An Evaluation of the material New Headway_ Elementary for the first year non-English major students at Thai Nguyen College of Economics and Technology

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* BÙI THỊ HƢƠNG AN EVALUATION OF THE MATERIAL “NEW HEADWAY – ELEMENTARY” FOR THE FIRST YEAR NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT THAINGUYEN COLLEGE OF ECONOMICS AND TECHNOLOGY Đánh giá giáo trình “New Headway_Elementary” dành cho sinh viên không chuyên ngữ năm thứ trƣờng Cao đẳng Kinh tế - Kỹ thuật Thái Nguyên M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111 Hanoi, 2014 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* BÙI THỊ HƢƠNG AN EVALUATION OF THE MATERIAL “NEW HEADWAY – ELEMENTARY” FOR THE FIRST YEAR NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT THAINGUYEN COLLEGE OF ECONOMICS AND TECHNOLOGY Đánh giá giáo trình “New Headway_Elementary” dành cho sinh viên không chuyên ngữ năm thứ trƣờng Cao đẳng Kinh tế - Kỹ thuật Thái Nguyên M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111 SUPERVISOR: TÔ THỊ THU HƢƠNG, DR Hanoi, 2014 i DECLARATION I certify the minor thesis is submitted entitled “An Evaluation of the material New Headway_ Elementary for the first year non-English major students at Thai Nguyen College of Economics and Technology” in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts I confirm that this is the result of my own work, and that it has not been submitted for any other degrees Signature Bùi Thị Hương ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My thesis has been completed with the supports of many people I would like to thank them for their thoughtful help First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr To Thi Thu Huong for her valuable guidance, thoughtful comments, sympathy and encouragement Without her help, I can not complete this thesis I am also grateful to all the professors and lecturers at College of Foreign Language (CFL), Vietnam National University, Hanoi (VNUH) for their insightful lectures and useful guidance during the course I would also like to express my thankfulness to all my English colleagues and all the first year students in the class K9QLMT, K9KT, K9CNTT, K9QLĐ at Thai Nguyen College of Economics and Technology (TNCET) for the great cooperation in the collection of data for my study Finally, I am deeply indebted to my husband and my little daughter for their love, encouragement and support, who helps me to accomplish this research iii ABSTRACT Material evaluation is an important task in the process of language teaching Within these regards, the thesis was carried out to evaluate the material "New Headway_ Elementary" which is being used at Thai Nguyen College of Economics and Technology in order to determine how the material is suitable for the needs of students within the framework of the English program Thanks to this, there are some suggestions for material adaptation to make a more appropriate material with the hope of improving the quality of teaching and learning English at Thai Nguyen College of Economics and Technology The material is evaluated based on the criteria of Hutchinson and Waters (1987) in terms of objective, content, and methodology by using two instruments to collect the data from teachers’ and students’ opinions such as questionnaires and interviews Research results show the strengths and weaknesses of the material, it also reveals some inappropriate things to the needs of students Based on these findings, they help the researcher come up with some suggestions for material adaptations as omission, addition and replacement to have a more appropriate material for the following courses iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS VNUH: Vietnam National University, Hanoi CFL: College of Foreign Language TNCET Thainguyen College of Economics and Technology ELT: English Language Teaching T: Teachers S: Students v LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Figure 1: The materials evaluation process (Hutchinson and Waters 1987, p 98) Table 1: Students’ desire and achievement after finishing English course Table 2: The match of the material to the needs of students Table 3: Students’ interest on the material Table 4: Teachers’ opinions about students’ achievement after learning this material Table 5: Students and teachers’ opinion about language point in this material Table 6: Students and teachers’ opinions about the proportion of four macroskills in this material Table 7: Teachers and students’ opinions about the integration of four macroskills in this material Table 8: Teachers and students’ opinions about the kinds of texts in this material Table 9: Teachers and students’ opinions about the organization and sequence of content in this material Table 10: Teachers and students’ opinions about topics of the material Table 11: Teachers and students’ opinions about each part of units in this material Table 12: Teachers and students’ opinions about the number of new words in each unit in this material Table 13: Teachers and students’ opinions about the variety of kinds of tasks/ exercises in this material Table 14: Teachers and students’ opinions about teaching and learning interactions/techniques in this material Table15: Teachers and students’ opinions about teaching aids vi TABLE OF CONTENTS PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 Rational for the study Aims of the study Research questions Methods of the study .2 Scope of the study Design of the study PART B: DEVELOPMENT .4 CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW .4 1.1 Materials in language teaching and learning 1.1.1 Material and types of materials 1.1.2 What are roles of material in language teaching and learning? 1.2 Material evaluation .5 1.2.1 What is material evaluation? .5 1.2.2 Different types of material evaluation 1.2.3 What are purposes of material evaluation? .7 1.2.4 Who are material evaluators? 1.2.5 Models for material evaluation 1.2.6 Different methods of evaluation .10 1.2.7 What are criteria for material evaluation? .11 1.3 Material adaptation 13 1.3.1 Why should adapt materials? 13 1.3.2 Adapting techniques 13 CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY 15 2.1 The current teaching and learning situation at TNCET .15 2.1.1 Teaching and learning context 15 2.1.2 General description of the material 15 2.2 Research methodology .16 vii 2.2.1 Participants 16 2.2.2 Instruments 16 2.2.3 Data collection procedure .16 2.2.4 Data analysis procedure 17 2.3 Summary 17 CHAPTER III: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 18 3.1 Material analysis 18 3.1.1 The objective of the material 18 3.1.2 The content of the material .18 3.1.3 The methodology of the material 20 3.2 Survey results .21 3.2.1 The suitability of the objectives of the material to the needs of students within the framework of the English program at TNCET 21 3.2.2 The suitability of the content of the material with the students’ needs within the framework of the English program at TNCET 25 3.2.3 The suitability of the methodology of the material to the needs of students within the framework of English program at TNCET 29 3.3 Major findings 31 3.3.1 The suitability of the objectives of the material to the needs of students within the framework of the English program .31 3.3.2 The suitability of the contents of the material to the needs of students withinthe framework of the English program 32 3.3.3 The suitability of the methodology of the material to the needs of students within the framework of the English program 33 3.4 Suggestions for material adaptation 34 3.5 Summary 35 PART C: CONCLUSION 36 Conclusions 36 Limitations and suggestions for further study 36 viii REFERENCES 37 APPENDICES I Appendix 1: HUTCHINSON AND WATERS’S CRITERIA CHECKLIST FOR MATERIALS EVALUATION (1987: 99-104) I Appendix 2: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS .VI Appendix 3: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR TEACHERS .XI Appendix 4: PROPOSED QUESTIONS FOR INTERVIEWS………………….XVI ... New Headway_ Elementary for the first year non-English major students at Thai Nguyen College of Economics and Technology? ?? in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of. .. evaluating the material New Headway_ Elementary from the opinions of the English teachers and the first- year students at college in terms of Objective, Content and Methodology basing on material evaluation. .. and learning 1.1.1 Material and types of materials 1.1.2 What are roles of material in language teaching and learning? 1.2 Material evaluation .5 1.2.1 What is material