An evaluation of the coursebook nursing 1 and its suitability to the second year nursing students at quang ninh medical college

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OFPOST-GRADUATE STUDIES HÀ HẢI HỒNG AN EVALUATION OF THE COURSEBOOK “NURSING 1” AND ITS SUITA

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF

POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

HÀ HẢI HỒNG

AN EVALUATION OF THE COURSEBOOK “NURSING 1” AND ITS SUITABILITY TO THE SECOND-YEAR NURSING STUDENTS AT

QUANG NINH MEDICAL COLLEGE

(ĐÁNH GIÁ GIÁO TRÌNH “NURSING 1” VÀ SỰ PHÙ HỢP CỦA GIÁO TRÌNHVỚI SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ HAI CHUYÊN NGÀNH ĐIỀU DƯỠNG TRƯỜNG

CAO ĐẲNG Y TẾ QUẢNG NINH)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Hanoi, 2016

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF

POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

HÀ HẢI HỒNG

AN EVALUATION OF THE COURSEBOOK “NURSING 1”

AND ITS SUITABILITY TO THE SECOND-YEAR NURSING STUDENTS

AT QUANG NINH MEDICAL COLLEGE

(ĐÁNH GIÁ GIÁO TRÌNH “NURSING 1” VÀ SỰ PHÙ HỢP CỦA GIÁO TRÌNHVỚI SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ HAI CHUYÊN NGÀNH ĐIỀU DƯỠNG TRƯỜNG

CAO ĐẲNG Y TẾ QUẢNG NINH)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Lâm Quang Đông

Hanoi, 2016

I hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it are my own andhas been generated by me as the result of my own original research I confirmthat:

1 This work was done wholly while I am in candidature for a Master degree at this University;

2 This thesis has never been submitted partially or wholly for a degree or any other qualification at this University or any other institution;

3 Where I have consulted the published work of others, this is always clearly attributed;

4 Where I have quoted from the work of others, the source is always given With the exception of such quotations, this thesis is entirely my own work;

5 I have acknowledged all main sources of help;

6 Where the thesis is based on work done by myself jointly with others, I havemade clear exactly what was done by others and what I have contributed myself

I am fully aware that should this declaration be found to be false,disciplinary action could be taken and penalties imposed in accordance with University policy and rules

Hanoi, October 2016

Ha Hai Hong

i

This study would not have been completed without the help and

encouragement which I received along the way

First and foremost, I wish to express my profound gratitude to my supervisor

- Assoc Prof Dr Lâm Quang Đông, who during the preparation of this thesis hasbeen most willing and ready to give me valuable advice, inspiration and supervision

I also acknowledge my sincere thanks to all the professors and lecturers atUniversity of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University,Hanoi for their insightful lectures, invaluable assistance and useful guidance

I would like to extend my appreciation to the teachers and nursing students

of K9 at Quang Ninh Medical College for their participation and assistancethroughout the process of the study

I am indebted to the authors of the reference materials whose ideas have inspired me throughout the writing process

Last but not least, I am grateful to my family whose encouragement was vital

to me in completing this paper

ii

It is undeniable that medical ESP coursebooks play a crucial part in teachingand learning ESP at medical colleges and universities Therefore, this study focused

on evaluating the coursebook Nursing 1, Oxford University Press before it comes

into use for nursing students at Quang Ninh Medical College The purpose of thisstudy was to evaluate the coursebook in terms of Audience, Aims, Content andMethodology from both teachers‟ and students‟ perspectives to make out howsuitable the book is to nursing students at the college The writer applied three majormethods including document analysis, questionnaire and informal interview to carryout the research The results of the study show that the coursebook is appropriate to

be used for nursing students at the college although it has some drawbacks whichcan be adjusted through the process of adaptation by the teachers

Quang Ninh Medical College

Vocational English as a Second Language

LIST OF CHARTS, FIGURES AND TABLES

Chart 1: Students‟ time of learning English

Chart 2: Students‟ levels of English

Chart 3: Learners‟ attitudes towards learning ESP

Figure 1: Types of ESP (From Hutchinson and Waters, 1987)

Figure 2: The evaluation model of Hutchinson and Waters (1987)

Table 1: Students‟ and teachers‟ ranking of the purposes of learning ESPTable 2: Students‟ and teachers‟ requirement for the topics of the coursebookTable 3: Students‟ and teachers‟ requirement for grammar of the coursebook

Table 4: Students‟ and teachers‟ requirement for vocabulary of the coursebook

Table 5: Students‟ and teachers‟ requirement for skills of the coursebookTable 7: Students‟ and teachers‟ requirement for activities of the coursebook

Table 6: Students‟ and teachers‟ requirement for the support of the coursebook

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv

LIST OF CHARTS, FIGURES AND TABLES v

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Research questions 2

4 Scope of the study 2

5 Methods of the study 3

6 Organization of the study 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1 An overview of ESP 4

1.1 Definition of ESP 4

1.2 Classification of ESP 4

1.3 Characteristics of ESP course 5

1.4 Characteristics of English for Medical Purpose 6

2 Roles of using the coursebook in language teaching and learning 7

2.1 Definitions of textbook, coursebook and materials 7

2.2 The importance of coursebook 7

3.Coursebook evaluation 8

3.1 Definition of coursebook evaluation 8

3.2 Purposes of coursebook evaluation 8

3.3 Types of coursebook evaluation 9

3.4 Techniques of coursebook evaluation 9

3.5 Criteria for coursebook evaluation 10

3.6 Models for coursebook evaluation 12

3.7 The importance of conducting a pre-use evaluation 13

4 Coursebook adaptation 13

4.1 Reasons for adapting 13

4.2 Areas for adaptation 14

4.3 Techniques for adaptation 14

5 Previous studies on coursebook evaluation 15

6 Summary 16

CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 17

1. The current ESP teaching and learning situation at Quang Ninh medical college 17 1.1 The context 17

1.2 The coursebook description 17

2 Participants 20

3 Data collection instruments 20

3.1 Document analysis 20

3.2 Questionnaires 21

3.3 Informal interview 22

4 Data collection procedure 23

5 Data analysis procedure 23

CHAPTER 3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 24

1 Document analysis 24

1.1 The analysis of ESP training curriculum 24

1.2 The analysis of the coursebook 24

2 Students‟ background 27

3 The requirements for the coursebook 29

3.1 The aims 29

3.2 The requirement for the content 31

3.3 The requirement for the methodology 34

4 Findings 35

4.1 The suitability of the coursebook in terms of audience 36

4.2 The suitability of the coursebook in terms of aims 36

4.3 The suitability of the coursebook in terms of content 36

4.4 The suitability of the coursebook in terms of methodology 38

PART C CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 40

1 The strengths and weaknesses of the coursebook 40

1.1 Strengths 40

1.2 Weaknesses 41

2 Recommendations 41

2.1 To the content 42

2.2 To the methodology 42

3 Limitations of the study 43

4 Suggestions for further study 44

5 Conclusion 44

REFERENCES 45

it is necessary to have good materials, and to make the most effective use of a textbook,

it is necessary for teachers to carefully examine all aspects of the textbook and compare

it against an assessment tool The current ESP coursebook used at Quang Ninh MedicalCollege (QNMC) was collected and edited from various sources To some extent, itsobjectives meet teaching and learning‟s goals such as vocabulary and readingdevelopment However, for communicative target in learning language, it does not meetteaching and learning requirements It includes the texts, then the exercises, whichcontain only questions to improve reading comprehension and the same kind ofquestions for all 12 units, which gives students little interest in learning There is no

CD, no video, no suggested reference books or sources enclosed in this book Thismaterial has been used at QNMC since 2011 and it appears to be uninteresting andunsuitable to the objectives of the course Therefore, the writer of this study

recommends a new coursebook Nursing 1, Oxford University Press that has received

many positive comments from colleagues of other medical colleges However, it isnecessary to have overall evaluation on the coursebook before it comes into use so that

the teachers can assess its suitability to the students and adapt the coursebook for the

highest effectiveness in teaching and learning For those reasons, the topic “An

evaluation of the coursebook " Nursing 1" and its suitability to the second-year

nursing students at Quang Ninh Medical College” was chosen with the intention that

a new but suitable and useful coursebook will be used to enhance the learningefficiency as well as stimulate students‟ interest in language learning

2 Aims of the study

This study aims to evaluate the strengths and the weaknesses of the coursebookand its suitability to the objectives of the curriculum, content and methodology fromboth the teacher‟s and the nursing student‟s perspectives at Quang Ninh MedicalCollege

Based on the evaluation results, possible ways for adaptation of the book aresuggested so that it can be used for teaching and learning ESP in the most effective way

at QNMC

3 Research questions

1 What are the strengths and the weaknesses of the coursebook Nursing 1?

2 How suitable is the coursebook to the second-year nursing students at QNMC?

4 Scope of the study

In coursebook evaluation, there are a great number of criteria that should betaken into consideration such as: the audience, the content, the methodology, thecultural bias, the layout, the authenticity, and so on In this study, the criteria forevaluation were based on Hutchinson and Waters (1987) with focus on the fourfollowing criteria: audience, aims, content and methodology

5 Methods of the study

This study employed three methods including document analysis, surveyquestionnaires and informal interviews These methods are described in detail inchapter two

6 Organization of the study The study consists of 3 parts:

Part I - Introduction - presents the rationale, aims, scope and methodology of the

study

Part II - Development - includes 3 chapters:

Chapter 1 – Literature review – provides a theoretical basis for the study First, it

surveys the literature on the theories of the basic concepts such as English for SpecificPurposes and English for Medical Purposes, regarding the definition, classification, andcharacteristics Second, it reviews coursebook evaluation, need analysis in terms ofdefinition, types, purposes and models The last part of the chapter presents the issuesinvolving coursebook adaptation which serve as a base for the improvementsrecommended at the end of the study

Chapter 2 – Research Methodology – includes an overview of the approach used in

conducting the study It also provides a thorough description of the data collectionprocedure as well as the analytical procedure

Chapter 3 – Results and discussion – reports the findings of the survey and discusses

the prominent aspects

Part III – Conclusion – makes conclusion of the study; recommends the improvements

to the coursebook; expresses the limitations and suggestions for further research

3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW

Robinson (1991) states that ESP is “normally goal-directed”, and that ESPcourses develop from a need analysis, which aims to specify as closely as possible whatexactly it is that students have to do through the medium of English

From the definitions, ESP can be not necessarily related to a specific discipline,and it also does not have to be aimed at a certain age group or ability range Rather,ESP should be seen simple as an “approach” to teaching that meets learner‟s demands

1.2 Classification of ESP

Hutchinson and Waters (1987) state that ESP has two main types according towhether the learner requires English for academic study (EAP: English for AcademicPurposes) or for work/ training (EOP/ EVP/ VESL: English for Occupational Purposes/English for Vocational Purposes/ Vocational English as a Second Language) The targetlearners of EAP are generally at schools and they need English in their study.Meanwhile, EOP is used as part of learners “work or occupation, for instance, tocommunicate with tourists (a tour guide), to persuade the customer (a salesman)” Thecrucial point here is that ESP course which will take place depends mainly on whether

the learners are studying English before, during or after the time they are taught in theirjob Nevertheless, school-subject ESP has been divided into such situations whereEnglish is a separate subject on the curriculum but with a related content to othersubjects (independent ESP), and where English is the means for other subject to belearnt (integrated ESP) Hutchinson and Waters (1987) divide ESP into three brancheswith each branch subdivided into two smaller ones: EOP and EAP as follows:

EAP

e.g English

forEconomics

EOPe.g Englishfor

Accountancy

EAPe.g Englishfor

Psychology

EOP

e.g English

forLaw

Figure 1: Types of ESP (From Hutchinson and Waters, 1987)

This classification is not a clear-cut distinction: people can work and studyconcurrently; and there is also a likelihood that in many cases the language learnt forimmediate use in a study environment will be used later when the student takes up ajob

1.3 Characteristics of ESP course

Most researchers (Strevens, 1988; Bojovic, 2006; Dudley-Evans, 1997;Gatehouse, 2001) have supported the main characteristics proposed by Carter (1983)

He identified the following “three features common to ESP courses: authentic material,purpose-related orientation, and self-direction”.

“Authentic material” means using material, not developed or written for teachingpurpose, from the main area of study of the learners or their occupation This materialmay include books, forms, charts, graphs etc and these forms of authentic texts may beexploited in modified or unmodified forms according to the requirement of the teachingcircumstances Authentic material will be an appropriate choice if ESP courses areoffered to advanced or intermediate level as proposed by Dudley-Evans, (1997)

Purpose-related orientation (Gatehouse, 2001 cf Carter, 1983) has beenidentified as the simulation of different communicative tasks to prepare the learners fordifferent target situations The learners are given practice through simulation to enablethem to handle various linguistic roles in the target situation

“Self-direction” is the third characteristic of ESP courses which means “that ESP

is concerned with turning learners into users” (Carter, 1983) It indicates that thestudents should “have certain degree of freedom to decide when, what and how theywill study” (Gatehouse, 2001)

1.4 Characteristics of English for Medical Purpose

EMP is a subset of ESP Education that most often focuses on teaching aspects ofmedical English, particularly terminology (Hull, 2004) The language of medicine isquite unique It is fraught with technical, academic language and replete with slang,colloquialisms, abbreviations and acronyms It has its own rules and structures Healthprofessionals must read, write, interpret, give directions, etc Using a wide variety ofabbreviations and acronyms are extremely career-specific Medical English is alsocontextual Doctors and nurses use academic and technical language interspersed withcommon speech and workplace jargon It rarely focuses on complete or proper sentencestructure

With regard to the level of Medical English, Hull (2004) believes that MedicalEnglish cannot be taught at the level of or in the same methods of basic English

language teaching Hull assumes that all EMP learners are health professionals or in themidst of health studies at the college or university level Therefore, career-specific,highly technical language must be contextually based The goal of learning English atthis level is not to learn grammar and structure primarily, but to acquire and use thelanguage of practice and social relations within the career.

2 Roles of using the coursebook in language teaching and learning

2.1 Definitions of textbook, coursebook and materials

The definition which Ur (1996) has given is very useful and easy to understand

It reads as follows: The term „coursebook‟ means, a text book of which the teacher andeach student has a copy and which is in principle to be followed systematically as thebasis for a language course Therefore, a coursebook must have at least being available

in the hand of students and teachers, and used systematically in a course of study, and acourse of study in this article refers to an English course of study

In Materials Development in Language Teaching (Littlejohn, 1998) the term

“materials” is defined as “anything which is used to help to teach language learners Itcan be in the form of a textbook, a workbook, a cassette, a CD-ROM, a video, aphotocopied handout, a newspaper, a paragraph written on a whiteboard.” (Tomlinson,1998) Therefore, it can be pointed out that coursebook is a type of materials

2.2 The importance of coursebook

In classrooms, coursebooks are an important aspect of the curriculum They arethe most observable feature of a teacher‟s methodology, and can contribute greatly to acourse‟s syllabus O‟Neill (1982) provides 4 justifications for the use of coursebooks.Firstly, a large portion of a coursebook‟s material can be suitable for students needs,even if not specifically designed for them Secondly, coursebooks allow students tolook ahead, or refresh themselves with past lessons Thirdly, coursebooks have thepractical aspect of providing material which is well-presented in inexpensive form.Finally, well-designed coursebooks allow for improvisation and adaptation by the

teacher, as well as stimulating students to create spontaneous interaction in the class.Therefore, coursebooks should be accessible to a variety of students as well asadaptable to the diversity of teachers and teaching styles.

3 Coursebook evaluation

3.1 Definition of coursebook evaluation

Hutchinson and Waters (1987) state that “evaluation is a matter of judging thefitness of something for a particular purpose Given a certain need, and in light of theresources available, which is out of a number of possibilities can represent the bestsolution?” In other words, “Evaluation is basically a matching process: matching needs

to available solutions.”

In the opinion of Dudley (1998), “Evaluation is a whole process which beginswith determining what information to gather and ends with bringing about the change incurrent activities or influencing future ones.”

Although each researcher has his own way of giving opinion on evaluation, theystill come to the agreement that evaluation is a process of collecting data, givingjudgments based on the collected data, and the most importantly, evaluation mustinclude action

3.2 Purposes of coursebook evaluation

Evaluation plays a very important role in the development of materials Ellis(1997) points out two purposes for materials evaluation Firstly, evaluation is carriedout to choose among the available materials the most suitable one to use for a particularsituation and such valuation is taken before the course takes place Secondly, evaluation

is carried out to determine whether the material which has been chosen works for thatsituation after it has been used for a period of time This helps to decide whether tocontinue using the material or to replace it with a better material In short, evaluationcan help assess whether the coursebook is the most appropriate for the target learners atvarious levels and in various teaching settings, then adjust it in order to increase thestrengths and minimize the drawbacks of the coursebook

3.3 Types of coursebook evaluation

According to some scholars, material evaluation is divided into three main typesdepending on the reasons for evaluation Cunningsworth (1995) points out that there arethree types of material evaluation, i.e pre-use evaluation, in-use evaluation and post-use evaluation This classification is similar to Ellis (1997) with different names, i.e.Preliminary, Formative and Summative evaluation respectively The first type, pre-useevaluation is carried out before a course begins in order to select the most relevant andsuitable materials for a particular group of learners This also has the purpose ofidentifying which aspects of the published materials need to be adapted to suit thepurposes of the evaluators (Robinson, 1991; Ellis, cited in Tomlinson, 1993) Pre-useevaluation focuses on predictions of potential value This is probably the most difficultkind as there is no actual experience of using the course book In-use evaluation is akind of evaluation for suitability, involving “matching the course book against aspecific requirement including the learner‟s objectives, the learner‟s background, theresources available, etc.” (Cunningsworth, 1995) The third type, post-evaluation refers

to an assessment of a textbook‟s fitness over a period of continual use Evaluation ofthis kind can be practical in helping to decide whether to use the same coursebook onthe future occasion

In short, whatever the types of evaluation, pre-use, in-use evaluation or post-useare, it is very important that the evaluator identifies clearly the reasons for theirevaluation so that it can be beneficial for the use of the coursebook (Robinson, 1991)

3.4 Techniques of coursebook evaluation

According Hutchinson & Waters (1987), Lynch (1996), Richards (2001),Robinson (1991), the useful evaluation techniques are questionnaires, interviews, testresults, discussion and other informal means The different methods used for evaluationhave been mentioned but they all have their possible advantages and limitations asfollows:

- Questionnaires are the most popular methods of data collection They can beused to elicit students‟ and teachers‟ comments on a wide range of issues Theadvantage is that they can be given to a large group of respondents at the same time andthey are not expensive However, questionnaires need to be carefully designed to avoidrespondents‟ misinterpretation of questions.

- Interviews are also a valuable method for evaluation They have advantages ofin-depth information on specific questions but the problem is that it is very time-consumingthough they can provide the opportunity for more extended exploration of the issues thanquestionnaires

- Observation can focus on any observable aspects of the lesson and can provide

an objective eye to identify things that may not be very clear to the teacher However, it is aspecialized work and requires careful preparation

- Document analysis refers to any documents that are involved in evocation, suchas: curriculum description, policy statement, newspapers, and program brochures,correspondence and so on This method is an effective way to collect data for the studybecause it can provide useful information and then “form an essential part” of the datafor an evaluation exercise (Robinson, 1991)

To sum up, among a number of different methods to collect data the researchershould identify what types of these instruments to be used effectively in their study Inthis study three methods including document analysis, questionnaires and interviewswere applied for data collection

3.5 Criteria for coursebook evaluation

Criteria for material evaluation used to determine which perspectives of thematerial should be taken into consideration Tomlinson (1998) suggests, “Criteria arewhat researchers use to reach a decision regarding what needs to be evaluated”

Hutchinson and Waters (1987) suggest four main criteria for material evaluationincluding: the audience, the aims, the content and the methodology

- Audience: The evaluator should obtain information about and from learners to

find out whether the materials are suitable to the students‟ age, knowledge of English,interest, sex, study or professional fields, status, educational background, and so on

- Aims: The aims of the material is to help learners develop certain language skills

and function or to improve the language as a whole In any language course, it is necessary

to examine whether the material can satisfy the aims and the objectives of the course or not

- Content: The content is one of the important elements of the material In order to

measure the material‟s content to see if it is suitable for the course, the researchers need

to take into account the following items: language description, language points, skills and their proportion, micro-skills, text types, subject matter areas, topics,organization through the course, organization within the course units, content sequence,content sequence within a unit The evaluator has to check if these items in the materialsatisfy the requirements, which were set up from the analysis of the learners‟ needs andthe course‟s objectives

macro Methodology: The criterion of methodology refers to the researcher‟s judgment

of whether the methodology used in the material is appropriate with the learners andefficient in helping them achieve the course‟s objectives Methodology of the materialcan be reflected by the theories of learning on which the course is based, the attitudes to

or the expectations of the learners about learning English, kinds of exercises and tasksincluded, teaching and learning techniques used, teaching aids, teaching guidanceneeded and the flexibility of the material to suit in different teaching contexts

Besides the four criteria mentioned above, Hutchinson and Waters suggest othercriteria such as the price, quantities and availability of the material

In this research, the set of evaluation criteria suggested by Hutchinson and

Waters (1987) appears to be suitable to be applied in evaluating to coursebook Nursing

1 in terms of audience, aims, content and methodology.

11

3.6 Models for coursebook evaluation

Hutchinson and Waters (1987) presents a model is a macro-evaluation in which the evaluation is divided into 4 steps

DEFINING CRITERIA

On what bases will you judge materials?

Which criteria will be more important?

SUBJECTIVE ANALYSIS

What realization of the

criteria do you want in your

course?

OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS

How does the material being

evaluated realize thecriteria?

MATCHING

How far does the materialmatch your needs?

Figure 2: The evaluation model of Hutchinson and Waters (1987)

The model shows a logical procedure for material evaluation or coursebookevaluation This first step is defining criteria on which the material will be assessed.This step is to identify the requirements for material, so the evaluator should describewhat criteria your course is based The second one is to evaluate whether the materialrealize the criteria set in the subjective analysis The final step is the matching process,which finds out how far the material matches the course requirements To evaluate thecoursebook under study, it is very important for the author to set out the criteria for bothsubjective analysis (the analysis of the training curriculum) and objective analysis (theanalysis of the material being evaluated) Then the findings of the two analyses are putinto comparison to find out whether they match or not Based on the results, strengths

as well as drawbacks of the coursebook can be identified, which may lead to somesuggestions for the coursebook improvements

3.7 The importance of conducting a pre-use evaluation

As mentioned previously, among three types of evaluation, pre-use evaluation iscarried out before a course begins in order to select the most relevant and suitablematerials for a particular group of learners and it is considered the most difficult kind asthere is no actual experience of using the course book The desired outcome ofevaluation is to allow for informed adaptation of the coursebook, which is intended toallow teachers to compensate for “non-congruence” (McDonough and Shaw, 2003)between coursebook, desired course outcomes, and the teaching context

According to Richard (2012), most coursebook evaluation schemes distinguishtwo essential stages that are necessary at the pre-evaluation phase: a description oranalysis phase, and an interpretation or evaluation phase In the first phase, the contents

of the book have to be carefully described in terms of scope and sequence, organization,and the types of texts and exercises contained within The analysis phase will involveidentifying these kinds of information: aims and objectives of the book, level of thebook, skills addressed, topics covered, situations it is intended for, target learners, timerequired, components, number and length of units, organization of units

In this study, the evaluator applied this type of evaluation also to understandlearners and teachers‟ expectations from a coursebook so that the coursebook can beadapted to meet the requirements of learners and teachers

4 Coursebook adaptation

4.1 Reasons for adapting

Once a coursebook has been evaluated, potential problem areas can be identified:What the coursebook offers cannot be exactly what our learners' need; The coursebookmethodology may not match our own; Our general aims may not match the aims of thecoursebook; The aims of a particular lesson/unit in the book may not match our lesson-by-lesson aims We will have to prioritize and select We may need to supplement thecoursebook

Teachers, with direct personal knowledge of their classroom teaching, should seetextbooks as a resource or an “idea bank” which can stimulate teachers‟ own creativepotential (Cunningsworth, 1984) Adapting materials helps teachers to maximize thevalue of the book for the benefit of their learners Hence they can improve it so that it issuitable for the particular situation (Apple and Jungck, 1990; Shannon, 1987)

4.2 Areas for adaptation

McDonough and Shaw (2003) identify the possible areas to adapt as follows:

- Lack of grammar coverage in general

- Lack of practice of grammar points of particular difficulty

- Reading passages contain too much unknown vocabulary

- Comprehension questions are two easy

- Subject matters are inappropriate for learners

- Photographs and other illustrative materials are not culturally acceptable

- Amount of material is too much/too little to cover

- Lack of guidance of teachers on group work and role play

- There are no vocabulary list or a key to exercises

However, they also note that more areas could be added to this list, depending on actual contexts

4.3 Techniques for adaptation

According to Tomlinson (1998) there are various ways various ways of adapting

a course-book:

- Omission: The teacher leaves out things deemed inappropriate, offensive and

unproductive, etc

- Addition: Where there seems to be inadequate coverage, the teachers may decide

to add material, either in form of texts or exercise material

- Reduction: Where the teacher shortens an activity to give it less weight or

emphasis

- Extension: Where an activity is lengthened in order to give an additional

dimension

- Rewriting/modification: Teachers may occasionally decide to rewrite material,

especially exercise material, to make it more appropriate, more communicative, moredemanding, more accessible to their students

- Replacement: Texts or exercise material which is considered inadequate for

whatever reason may be replaced by more suitable material

- Re-ordering: Teachers may decide that the order in which the materials are

presented is not suitable for their students They can then decide to plot different coursethrough the materials from the one writer has laid down

5 Previous studies on coursebook evaluation

There have been many studies done in the field of evaluation of ESP coursebook.Many of these studies have brought about good improvement of the coursebooks usedfor ESP courses Some researches worth mentioning are Ngo Thi My Binh (2010),Luong Thi Minh Thu (2012), Nguyen Thi Van (2012), Luu Nhu Quynh (2012), NguyenThi Mai Huong (2013)

These evaluation had been done on different kinds of coursebooks such as ESPfor tourism students, marine engine students, for nursing students, for medical students,for economics and business management students All of these researchers of ESPcoursebooks aimed at finding out the strengths and the weaknesses of the coursebookand then usually gave suggestions for improving the coursebooks This thesis aims toevaluate the ESP coursebook for the second-year nursing students at QNMC in terms oflanguage level, aims, content and methodology to determine whether it meets thecourse‟s objectives, students‟s language level, and the users‟ needs Therefore, theresearcher just wants to review two studies that have the similar aspects Luu NhuQuynh (2012) did the research to evaluate the ESP coursebook for the students at HaTinh Medical College according to learning-centred approach The subjects of thisstudy were100 second-year students of medicine who were taught the ESP coursebook

of the college and three English teachers The study employed survey questionnaires forteachers and students To conduct the study, Luu Nhu Quynh used criteria and themodel proposed by Hutchinson and Waters (1987) focusing on the learners and the

procedural consideration with subjective and objective analysis in the light of centred approach Nguyen Thi Van (2012) also conducted a need-based evaluation ofthe nursing coursebook in terms of appropriateness of its objectives, contents andmethodology from both the teacher‟s and the student‟s perspective To collect the data,the author of the study applied two instrements which are questionnaire and informalinterview She also followed the model of material evaluation proposed by Hutchinsonand Waters (1987) An overall assessment of the coursebook showed that thecoursebook was partly appropriate to the needs of the students in terms of the aim,content and methodology There were some problems with the content, such as theratios of subject areas, types of exercises, time spent on each unit Further more, therewas no support for the teachers teaching the coursebook.

learning-From the studies on the coursebook evaluation presented above, it is found thatthe coursebook evaluation model suggested by Hutchinson and Waters (1987) wasemployed by most of Vietnamese researchers This model seems to fit their teachingand learning contexts The data collection instruments including document analysis,questionnaires and interviews were the most popular The review of the studies abovehave prompted the researcher to use Hutchinson and Waters (1987)‟s model to carryout the coursebook evaluation

6 Summary

This chapter has addressed key notions about ESP and provided a brief review ofliterature on coursebook evaluation and adaptation The chapter indicates thatevaluating the ESP coursebook is an obligatory process as the coursebook plays a veryimportant role in language teaching in general and in the ESP context in particular.Basing the theoretical foundation in this chapter, the evaluator selected the set ofevaluation criteria suggested by Hutchinson and Waters (1987) to apply for the studyand concentrated on such major issues as audience, aims, content and methodology.The evaluator also employed major methods including document analysis andquestionnaire Informal interviews are used after analyzing documents and surveyquestionnaire data with the purpose of getting more objective information about thematerial in order to increase the credibility of the evaluation

CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

1 The current ESP teaching and learning situation at Quang Ninh medical college

1.1 The context

At QNMC the number of teachers of English is limited and none of them are incharge of teaching ESP independently

At the college, English is a compulsory subject to all students An English course

is divided into two parts: General English and English for Specific Purpose Studentslearn GE from a coursebook entitled Lifelines Elementary published by OxfordUniversity Press in 1999 After finishing GE, they take a ESP course (32 periods) Theproblem is that students have not finished all their professional courses, thus they do nothave sufficient background knowledge of their profession

Nursing students study Medical English with the coursebook composed by thehead lecturer of English of the college However, this coursebook does not bring goodresults in teaching and learning ESP due to its clear drawbacks Thus it is verynecessary to find a better coursebook as a substitute

Teaching ESP is very important to the nursing students of QNMC because itbrings them more opportunities to work in foreign organizations or foreign countries inthe age of globalization

1.2 The coursebook description

Nursing 1 is a 135-page-long “in-house” material which was written by Tony

Grice and first published by Oxford University Press in 2007 The coursebook consists

of 15 units of different topics Each unit includes the following parts:

 Scrub up: This part can be seen as a warm-up activity at the beginning of each

unit It usually contains a number of pictures and introduces key words or concepts It canlead students to focus on the topic of the unit

 It’s my job: Every two or three units include this section “It‟s my job” is based

on authentic interview and sources Students will read about many people in various nursingenvironments and obtain insight into the skills required

 Patient care: Some units introduce this part which is useful to practice

communication skill, an important “soft skill” They will learn how to communicate withpatients and their family and their friends about difficult or sensitive matters

 Body bits: This stimulates students to concentrate on parts of the body, which

enables them to extend the vocabulary for talking about the body and its functions

 Signs and symptoms: This part appears in some units and focuses on common

diseases and conditions which are relevant to the particular unit, providing students with thevocabulary for describing common signs and symptoms of illness

 Top margin: This is on the top of the page, containing facts, statistics and

quotes These are optional extras and can add variety and interest to lessons, or equipadditional material for strong students There are also definitions for difficult words orphrases which are important for understanding a text which appears on the same page

 Vocabulary: There is an amount of specialist vocabulary related to the topic of

the unit in this section The words are introduced in different techniques and put incontextualized situations to raise learners‟ attention and interest There are exercisesfollowing for further practice

 Language spot: This focuses on the grammar arising from the topic of the unit

and pays attention to its practical application Learners can have revision by looking at theGrammar reference Teachers also can provide them grammar test in Teacher‟s ResourceBook

 Listening, Reading, Speaking, Writing: These activities give realistic and

communicative practice of language skills needed in nursing

In the listening activities students are exposed to situations related to nursing,containing dialogues, emergencies, and interviews They also listen to a variety ofEnglish accents, both native speakers and non-native speakers

In the reading parts, learners will read a number of nursing-based texts

In the sections of speaking, students are required to practice speaking in

authentic situations at work environment

Writing practice is designed as consolidation and extension of the topic with structured, meaningful writing tasks

 Pronunciation : This helps students to practice pronunciation with key words.

 Project: This section encourages learners to take an active role in learning, both

in terms of English language work and the subject of nursing itself This can be set ashomework assignment

 Checklist: This allows students to check their own progress.

 Key words: This part contains the main items of nursing vocabulary presented

in the unit The definitions and pronunciation appear in the Glossary The section also givestudents the chance to personalize the Key words by adding five more words or expressionsthat they are thought to be useful to them

 Grammar reference: This section supports the part of Language spot It

presents the form of a particular grammar pattern, briefly explains its use and providesexample sentence as well as showing errors which students are likely to make

 Listening scripts: The section provides complete transcripts of all recordings.

Students can check their answer after completing listening task It also allows weak students

to read it when they listen to a recording

 Glossary: This is an alphabetical list of all the key words Every word is followed

by the pronunciation in phonetic script, the part of speech and a definition in English.Glossary begins with a phonetic chart, with an example word from nursing to illustrate each

of the sounds

 Reading bank: The section appears in the middle of the book, providing

specific skills practice in reading The reading texts are accompanied by pre-reading tasksand comprehension questions There is also an Answer key in the Student‟s Book to enablelearners to check their work by themselves

From the above description, it can be seen that the book focuses on thefunctional language needed to succeed in the job Grammar, vocabulary, and skills are

all contextualized in real work situations An inspirational approach includes It's my jobprofiles of real professionals, and specialist facts, figures, and quotations on every page.Writing bank or Reading bank gives practice in working with specialist texts.

The book also provides Revision and Extension with Projects, a student'swebsite with consolidation exercises from the unit Besides, Teacher's Resource Bookprovides a specialist background to the area for every unit, plus easy-to-understand tips,additional activities for mixed ability classes, and Grammar tests and Communicationworksheets The book also provides CDs

2 Participants

The teachers

The first group of teachers includes 3 teachers of English Department One ofthem has experience in collecting and editing materials for English courses Two ofthem have taught ESP and the other does not have much experience in teaching ESP

The second group of teachers to be interviewed consists of 10 lecturers ofNursing Department who have much professional knowledge and experience inteaching nursing students

The Quang Ninh Medical College official curriculum was analyzed according tofour criteria as the audience, aims, content and methodology The course objectives inthe curriculum were carefully examined as a subjective analysis

The coursebook itself was analyzed as an objective analysis to examine how thecoursebook realizes the criteria of the course requirements The coursebook analysiswere broken into sub-issues as follows to get detailed comparison of each: Aims of thecourse; Level; Content and Methodology.

3.2 Questionnaires

In this study, three questionnaires were used: 1 Questionnaire for the students;

2 Questionnaire for teachers of English; 3 Questionnaire for teachers of specialized subject (nursing)

3.2.1 Questionnaire for the teachers

 Questionnaire for the teachers of English

The questionnaire for the teachers of English was designed to collect theirinformation on requirements of the new ESP coursebook The questionnaire includesfour sections with ten items The researcher hoped to see their demands in terms ofcourse aims, content, methodology The questionnaire (see Appendix 1) consists of foursections:

- Section 1 was designed to get the information of the teachers: the time of

teaching English

- Section 2 was designed to collect the information on the teachers‟ ideas about the main objectives of the ESP course

- Section 3 was designed to gather the information about the teacher‟s

requirements for the content of the coursebook

- Section 4 was designed to collect teacher‟s requirements for the methodology

 Questionnaire for the teachers of specialized subject

The questionnaire (see Appendix 3) for specialized subject teachers contains two sections:

- Section 1 was designed to collect the information about the objectives of the ESP course

- Section 2 was designed to collect the information about the topics which should

be included in the coursebook

3.2.2 Questionnaire for the students

The questionnaire for the students was designed to collect their information onrequirements for of the new ESP coursebook The questionnaire includes four sectionswith ten items The researcher hoped to see their demands in terms of course aims,content, methodology The questionnaire (see Appendix 2) consists of four sections:

- Section 1 was designed to get the information of the learners: the time of learningEnglish, the result of their GE course

- Section 2 was designed to collect the information on the learners‟ objectives when they take part in an ESP course

- Section 3 was designed to gather the information about the learner‟s

requirements for the content of the coursebook

- Section 4 was designed to collect learner‟s requirements for the methodology

3.3 Informal interview

In this study, interview was used to collect additional ideas and acquire a variety

of opinions and concerns that cannot be elicited from the questionnaires

To make the result of the interviews objective, three interviews were conductedwith three teachers of English, 6 teachers of specialized subject and 5 nursing students

at different points of time

The interviews which were designed for the teachers of English with the samequestions were related to the following issues:

- The objectives of the ESP course

- The language skills considered to be important for nursing students

- The contents and appearance of the coursebook which can motivate nursing students in learning ESP

The interviews which were designed for the teachers of specialized subject with the same questions were related to the following issues:

- The most necessary topics that should be taught for nursing students

- The real situations in their future working environment in which students may use English

The interviews which were designed for the nursing students with the same questions were related to the following issues:

- The reason for learning ESP

- The expectation when taking ESP course

- The situations in which they use English for their future job

- The requirements for the content and the appearance of the coursebook

- The language skills they want to learn the most

- The requirements for the methodology of the ESP course

4 Data collection procedure

Data collection was conducted via questionnaires and interviews for both theteachers (teachers of English and teachers of specialized subject) and the students.Firstly, the questionnaires were distributed among the teachers of English individually.They were given a week to complete and return the questionnaires to ensure that theyhad enough time to give their answers Secondly, the students were asked to completethe questionnaires while they were in their classroom after being explained about theaim and the way to answer the questionnaire The third questionnaire was delivered tothe teachers of specialized subject individually They had three days to finish it

Interviews with the teachers and the students were carried out after collecting datafrom questionnaires for detailed information

5 Data analysis procedure

After having collected data, the researchers analyzed, synthesized andcategorized the answers in suitable tables The result in this research was reported withthe descriptive statistic tool

CHAPTER 3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

1 Document analysis

1.1 The analysis of ESP training curriculum

As presented above, it was necessary to analyze the Training Curriculum ofQNMC in order to explore the training goals of the ESP course It was reported thatEnglish is a required subject including GE and ESP The first stage of GE costs 4credits equivalent to 56 class-time periods The other of ESP includes 2 credits equal to

32 class periods In the curriculum, it is stated that at the end of the English course,including both GE and ESP, students will be able to obtain basic knowledge and skills

of English language and they will be able to communicate in English in daily life In theTraining curriculum of ESP, it is reported that at the end of the course students willacquire basic knowledge of vocabulary, grammar in order to read and understandnecessary authentic materials for their study of specialist subjects and they will be able

to communicate with patients and colleagues in English in their future workingenvironment

It is understood from the training curriculum and the course objectives thatspeaking, listening and reading are three skills of focus during ESP course In addition,students are expected to be able to use their English in real situations of work context

To be more precise, topics and materials used during the course should be authentic inorder for learners get familiar so that they find it easier to apply in their future job

1.2 The analysis of the coursebook

In this part, the coursebook was analyzed with regards to the aims, level, content(focusing on specialist vocabulary, topics of units, and grammar structures) andmethodology (types of tasks or exercises and different types of class arrangement) Theresults of the coursebook analysis were as followings:

 Aims of the coursebook

It can be inferred from the part of coursebook analysis presented above that the coursebook aims to equip students with vocabulary, grammar items and language skills

which are necessary for their future job In addition, all those language knowledge,skills and tasks are presented in contextualized examples and situations which areextremely useful for students to use English to deal with their job in the future,especially speaking and listening tasks which enable students to improve their

communicative skills in real situations In short, Nursing 1 aims to teach pre-work

students to communicate accurately, in English, with patients and colleagues

 Level of the book

The coursebook is ideal for pre-work students, studying at pre-intermediatelevel, who will need to use English in work situations Therefore, the level of the book

is appropriate for the nursing students of QNMC who have finished GE course atelementary level

Unit 2 Hospital department Unit 10 Death and dying

Unit 3 Hospital admissions Unit 11 Hygiene

Unit 4 Accidents and emergencies Unit 12 Mental health nursing

Unit 7 Caring for the elderly Unit 15 Alternative treatments

Unit 8 Nutrition and obesity

Specialized vocabulary

Since Nursing 1 covers many typical topics related to nursing job, it can be saidthat the coursebook provides learners a wide range of specialized vocabulary related totheir career as a nurse in the future

Grammar patterns

Regarding grammar structures, in each lesson, from unit 1 to unit 15, there is asection namely Language focus in which some grammar patterns used in reading texts,speaking, listening or writing are presented with some examples to follow

Unit 1 Present simple vs Present Unit 9 Zero and first conditional

continuous

Unit 2 Prepositions of places and Unit 10 Expressing possibility

movement

Unit 3 Past simple and past continuous Unit 11 Talking about obligation

Unit 4 Instructions Unit 12 Present perfect

Unit 5 Making comparison Unit 13 The passive

Unit 6 Question forms Unit 14 Be going to v present continuous

for future

Unit 8 Should and shouldn‟t

Skills

It can be seen from the course map of the book that basic language skillsincluding listening, reading, speaking and writing are paid attention to However,listening and speaking get more attention because there are more tasks involved inlistening and speaking in the book There is also an independent reading bankconsisting of 15 reading texts given to learners who want to widen vocabulary andimprove their reading skill It can be concluded that the coursebook focus on skills thatenables learners to use English for communicative purposes

Text types

It is clear that the text-type used in the coursebook under study is of the typesrequired nursing documents All the topics mentioned above are presented in differentforms of texts varying from definitions, explanations, records, dialogues, pictureillustrations, charts, graphs, figures There are many reading texts with various types ofexercises but the number of monologues, dialogues and conversations is limited

The tasks and exercises for listening, reading, speaking, writing, vocabulary,grammar pattern are diverse and put in contextualized situations It can be seen thatlistening and speaking get more attention than other skills

Chart 1: Students’ time of learning English

27

The chart above indicates that the number of students who have been learningEnglish for more than 5 years overwhelms the number of the other groups Most ofthem (87%) have learned English for more than 5 years The number of students havinglearned English from 3 to 4 years equals to the number of those who have learned thesubject from 2 to 3 years These two groups account for 5% each There are one 5students (5%) among 150 having learned English less than 1 year To conclude, mostnursing students under this study have learned English for quite a long time.

10%

0%

Excellent Good Average Below

average

Chart 2: Students’ levels of English

The students have finished GE course at elementary level and taken the finalexam The above chart shows their exam results 7% of those students have gotexcellent level (whose marks for the whole course are from 8/10 to 10/10) 49% ofthem have got good marks (from 7 to 8/10) The number of students are at average level(whose marks are from 5/10 to 6/10) accounts for 37% of the total number And thenumber of students whose test results are below average level takes up 7% From thechart it can be seen that most of the students have passed their GE course, and morethan half of them (56%) are at good and excellent level This means that the number ofstudents at average level is quite considerable

Role of English

important

quite 2%

important 17%

very important 37%

important 44%

Chart 3: Learners’ attitudes towards learning ESP

Most students show their positive attitudes to the ESP course They are aware of

the fact that English for nursing purpose course is important for their study and their

future work Chart 3 depicts that 37% of the students consider ESP course very

important for them while 44% find it important and 17% students assert the course is of

slight importance, and 2% confirm that ESP is not important to them

3 The requirements for the coursebook

3.1 The aims

Table 1: Students’ and teachers’ ranking of the purposes of learning ESP Objective 1: To build up English terms of nursing field used in books, documents and

special newspapers and magazines.

Objective 2: To read and comprehend some certain kinds of documents for nursing

Objective 3: To translate books, documents and magazines of nursing field from

English to Vietnamese and vice versa.

Objective 4: To consolidate and improve basic grammar used in specific texts.

Objective 5: To use English in communicating and daily activities at work