admitted that they could deal with the tasks of describing an important national occasions, predicting a story from questions and writing a story using suddenly, fortunately, unfortunately, to my surprise, finally Additionally, those students alleged that they confronted with a number of difficulties while doing those above-mentioned tasks because the topics were not popular and they lacked vocabulary to express their ideas

The teachers found that the tasks of writing a story about something went wrong using and,

but, so and because, writing a paragraph describing recent changes in your life, predicting a

story from questions, writing a paragraph about what people think about the future of English,

writing a paragraph describing an important national occasion, writing a story using suddenly,

fortunately, unfortunately, to my surprise, finally were not easy for the students to complete,

while the rest were deemed to be opposite

2.2.2.3 Students’ speaking tasks completion

Talking about suitable questions to ask people 100 80

Talking about customs and traditions of hospitality 20 50

Talking about typical meals and food in different

Talking about ritual or festival in your country 40 55 Talking about table manners and social occasions in

Talking about a situation where something went

Giving general/ specific information about families

Talking about your perfect weekend 80 69

Table 8: Students’ speaking tasks completion

Compared to the completion of reading and writing tasks, speaking may be said to be the best

of all Table 8 has pointed out that 15 of 24 mentioned tasks were able to be completed by a majority of the students, between 50% – 80%, whereas the rest appeared not so difficult

Environment seemed to be a hard topic because 41 % could deal with this Similar rates (42%,

43 %) considered talking about future of English, talking about experiences and table manners and social occasions in your country hard ones because they blamed the irrelevance of the

topics to their interest for their reluctance in talking about them As for the difficulty in the

task of talking about experiences, one more reason is mentioned, that is, the students

previously said that their grammatical structures relating to past tense was not so good, therefore, it is understandable when they faced a lot of difficulties in these tasks

Considering the teachers‟ answers, a majority of them (60-80%) agreed that the tasks of

talking about such topics as suitable questions to ask people, people’s lifestyle, typical entertainment, memorable journey, clothing, your perfect weekend and describing people

were not difficult for the students Similar to the students‟ point of view, teachers also

confirmed that the topics of customs and tradition of hospitality, surprising behavior, experiences, typical food and drinks, etc were hardly completed by the students Again, the

teachers explained that in their class observation, the students seemed not to be interested in talking about those topics because they were all beyond their needs as well as knowledge

2.2.2.4 Students’ listening tasks completion

Table 9: Students’ listening tasks completion

Listening tasks can be said to be the most challenging because, for example, the task of

listening for specific information could be handled by only half of them, whereas listening for main ideas, listening for context and predicting were completed with many difficulties More

importantly, as can be inferred from the table, the students‟ ability of generalizing information

is not good with only 35 % of the students successfully doing the task of listening for main ideas The teachers also gave out their answers which were basically similar to the students‟ Among the four listening tasks, listening for context and predicting appeared to be the most

difficult because only two teachers, accounting for 20% of the surveyed group, claimed that

their students could fulfill these two tasks Listening for main ideas ranked the second in terms

of difficulty level with three teachers, making up 30%, stating that their students were able to

complete it To the teachers‟ assessment, listening for specific information was deemed to be

the easiest Seven teachers, in the interviews, added that their students completed the task with little and even no difficulty

2.2.2.5 Students’ satisfaction level in each skill and teachers’ assessment on their skill improvement

The students‟ satisfaction level in each of their skills improvement after the course has been,

in details, presented in table 10 below

Very satisfied Satisfied Not so satisfied Not satisfied

Table 10: Students’ satisfaction level in each skill

As can be seen from the table, understandably no students admitted that they were very satisfied with their progress in all four skills Together with the data shown in table 9, it is reasonable when the number of the students that had negative assessments on their advances in listening is the smallest, taking only 1% whereas 83% were dissatisfied The percentage of the students who considered their reading skill most improved is 35% while that of writing and speaking is only 27% and 10% The result, overall, indicated that more progress had been made with two skills: reading and writing while unfortunately, a very small number of students confirmed that their listening and speaking skills were better A question raised here

is that whether such unbalance in stress on skills development was probably a major cause of the uneven skills improvement among students

In order to have a more objective evaluation on the students‟ improvement in each skill, let us have a look at table 11 below to discover how the teachers assessed their students‟ four skills

Table 11: Teachers’ point of view on students’ improvement in each skill

On the whole, the teachers agreed that the two skills of speaking and reading are much improved while they confirmed that the students did not make much progress in the skills of listening and writing There exists the mismatch between the teachers‟ and students‟ opinions when the students were supposed that their writing is quite good and their speaking is not good

at all which is different from the teachers‟

2.3 Teachers’ and students’ evaluation on the content of the materials

2.3.1 Topics of the textbook

There is a big difference in the rate of response to the question relating to the update of the topics in the textbook 104 students, making up 95%, admitted that the topics are up-to-date whereas the number of students that had negative assessment is minimal, only taking 5% For the students of the first group, they claimed that many topics are updated to help students

understand more about the world, for example, “warning: flying is bad for your health” is

really suitable in the modern life when people are accustomed to traveling by plane Considering the same issue, eight of ten teachers, making up 80%, sympathized with the point

of view that the topics in the textbook are updated, and bring about latest information in many fields

Regarding the suitability of the topics to the students‟ ability, interests and age, 12 % of the students claimed that they were not appropriate to them while the percentage of those who are really interested in the topics makes a big group (88%) To make their opinions more

evidential, students also gave out some topics such as Time travelers, The Skylight, Take a closer look, etc., which are considered irrelevant to their knowledge As a matter of fact, the

students again argued that it is not suitable when forcing them to learn anything beyond their needs and ability

2.3.3 Aims of the units

Table 12: Students’ point of view on the aims of the units

Looking at table 12, it can be seen that the students‟ criticism were directed at the point that the lessons were designed to draw attention to grammar rather than background knowledge on socio-culture or vocabulary which are considered quite important for students to succeed in communicating in English As has been shown in the above table, 70% of the students claimed that the book aimed at providing grammatical structures while 60% thought the goal was at cultural knowledge Knowledge of society as well as vocabulary has been recognized as the aims of the lessons by 53% and 54% of the respondents Additionally, in the interviews, the students expressed their thoughts that even though there are vocabulary boxes in almost every lesson, the words seem not to be “new” to them and they hoped that they would be provided with more new words not only useful for their daily conversations but also specialist terms to help them get used to ESP that they are going to deal with in the next semesters Students added that grammar boxes in the book should be made more clearly with more examples to help them better understand and effectively use grammatical structures

A bit different from the students‟ opinions, the teachers showed their ideas that the units in the textbook focuses on widening students‟ vocabulary, at the same time grammatical structures