摘 要

本文采用McDonough and Shaw (2013)的内外评估模型，对两套大学非英语专业英语教材进行了回顾性评价，以此确定其是否符合学生与教师的学习及教学需求。这两套教材分别是：李荫华和王德明主编的《全新版大学英语综合课程(第二版)》与郑树棠主编的《新视野大学英语(第三版)》。两者均适用四年制大学英语公共课程。本研究采用内部评估和外部评估相结合、并辅以非正式访谈的研究方法。在教材本体的分析中，本文通过两套课本的封面、所选文章、语法、词汇、练习等多方面进行系统对比，从而对教材是否符合大学英语课标要求、大学生学习需要、及教师课堂教学需求等方面进行调查。此外，应用非正式访谈的方法采集教材使用者的实际反馈意见，进一步验证教材本体的分析结果。研究表明：以上两套教材均符合大学英语课程要求，符合大学生学习需要。

关键词：内部评估；外部评估；教材评估；大学英语

Abstract

This thesis used McDonough and Shaw’s (2013) internal-external assessment model to evaluate two sets of college non-English-major English Language Teaching (ELT) textbooks in China, in order to determine whether they fit the students’ learning and teachers’ pedagogical needs. The two sets of textbooks are: New College English Integrated course (2^nd Edition) by Li Yinhua and Wang Deming and New Horizon College English (3^rd Edition) by Cheng Shutang. Both of the textbooks are designed for English courses in a four-year undergraduate program. The present study primarily employed the internal-external assessment approach, with the additional use of informal interviews. For the textbook analysis, this study looked into the cover pages, selected texts, grammar, vocabulary, exercises, and other aspects of the two target textbooks. Based on the comparison of the textbooks, the study attempted to address whether they met the requirements of the college English curriculum standards, the needs of non-English-major undergraduates, and teachers’ instructional demands. The research shows that the above two sets of teaching materials meet the requirements of college English curriculum and meet the learning needs of college students.

Key Words: Internal evaluation; external evaluation; textbook evaluation; college English

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Literature Review 4

2.1 The definition of textbook evaluation 4

2.2 The approaches to textbook evaluation 5

2.2.1 Predictive evaluation 5

2.2.2 Retrospective evaluation 6

2.2.3 SLA-based Evaluation 7

2.2.4 McDonough and Shaw’s (2013) evaluation 8

3 Research Methods 10

3.1 Textbook analysis 10

3.1.1 The textbooks 10

3.1.2 Procedure 12

3.2 Informal interview 13

3.2.1 Instruments 13

3.2.2 Participants 14

3.2.3 Procedure 15

4 Results 16

4.1 Textbook Analysis 16

4.1.1 External evaluation 16

4.1.1.1 External evaluation on NCE 16

4.1.1.2 External evaluation on NHCE 17

4.1.2 Internal evaluation 18

4.1.2.1 The language 18

4.1.2.2 The grammar 19

4.1.2.3 The exercise 19

4.1.3 Overall evaluation on the textbooks 20

4.2 Informal interview 21

4.2.1 Students’ interview 21

4.2.2 Teacher’s interview 22

5 Discussion 24

5.1 Summary of major results 24

5.2 Pedagogical implications for students 24

5.3 Pedagogical implications for teachers 25

5.4 Pedagogical implications for relations of students and teachers 27

6 Conclusions 28

References 30

Acknowledgements 33

An Internal-external Assessment Approach to the Retrospective Evaluation of College non-English-major Textbooks

1 Introduction

Since the first decade of the 21^st century, higher education in Mainland China has experienced a significant transformation from an elite educational system to a stage of massification. More and more Chinese students have the ability to understand the teaching content and can afford the costs of higher education, thus the importance of higher education in China is also increasingly drawing our attention. With the continuous progress of globalization, the significance of English is gradually shown across different levels of educational system in China, and higher education also attaches more importance to English teaching.

It is widely accepted that English is a foreign language (FL) for Chinese native speakers. Chinese children have been in contact with English since the third grade of primary education. This process continues until the undergraduate and even postgraduate stages. According to the requirements of college students' English curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2009), college students should master at least 4200 English words and achieve a basic level of English skills regarding listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translation. However, the content of English learning is different at different levels, and for non-English majors.

L2 acquisition cannot occur without some kind of language input. Particularly in FL settings such as Mainland China, a majority of Chinese learners of English have little or limited access to abundant input of the target language. There are many ways to increase language input, but the most efficient way of achieving this goal is considered as the use of language textbooks in formal instructional settings. As one of the main teaching mediums, textbooks play a highly important role in the teaching and learning process, which is of great benefit to students’ learning and teachers’ instruction. Therefore, choosing an appropriate textbook becomes more and more important for English education.

Thus，it is a sensible idea to conduct an evaluation of college ELT textbooks to have a better understanding of whether the textbooks are suitable for the actual needs of students and teachers. Textbook evaluation is a research approach to providing insights into the effectiveness of teaching materials. This approach offers not only an understanding of the teaching materials, but also a contact to their target users. Textbook evaluation can potentially have crucial impacts on the language learning and teaching process, since instructors may make use of textbooks as guidelines for their classroom teaching (Harmer, 1991; McGrath, 2002) or design and arrange the whole language syllabus around them (Harmer, 1991). Consequently, it is important to carry out a textbook evaluation on the basis of valid and reliable principles or models, in order to optimize the effectiveness of textbooks on language teaching.

After consulting with a couple of college students on non-English majors from the Wuhan University of Technology, an interesting finding has been revealed that not all the students use the same textbooks. All non-English major students need to spend two years (a total of four semesters) to study English. However, according to the present study, those students have used different textbooks. For senior-year students, the textbook they used for the last two years was New College English Integrated Course (2^nd edition) by Li Yinhua and Wang Deming, while for the current juniors, they used New Horizon College English (3^rd edition) by Zheng Shutang.

The established studies on textbook evaluation mainly looked into predictive evaluation such as (Cunningsworth, 1991); retrospective evaluation such as (Elis, 2006; Damankesh and Babaii, 2015), second language acquisition (SLA)-based evaluation such as (Ellis, 1985, Chen, 2016). However, the previous studies on the use of internal-external assessment approach within the context of Chinese higher education are still limited in number. Therefore, the current study aims to address whether they met the requirements of the college English curriculum standards, the needs of non-English-major undergraduates, and teachers’ instructional demands.

The textbook evaluation approach employed in this thesis is adapted on the basis of the internal-external assessment model developed by McDonough and Shaw (2013). This model can be generally divided into three sections, external evaluation, internal evaluation, and overall evaluation. The three sections refer to different fields respectively. External evaluation is the assessment of the external logic of the textbook, internal evaluation is intended for the content of the textbook, and overall evaluation is the general measurement of features and characteristics of the textbook.

This thesis consists of six chapters in total. The first chapter is an introduction on the current situation of English teaching and the need of textbook evaluation. The second chapter is a literature review on the following two parts: 1) the definition of textbook evaluation; 2) the approaches of textbook evaluation. The third chapter is research methods and the next is results. The fifth chapter is discussion and the final chapter is conclusion which includes limitation.

2 Literature Review

This part is intended to review the previous studies on textbook evaluation. Firstly, an introduction of textbook evaluation is provided. It offers a definition of textbook evaluation. Then, the methods that had been commonly used should be taken into consideration. In this section, several methods will be introduced, including the model which will be used in this thesis, namely, McDonough and Shaw (2003).

2.1 The definition of textbook evaluation

The purpose of a textbook evaluation is that throughout the evaluation, students and teachers should benefit from the analysis results. Especially for EFL students and teachers, textbook evaluation has become an essential approach to gain knowledge and evolve techniques.