An evaluation of lifelines elementary as the english course book at the central professional school of archives and records management no ii

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES WX YZ AN EVALUATION OF LIFELINES ELEMENTARY AS THE ENGLISH COURSE-BOOK AT THE CENTRAL PROFESSIONAL SCHOOL OF ARCHIVES AND RECORDS MANAGEMENT NO II A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL) Submitted by NGUYỄN TRƯƠNG ANH TRÂM Supervisor NGUYỄN HOÀNG LINH, M.A Ho Chi Minh City, 2006 CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION This chapter sketches out the Central Professional School of Archives and Records No.II (CPSOARM) as the setting of the study before presenting some typical characteristics of the students at this school, which accounts for the choice of Lifelines Elementary as the English course-book at the school In this chapter, the aims of the study and an overview of the thesis are also presented 1.1 A general description of CPSOARM and the characteristics of the learners at this school The Central Professional School of Archives and Records Management No II was established in 1977, directly dependent on Ministry of Home Affairs The school is a public base in the south of Vietnam, responsible for training the manpower of records, archives and office work for the provinces from Quang Tri to Ca Mau Hence, a vast majority of students come from the central part while the remainder from western provinces of Vietnam Especially, most of them are from rural and remote areas, which partly justifies their lack of knowledge in general and their poor English in particular As a matter of psychology, most of the students find learning English horrifying This partly results from the fact that Vietnamese learners are timid and shy by nature Since then, shyness and passiveness are inherent in their study manner Particularly, in language learning, this characteristic unsurprisingly forms a barrier between learners and the target language Having the same nature, the learners at CPSOARM are not very ‘affectionate’ towards English because this language is still alien to them They are likely to have the sense of inferiority complex that they cannot study well, let alone make progress in learning English To these kinds of learners, learning English is a frustrating problem because they think they that hardly tackle this language successfully In any class of any training areas in this school, the students’ knowledge of English can be interpreted as a mixture of all levels At high school, some studied English for seven years, some three years, and some never studied it However, all of them share the same feature that they lack a solid foundation of this language 1.2 Reasons for selecting Lifelines Elementary as the English course-book As a result, the course-book selected for English teaching is Lifelines at elementary level because all the learners are assumed to be beginners due to their weakness of English language Besides, according to the requirements of the training areas (Records Administration and Secretarial Office-work mainly served in state offices rather than in foreign companies), English is just introductorily exposed to them It means that the learners are not required to invest much in this subject The teaching staff is unanimous in presuming that the selected book will be suitable for the learners At first sight, Lifelines gains the teachers’ enjoyment because of its rich content and vivid pictures that they hope will engage the learner’s eye and mind Additionally, Lifelines is counted as one of the latest and the most updated books which presumably benefit learners more than oldfashioned ones Moreover, the teachers assume that this course-book is not the one with which learners have to wrestle strenuously Consequently, in 2003, the long-time used Streamlines was replaced with the new-fashioned Lifelines However, I can say, the use of this book to substitute for Streamlines is just based on the teaching experience of the teachers without any backing of scientific proof, and undeniably Lifelines is not tailored for any particular kind of second /foreign language learners; thus the practical use of this book may, more or less, cause trouble, which gives birth to this study inherently functioning as a scientific base to justify the existence of Lifelines in this environment 1.3 The aims of this study After all, the objective of this research is to supply the teacher with scientific evidence that makes her have a proper evaluation of the book In this sense, the findings of this thesis will be a solid base for the teacher’s decision to adapt or modify the book to suit her students’ tastes While using the book, the teacher does not know if it is completely suitable for the learners or not and she wonders what problem may arise from the use of the book However, the teacher cannot impulsively give any conclusion In her opinion, any decision and conclusion must be based on solid scientific evidence For this reason, the research is brought forth As mentioned above, the purpose of this study is to examine the fitness of the book for the learners at CPSOARM in respect of psychology and ability and to discover the most serious problem resulting from the use of this book On this basis, the examination was performed on the data collected from the direct observation during the course, questionnaires distributed to the learners inquiring their own evaluation of the course-book, and interviews with both sample students and other English teachers in the same school The research questions The purpose of this study is to examine the suitability of Lifelines Elementary as the English course-book at the Central Professional School of Archives and Records No II Specifically, this study is aimed at pointing out in what aspects the book was suitable and in what aspects it is unsuitable for the learners at this school Thus the questions guiding this study are: In what aspects is Lifelines Elementary suitable for the learners at this school? In what aspects is the book unsuitable for the learners at this school? Three sub-questions: (1) How the students perceive the book in terms of suitability for their ability and psychology? (2) How the students evaluate their proficiency after using the book? (3) What is the most difficulty they have in using this book? 1.5 An overview of the thesis Except the abstract, this thesis consists of six central chapters: Chapter 1, Introduction, includes five sections The first one, A general description of CPSOARM and the characteristics of the learners at this school, exposes the background to the study giving a sketchy description of CPSOARM as well as the characteristics of the learners at this school The second section, Reasons for selecting Lifeline Elementary as the English course-book accounts for the reason why the English course-book selected for learning and teaching at this school is Lifelines Elementary The third section reveals the aims of the study, the fourth the research questions, and the last one gives an overview of the thesis Chapter 2, Literature Review, presents other literature that is relevant and fundamental to this study In this chapter, principles central to the materials evaluation are listed, several teaching approaches are introduced and one related study in the same field is presented Chapter 3, named Methodology, portrays three data collected procedures employed in this study: 1) the direct observation of the learners’ behaviors performed by the teacher during the course; 2) questionnaires asking the learners to give their assessments of the book; 3) interviews with both learners and teachers Chapter displays Data analysis and findings Accordingly, the findings of the study are exposed in the light of the data collected from the three instruments Chapter 5, titled Discussions and Recommendations, discusses the findings and gives several recommendations on teaching and learning method Chapter leads to conclusion 1.6 Summary This chapter has presented a description of CPSOARM as well as the characteristics of the learners at this school before elucidating the reason why Lifelines Elementary has been chosen as the English course-book in this school The following sections reveal the aims of the study as well as the research questions and deliver an overview of the entire thesis CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter consists of five main sections The first section interprets the nature of a course-book evaluation so that the reader has a notion of the aim and the perspective of the writer on the issue because the term ‘evaluation’ itself is almost universal which may lead to many ways of understanding The second section presents some studies that instruct the ways to evaluate materials in general These instructions were useful to the study because the writer employed some of these principles as standards for the evaluation of Lifelines The third section gives a view over some typical teaching and learning approaches whose advantages and disadvantages are revealed This part was useful in that it helped the writer identify and evaluate the learning and teaching approach suggested in the book The fourth portion introduces existing literature that has given an evaluation of Lifelines Eventually, the last section gives brief introduction to Lifelines Elementary 2.1 The nature of the course-book evaluation “Oppression makes the wise man mad” Robert Browning The relationship between teaching and learning has long been a subject of controversy In metaphorical terms, teaching and learning is a form of art, the creation of beautiful or thought-provoking works In this sense, it is far from easy to execute teaching and learning effectively From the angle of teachers, to pass their knowledge on to learners is not a simple matter as “ for every person wishing to teach there are approximately thirty who don’t want to learn much” (W C Sellar, a British writer of humor, Encarta, 2004) On the part of learners, learning is more than just memorization In this view, learning is synonymous with understanding, arranging, acting on the material with which learners are engaged (Newsam, Encarta 1994) Noticeably, if the roles of teachers and learners are overemphasized during the process, the role of course-books as a medium of these two extremes is likely to be neglected Thus, selecting, considering and evaluating a course-book is an essential process As part of the mentioned process, this thesis only centers on evaluating the course-book after it is brought into use over a period of time to identify its strengths and weaknesses Evaluation is a matter of judging the fitness of something for a particular purpose Given a certain need, and in the light of the resources available, which out of a number of possibilities can represent the best solution? Evaluation is, then, concerned with relative merit There is no absolute good or bad – only degrees of fitness for the required purpose (Tomlinson, 1998) According to this assumption, the evaluation of this course-book is, in fact, turned to the evaluation of its degrees of suitability for the users because the book is presumably perfect in itself In the same view, it is specified that the purpose of this thesis is to discover if the course-book employed is suitable for the users’ ability and psychology or not, and in what aspects it is inappropriate for these learners 2.2 Studies instructing the ways to evaluate materials in general There has been little existing literature concerning evaluating a particular course-book so far However, there are numerous studies instructing the ways to evaluate materials in general First of all, a definition of materials evaluation is raised In chapter of the book Materials Development in Language Teaching (1998) edited by Brian Tomlinson, materials evaluation is characterized as “a matter of judging the fitness of something for a particular purpose, There is no absolute good or bad – only degrees of fitness for the required purpose” (p.96) In the same spirit, this study did not evaluate the book on its positive and negative side on the assumption that the book is intrinsically faultless, but it is just aimed at examining the levels of suitability of the book for the students’ ability and characteristics at CPSOARM In Materials Development in Language Teaching, the author instructs the way to evaluate materials in general Accordingly, evaluation is mainly a matching process: matching needs to available solutions From this principle, the evaluation process can be divided into four major steps: Defining criteria Subjective analysis Objective analysis Matching Also, in the introduction of this book Tomlinson presents some principles relevant to the development of materials for language teaching These principles, in some aspect, can be considered as criteria for us to evaluate a course-book Accordingly, materials should achieve impact, materials should help learners to feel at ease, materials should help learners to develop confidence, and so on First, materials should achieve impact “Impact is achieved when materials have a noticeable effect on learners” (1998:7) They should arouse the learners’ curiosity and attract their attention because learners’ curiosity and attention compose learners’ motivation for learning Second, materials should help learners to feel at ease According to Tomlinson, learners will feel at ease in many ways First, learners will feel comfortable with materials with lots of white space than they in the materials whose pages are fully covered with lots of different activities In fact, in terms of psychology, such materials relieve learners’ anxiety about abundant tasks As a result, they are unlikely to find their course-books too ponderous to study, or at least they not feel required too much for the course Second, they will feel at ease with texts and illustrations “that they can relate to their own culture” (1998:8) In fact, they may find it discouraging to encounter those texts on unfamiliar and exotic culture Third, learners prefer materials that help them to learn to the ones that always test and challenge them Fourth, materials should help learners to develop confidence Helping learners to develop confidence is not synonymous with giving them too simple and easy tasks Tomlinson argues that “it often only succeeds in diminishing the learners They become aware that the process is being simplified for them and that what they are doing bears little resemblance to actual language use” (1998:9) They also become aware that they are not really using their brains and that their apparent success is an illusion And this awareness can even lead to “a reduction in confidence” (1998:9) To him tasks given in a course-book should be “stimulating and problematic” but “achievable” This will encourage students and make them engage in many skills such as being imaginative, being creative or being analytical Especially, he emphasizes “at elementary level learners can often gain greater confidence from making up a story, writing a short poem or making a grammatical discovery than she can from getting right a simple drill” (1998:9) Third, what is being taught should be perceived by learners as relevant and useful Tomlinson claims that “in ESP materials, it is relatively easy to convince the learners that the teaching points are relevant and useful by relating them to known learner interests and to ‘real-life’ tasks which the learners need or might need to perform in the target language’ It signifies that learners only perceive what they are taught as relevant and useful when it satisfies their needs and helps them to reach the targets they are in pursuit of APPENDIX 2: QUESTIONNAIRE (IN ENGLISH) My dear students, The following questions are aimed at collecting data for the research on the topic “An evaluation of Lifelines as the English course-book at the Central Professional School of Archives and Records Management No II” Please give your personal information and opinions by answering all the questions by putting an (X) next to your choice Your sincere and honest answers are fundamental to the success of the study QUESTIONNAIRE An evaluation of Lifelines Elementary as the English course-book at the Central Professional School Of Archives And Records Management no II Date: Part A: Personal Information Student’s name: Year of birth: Class: You come from: A city A town The countryside Gender: † † † a mountainous area † a remote rural area † When did you begin to learn English? in junior secondary school † in senior secondary school † others : 97 Part B: About the influence of Lifelines on your psychology and study manner Do you like this book? not at all † † † extremely † † † † † extremely Does the book make you feel self-confident? not at all † Does the book make you feel at ease? not at all † † † † † † extremely Do you perceive that the book is useful and relevant to you? not at all † † † † † extremely Does the book stimulate your self-study and investment? Or How often you study English in your free time? never † † † † † always Part C: about your proficiency while using the course-book Evaluate your proficiency in: † † a Reading: very bad † † b Writing: very bad † † † very good † † † very good c Listening: very bad † † † † † very good d Speaking: very bad † † † † † very good † † † † very good pronunciation: very bad † † † † † very good grammar: very bad † 98 Part D: about the suitability of the course-book for your ability How difficult you find the tasks and exercises from the book? not at all 10 extremely † † † † extremely † † † † extremely † † † † extremely † † † † extremely † † † extremely † † † extremely † † † † grammatical tasks not at all 15 † writing tasks? not at all 14 † reading texts? not at all 13 † speaking tasks? not at all 12 † listening tasks? not at all 11 † † † pronunciation tasks? not at all † † 99 APPENDIX PHẦN CÂU HỎI PHỎNG VẤN SINH VIÊN Để nghiên cứu nêu thêm xác, xin bạn vui lòng trả lời câu hỏi sau: Bạn có thích giáo trình không? Tại sao? Bạn có cảm thấy thoải mái học giáo trình không? Tại sao? Giáo trình có làm bạn cảm thấy tự tin học không? Nếu có, nào? Bạn có thấy giáo trình hữu ích tương ứng với trình độ bạn không? Nếu có, đến mức độ nào? Giáo trình có kích thích tự học đầu tư bạn không? Xin vui lòng giải thích Trong sử dụng giáo trình, bạn gặp khó khăn nhất? Xin cho biết sao? Cảm ơn hợp tác bạn 100 APPENDIX INTERVIEW WITH STUDENTS To make the findings of this research more exact and credible, please answer the following questions: Do you like this book? Why? Do you feel at ease with this book? Why? Does this book develop your confidence? In what ways? How useful and relevant you think it is? To what extent? Does the book stimulate your self-investment and self-discovery? Explain What you perceive is the most problematic skill while you are using this book? Why? Thanks for your cooperation 101 APPENDIX PHẦN CÂU HỎI PHỎNG VẤN GIÁO VIÊN Để kết nghiên cứu đạt đến độ tin cậy xác cao, xin quý Thầy (Cô) vui lòng trả lời câu hỏi sau: Trong trình học, sinh viên Thầy (Cô) có biểu thấy họ thích giáo trình không? Nếu có lý gì? Sinh viên có cảm thấy thoải mái học giáo trình không? Tại sao? Giáo trình có làm cho sinh viên tự tin trình học hay không? Như nào? Sinh viên nhận thấy giáo trình hữu ích phù hợp với họ không? Tại sao? Trong bốn kỹ (nghe, nói, đọc, viết) kỹ gây khó khăn cho sinh viên nhất? Vì sao? Xin vui lòng cho biết phương pháp giảng dạy Thầy (Cô) dạy kỹ Xin cảm ơn hợp tác quý Thầy (Cô) 102 APPENDIX INTERVIEW WITH TEACHERS To ensure the exactness and the credibility of this research, please answer the following questions! During the process of learning, did your students show their enjoyment of this book? Do you know why? Did they feel at ease with this book? Why? Did the book develop their confidence? In what ways? How useful and relevant did they think it was? Why? What skill among the four skills you perceive troubled your students most? Why? What was your teaching strategy for this skill? Thanks for your cooperation 103 APPENDIX MỤC TIÊU CỦA QUÁ TRÌNH QUAN SÁT TRỰC TIẾP Thái độ sinh viên học Lifelines (Lifelines có làm SV yêu thích không? Lifelines có thu hút ý họ không? Có làm cho SV cảm thấy thoải mái mặt tâm lý hay không?) Thái độ cách thức SV trình học môn Đọc hiểu (Hăm hở, nhiệt tình, tự học, có chủ động không?) Khó khăn, có? Thái độ cách thức SV trình học môn Viết (Hăm hở, nhiệt tình, tự học, có chủ động không?) Khó khăn, có? Thái độ cách thức SV trình học môn Nghe hiểu (Hăm hở, nhiệt tình, tự học, có chủ động không?) Khó khăn, có? Thái độ cách thức SV trình học môn Nói (Hăm hở, nhiệt tình, tự học, có chủ động không?) Khó khăn có? Thái độ cách thức SV trình học môn Ngữ pháp (Hăm hở, nhiệt tình, tự học, có chủ động không?) Khó khăn có? Thái độ cách thức SV trình học môn Ngữ âm (Hăm hở, nhiệt tình, tự học, có chủ động không? Khó khăn có? 104 APPENDIX THE OBJECTS OF THE DIRECT OBSERVATION The students’ manner and attitude while they are using Lifelines (Do they like the book? Does the book attract their attention? Does it make the students comfortable?) Their attitude and manner while learning reading (Eager, enthusiastic, motivated, and active or not?) What problems, if any? Their attitude and manner while learning writing (Eager, enthusiastic, motivated, and active or not?) What problems, if any? Their attitude and manner while learning listening (Eager, enthusiastic, motivated, and active or not?) What problems, if any? Their attitude and manner while learning speaking (Eager, enthusiastic, motivated, and active or not?) What problems, if any? Their attitude and manner while learning grammar (Eager, enthusiastic, motivated, and active or not?) What problems, if any? Their attitude and manner while learning pronunciation (Eager, enthusiastic, motivated, and active or not?) What problems, if any? 105 APPENDIX 106 APPENDIX 10 107 APPENDIX 11 108 APPENDIX 12 109 APPENDIX 13 110 APPENDIX 14 111