Tài liệu An evaluation of the textbook “english id 1” used at tri duc high school

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY --------------------------- AN EVALUATION OF THE TEXTBOOK “ENGLISH ID 1” USED AT TRI DUC HIGH SCHOOL Submitted to the Faculty of English Language in partial fulfillment of the Master’s degree in English Language Course code: 1641900017 By PHAM VAN MANH Supervised by Dr. LE VAN TUYEN HO CHI MINH CITY, March/2018 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY --------------------------- AN EVALUATION OF THE TEXTBOOK “ENGLISH ID 1” USED AT TRI DUC HIGH SCHOOL Submitted to the Faculty of English Language in partial fulfillment of the Master’s degree in English Language Course code: 1641900017 By PHAM VAN MANH Supervised by Dr. LE VAN TUYEN HO CHI MINH CITY, March/2018 CERTIFICATION OF THESIS DEFENSE THE THESIS WAS WRITTEN AT HOCHIMINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY Academic supervisor name : Dr. LE VAN TUYEN The thesis defense session was conducted at Hochiminh City University of Technology (HUTECH) on April, 6th 2018. The Board of Examiners for the Master’s Thesis Defense NAME FUNCTION TT 1 Dr. NGUYEN THI KIEU THU Chair 2 Dr. LE THI THANH Reader 1 3 Dr. TRAN QUOC THAO Reader 2 4 Dr. PHAM NGUYEN HUY HOANG Member 5 Dr. NGUYEN DANG NGUYEN Secretary Member On behalf of the Board of Examiners Chair HCMC, April 6th 2018 HCMC UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY POSTGRADUATE INSTITUTE MASTER’S THESIS TASK REPORT Student name: PHAM VAN MANH Sex : Male Date of birth: 18/05/1990 Place of birth : NINH BINH Major: English Language Student code: 1641900017 I- Thesis title: AN EVALUATION OF THE TEXTBOOK “ENGLISH ID 1” USED AT TRI DUC HIGH SCHOOL II- Task description and contents: - Students' and teachers’ attitudes and perceptions towards the textbook English ID 1 - The extent the teachers use and exploit the textbook in the classroom. Through the investigation, strengths and weaknesses of the textbook itself as well as of the way it is exploited are elucidated and recommendations are made for both designers and teachers. III- Starting date: 01/08/2017 IV- Completing date : 17/03/2018 V- Academic supervisor: Dr. LE VAN TUYEN SUPERVISOR LE VAN TUYEN FACULTY DEAN i CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I certify my authorship of the Master’s thesis submitted today entitled: AN EVALUATION OF THE TEXTBOOK “ENGLISH ID 1” USED AT TRI DUC HIGH SCHOOL In terms of the statement of requirements for Theses in Master’s programs issued by the Higher Degree Committee of Faculty of English Language, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology. Ho Chi Minh City, March/ 2018 PHAM VAN MANH ii RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, PHAM VAN MANH, being a candidate for the degree of Master of Arts (English Language) accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Theses deposited in the Library. In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my Master’s Thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Librarian for the care, loan, and reproduction for theses. Ho Chi Minh City, March 2018 Signature ……………………………. PHAM VAN MANH iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research would have never been completed without the assistance of some people who always gave support and useful recommendations. I would like to express my deep gratitude and heartfelt thanks to a number of people. Without them, this research study would not have succeeded. First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Le Van Tuyen, my advisor, for his helpful suggestions, guidance and time which inspired me to do my best to complete this study. He gave me not only invaluable, constructive and insightful suggestions tirelessly, but also warm encouragement. Next, I am also really grateful to all lecturers for their helpful instruction during the Master of Art course as well as the staff of Graduate Studies at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology for their kind assistance. My honest thanks go to Ms. Nguyen Thi Phung, Vice-principal of Tri Duc High School for her support and all the colleagues who are the English teachers at Tri Duc High School, as well as students at Tri Duc High School, for their contribution, enthusiastic engagement in the survey for questionnaires and interviews. I would like to thank my classmates who provided me a number of sincere advices and shared with me a lot of knowledge and learning experience during the course. Without their help, I think I could have never been completed the courses. Finally, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my family for their spiritual as well as material supports, especially, my wife who has always supported and encouraged me to overcome all the difficulties in completing this study. iv ABSTRACT Textbooks play a key component in most language teaching programs. A textbook seems to become the main tool for teachers to convey language knowledge to English as a foreign language (EFL) learner. The present study aims to investigate students' and teachers’ attitudes and perceptions towards the textbook “English ID 1” which used at Tri Duc High School (TDHS) at the pre-intermediate level and the extent the teachers use and exploit the textbook in the classroom. Through the investigation, strengths and weaknesses of the textbook itself as well as of the way it is exploited are elucidated and recommendations are made for both designers and teachers. 308 students and 18 teachers comprising males and females participated in this study. The instruments employed in the study were a textbook evaluation questionnaire adapted and modified from some variety checklists of many researchers, semi-structured interviews with ten students and five teachers and classroom observations. The 42-item questionnaire using 5-point Likert scale rating from “1=Strongly Disagree” to “5=Strongly Agree” was employed to elicit participants’ response to six main categories including Overall Assessment, Practical Consideration, Language Skills, Subject and Content, Organization and culture. Descriptive statistics were carried out to interpret the quantitative data by utilizing mean and standard deviation. The data analyzed from the interviews, classroom observation and the syllabus and textbook were analysed based on “Content Analysis”. The results showed that both teachers and students had active perceptions regarding the strengths and weaknesses of the textbook and they thought that it was consistent with English teaching and learning process at their school. In addition, it also revealed that the teachers had some problems in the use of textbook English ID 1 in the classroom v TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY ........................................................................... i RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS...............................................................ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................... iii ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................ iv TABLE OF CONTENTS .......................................................................................... v LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................... viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .................................................................................... ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................... 1 1.1 Background to the study ........................................................................ 1 1.2 Problem statement.................................................................................. 5 1.3 Thesis statement ..................................................................................... 6 1.4 Purpose of the study ............................................................................... 6 1.5 Scope of the study .................................................................................. 7 1.6 Significance of the study........................................................................ 7 1.7 Organization of the thesis ...................................................................... 7 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW .................................................................... 9 2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................ 9 2.2 Theoretical Foundation .......................................................................... 9 2.2.1 Materials and Textbooks .............................................................................9 2.2.1.4 Advantages and Disadvantages of the textbook and its roles in the classroom ........................................................................................................... 14 2.2.2 Textbooks Evaluation ................................................................................19 2.3 Some review of previous studies ......................................................... 30 2.3.1 Studies on textbook evaluation in Vietnam...............................................31 2.3.2 Studies on textbook evaluation at overseas ...............................................33 2.4 Summary .............................................................................................. 39 CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY ............................................................................ 40 vi 3.1 Introduction .......................................................................................... 40 3.2 Research site ........................................................................................ 40 3.3 Participants of the study....................................................................... 41 3.3.1 Students .....................................................................................................41 3.3.2 Teachers .....................................................................................................43 3.4 Description of the textbook.................................................................. 44 3.5 Research Method ................................................................................. 47 3.6 Research instruments ........................................................................... 49 3.6.1 Questionnaire .............................................................................................49 3.6.2 Interviews ..................................................................................................53 3.6.3 Classroom Observation .............................................................................54 3.7 Data Collection .................................................................................... 55 3.7.1 Procedure of conducting questionaires ............................................. 56 3.7.2 Procedure of conducting interviews ................................................. 57 3.7.3 Procedure of conducting classroom observation .............................. 58 3.8 Data analyses ....................................................................................... 58 3.9 Summary .............................................................................................. 60 4.1 Introduction .......................................................................................... 61 4.2 The Results of the study....................................................................... 61 4.2.1 Research Question 1: Students and Teachers’ perceptions towards the textbook “English ID 1” ...................................................................................... 61 4.2.2 Research question 2: The extent teachers use and exploit the textbook in the classroom ......................................................................................................76 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION ................................................................... 87 5.1 Summary of the results ........................................................................ 87 5.1.1 Students and teachers’ perceptions towards the textbook English ID 1 ...87 5.1.2 The extent the teachers used the textbook in the classroom .....................89 5.2 Implications of the research ................................................................. 89 5.3 Limitation ............................................................................................. 90 vii 5.4 Recommendations ................................................................................ 90 5.4.1 For the curriculum managers .....................................................................90 5.4.3 For EFL Teachers ......................................................................................91 5.4.1For the students .................................................................................. 92 5.4.4 Recommendations for further research ............................................. 92 REFERENCES .......................................................................................................... 93 APPENDIXES viii LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1: Demographic Profile of Students. ........................................................ 41 Table 3.2: Demographic Profile of Teachers. ....................................................... 43 Table 3.3: Language Map of Unit 1 ....................................................................... 46 Table 3.4: Reliability analysis of scales ................................................................. 52 Table 3.5: Coding for Classroom Observations ................................................... 55 Table 4.1 Descriptive Statistics for the Overall Assessments .............................. 62 Table 4.2 Descriptive Statistics for the Practical Consideration ........................ 64 Table 4.3 Descriptive Statistics for the Language Skills ..................................... 66 Table 4.4 Descriptive Statistics for Subject and Content .................................... 71 Table 4.5 Descriptive Statistics for the Organization .......................................... 73 Table 4.6: Descriptive Statistics for the Culture .................................................. 74 Table 4.7: Number of Units and Time distribution for each semester .............. 77 Table 4.8: Content Division and Time Allocation ................................................ 79 ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as a Foreign Language ELT: English Language Teaching MOET: Ministry of Education and Training ESL: English as a Second Language TDHS: Tri Duc High School 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1Background to the study There is no doubt that English has been the international language all over the world and it is playing an important role in international relationships. For some countries, English language education has become a major attention of their policy makers. However, educational policy of these governments has influenced their communities in different ways that are often controversial (Khajavi & Abbasian, 2011). Chang (2006) asserts that English has been the popular foreign language in the curriculum of educational institutions and in foreign language learning and teaching contexts. There is no doubt that many countries are attempting to support English education in order to engage actively in international activities. Therefore, the finding the ways which help in teaching English and culture in a balanced manner seems unavoidable. The textbook is an important element as well as the main source of input of EFL curriculum in non-English speaking contexts. It also provides the content of the curriculum regarding language knowledge, skills, and culture. It not only supports teachers in their instruction and teaching but also helps both teachers and students accomplish their own teaching and learning objectives. Besides, the textbooks also influence teachers seriously, because they provide patterns and guidelines to teachers so that they could teach in a better way and help the students for better learning. Although recent technological innovations have helped much for education to teach in new ways and to reach new goals, the published textbooks are still the most commonly used source material for most instructional situations. Hence, many new commercial textbooks are regularly published to serve for the changing focuses of instruction and the changing language learners’ needs in language learning and teaching process. That is the reason why it is important to 2 decide on which language textbooks are most useful for both students and teachers in the particular situation. Nowadays, a number of English teaching materials on the market have been growing increasingly, making the choice of a good textbook seem to be a challenging task. Tomlinson (2003) states that the research about materials development did not have enough attention until the 1990s when textbooks on this subject started to be published and materials or textbooks evaluation has become a new trend in the process of language learning and teaching. Textbook evaluation is the significant importance because it leads to a much better understanding of the nature of particular learning and teaching contexts. Furthermore, the analysis and evaluation of what is happening in the learning and teaching situation are going to provide the teachers with more accurate information about the nature of the exploited textbooks. The textbook evaluation of some teachers is more important than designing courses because their schools usually force them to teach from a textbook which was designed for their own teaching purposes. When a textbook has been selected and purchased, then there is the responsibility to exploit it even if it is not highly suitable for a particular purpose or situation. Thus, it is worth spending much time considering the quality of the textbook in a systematic way. Textbooks are an essential element in learning and teaching process because they partly describe what is taught, what is ordered as well as what learners study. Therefore, producing a well-designed and marketable textbook and selecting an appropriate textbook and using it effectively are of vital importance and difficult challenges. Vietnamese people have learned English for a long time and teaching EFL has been becoming more and more popular. All of the public or private schools in Vietnam offer compulsory English courses. French, Chinese, Japanese and so on are also taught at most schools, but English has obtained a privileged status in the education system in the past decades. In Vietnamese high schools, textbooks are a compulsory part of English teaching and learning. For public and private high schools, they both have used the standard textbooks published by Ministry of 3 Education and Training (MOET). However, in addition to the use of those textbooks, they usually select more suitable textbooks for their own students to help them more and more developing in English language learning. With the numerous numbers of textbooks today, the decision to choose a textbook cannot be taken lightly and it is whether acceptable or not is a difficult question. In Vietnamese education, English language is now a compulsory subject in the curriculum for general education from grades 6 to 12 and optional one for primary school education from grades 3 to 5. It means that the presence of a textbook is necessary to support the learning and teaching process. In fact, there have been many textbooks published to fulfill the need of English textbook but there are not any completely perfect textbooks or set of materials. Therefore, it is the important task of the English teachers and researchers to choose a textbook that is appropriate for learners. Cunningsworth (1995) said there were not any coursebook designed for a general market meet the learners’ needs ideally. Thus, when the selection of a new textbook is important in conducting an evaluation to ensure that it is suitable and certain criteria must be considered in the evaluation process. Hence, every school has different objectives and students have different backgrounds, abilities and needs so the criteria of textbooks will vary. Tomlinson (1996) also suggests that material evaluation process can be seen as the way to develop our language understanding which will contribute to both acquisition theory and pedagogic practices The selection of the textbook will base on the curriculum’s overall orientation of every school but it is important to focus on approaches and syllabuses, which are understood as ways of defining what the students really need to learn and syllabuses cover all instructional objectives, techniques, and exercises, language items as well as the four skills (Brown, 1995). Moreover, Cunningsworth (1995) mentions that all of the textbooks reflect the purposes, methods and values of the curriculum, so it is very important that the textbook must be selected carefully. Its aim should be found out in order to meet the needs and interests of the students to the highest level. Additionally, when selecting a textbook, policy- 4 makers, managers or teachers should look over some elements such as context, beliefs about how people learn languages, students’ needs and interests, and student diversity (Graves, 2000; Butcher et al., 2006). Furthermore, the textbooks should be consistent with the studying level, have the expectations on students clearly, help students engage their learning to their own knowledge or experience, provide opportunity for students to review in their learning and allow students to attend in meaningful interaction with one another for communicative purposes (Wajnryb, 1995; Cunningsworth, 1995) Habtoor (2012) states that some textbooks are published annually in the world and a number of them are designed mainly for ESL and EFL situations. This result is very different from among teachers, especially the teachers having little or no teaching experience in language teaching; even experienced teachers also might find it a challenging task to select a textbook for their own groups. Therefore, selection and textbook evaluation are important and considered to be an essential problem for teachers and curriculum developers in language teaching contexts. This is the major reason why they have to tend to evaluate textbooks carefully. In fact, there are many reasons for evaluating textbooks. Sheldon (1988) believes that textbooks should be evaluated for two main reasons. First, it will help the teacher or curriculum managers in making decisions on selecting the appropriate textbook. Second, it would consider the pros and cons of a textbook which familiarizes the teacher with its probable strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, another reason as Cunningsworth (1995) highlighted is to identify particular strengths and weaknesses in textbooks already in use. As a result, weak points will be improved through the using and adapting the supplementary materials from other textbooks. Besides, he also emphasizes that textbook evaluation can also be a valuable constituent of teacher training programs with the purpose of making teachers have awareness of important features in looking for in textbooks when they familiarize with plenty of published language instruction textbooks. Ellis (1997) also says that textbook evaluation would help teachers much in their skills development as well as 5 professional growth. Moreover, he maintains that textbook evaluation helps teachers move beyond impressionistic assessments and it helps them to acquire useful, accurate, systematic, and contextual insights into the overall nature of the textbook and material. Therefore, Litz (2005) concludes that textbook evaluation can seem as a particularly meaningful mean of conducting action research as well as a form of professional empowerment and improvement. 1.2 Problem statement Nowadays, English education starts in kindergarten and continues to university in Vietnam. From kindergarten to secondary school the students learn reading, writing, listening and the basic grammatical rules of speaking. They learn more advanced English at the high school, including more sophisticated grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary and other skills. Therefore, all high schools usually choose to learn with more other materials to help their students get the knowledge better and better. This leads to the appearance of the more published textbooks which have not been evaluated about content and quality carefully yet to meet these needs. In English language teaching context in Vietnam, the field of textbook evaluation so far has some limitations while the publishing of ELT materials is growing dramatically. Firstly, At TDHS, the policy-makers have been using English ID series for the courses “English for Communication” and they hope to help students improve their English skills. However, till now, there are not any evaluation conducted to examine the strong and weak points of English ID series or to acquire teachers and learners’ perspectives and attitudes toward the textbooks since they are published and applied into some Vietnamese high schools and some foreign language centers. Secondly, as an English teacher at TDHS for 2 years, the researcher recognized that there are many existing problems in using the English ID series from teachers’ and students’ perceptions. Some students also stated that although they could reach the positive results of the course, they still could not apply linguistic knowledge and skills studied in real life, as well as communicating 6 on the daily activities. Thus, it is necessary to get teachers and students to raise their voice about these issues. In order to fill the gap in this field, the researcher conducted this study to explore teachers’ and students’ attitudes and perceptions towards the English ID textbook as well as examining how the appropriateness of the textbook meet the needs of students. The researcher expected that through this study will provide valuable insights for English language curriculum designers, teachers and students in the context and will make a small contribution to enhancing the teaching and learning of English in Ho Chi Minh as well as in Vietnam. 1.3 Thesis statement This study evaluates the textbook “English ID 1”, an English textbook from a series of four textbooks of Paul Seligson (Series Author); Tom Abraham; Cris Gontow; Carol Lethaby published by Richmond publisher in 2013. This textbook is used for all students from grades 6 to 12 (ages 12 to 18) at the pre-intermediate level at TDHS of Vietnam since 2015. The textbook was included students’ book, workbook, and teachers’ manual. Students have learned this textbook with Englishcentral.com website is at the core of the teaching and learning process in the classroom. This study attempts to find answers to the following research questions: 1. What are students and teachers’ perspectives towards the elements of textbook “ English ID 1” in term of Overall Assessments, Practical Considerations, Language Skills, Subject and Content, Organization and Culture? 2. How do teachers use and exploit the textbook in the classrooms? 1.4 Purpose of the study The overall purpose of the study is to evaluate the whole textbook regarding Overall Assessments, Practical Considerations, Language Skills, Subject and Content, Organization and Culture, which will elucidate the strengths and weaknesses of the textbook used in the teaching and learning context at TDHS. More specifically, first, the study aims to investigate students and teachers’ attitudes towards the textbook English ID 1 designed for high school young learners. Second, 7 the researcher wants to discover the extent the teachers use and exploit the textbook in the classroom which will help English teaching and learning at TDHS and some language centers become more interesting and effective in the future. 1.5 Scope of the study This study focuses on the textbook English ID 1 used in English teaching and learning at the TDHS in Tan Phu District of Ho Chi Minh city. Thus, these results cannot apply to all districts in the Ho Chi Minh City as well as all other high schools in Vietnam. In fact, there are four textbooks in this English ID series but the researcher chooses only English ID 1 to evaluate. Moreover, this study bases on the criteria of good textbooks and focuses on the appropriateness of the analyzed textbooks. Furthermore, the textbook is intended for high school students who are considered young learners of the level of pre-intermediate. As a result, some suggestions made and implications drawn in the study cannot easily be generalized to textbooks for other English learners at different schools 1.6 Significance of the study The results of the study may help the administrators, teachers, students have an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the textbooks in order to adapt the textbooks more effectively in their educational setting and to meet the objectives of the course. Consequently, the results might be beneficial for all users including teachers and students and useful for the curriculum developers, policymakers or publishers in selecting or developing a textbook. Moreover, the results would be the useful recommendations for teaching and learning English at TDHS to become more successfully and effectively. It is fully hoped that the recommendations emanated from this study will be one of the ideas to be considered when the MOET of Vietnam embrace changes in the EFL curriculum. 1.7 Organization of the thesis The researcher is going to organize this study in order to get the reader easier to understand. The following part shows the content of five chapters covered in this