VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES
ĐỖ THỊ QUỲNH CHÂM

AN EVALUATION OF THE COURSE BOOK “NEW CUTTING EDGE –
ELEMENTARY” FOR THE FIRST - YEAR ACCOUNTING STUDENTS
OF HAIPHONG POLYTECHNICS COLLEGE

(Đánh giá giáo trình “New Cutting Edge – Elementary” dành cho sinh viên năm thứ
nhất chuyên ngành kế toán trường Cao đẳng nghề Bách Nghệ Hải Phòng)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60 14 10 HANOI, 2012
iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Certificate of originality of the thesis i
Acknowledgements ii
Abstract iii
Table of contents iv
Abbreviations……………………………………………………………………………vii
List of tables, figures and charts……………………………………………………….viii
PART A: INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rational of the study 1
2. Aim of the study 2
3. Method of the study 2
4. Scope of the study 2
5. Significance of the study 2
6. Design of the study 3
PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4
Chapter 1: Literature Review 4
1.1 .
Materials in language teaching and learning 4
1.1.1. Definitions 4
1.1.2. Role of materials in General English Course 5
1.2. Material evaluation 6
1.2.1. Definitions of material evaluation 6
1.2.2. Purposes of material evaluation 7
1.2.3. Types of materials evaluation 7
1.2.4. Methods of materials evaluation 8
1.2.5. Criteria for materials evaluation 9

3.4.2. Topics in the course book 28
3.4.3. Vocabulary in the course book 29
3.4.4. Practice in the course book 30
3.5. Evaluation on the methodology of the course book 31
3.5.1. Methodological Criteria 31
3.5.2. Effect of the teaching aids 32
3.6. Evaluation findings 32 vi

3.6.1. Evaluation on the learners‟ needs 33
3.6.2. Evaluation on the course objectives 33
3.6.3. Evaluation on the format of the course book 33
3.6.4. Evaluation on the content of the course book 34
3.6.5. Evaluation on the methodology of the course book 34
3.7. Recommendation for the course book‟s adaptation 35
3.7.1. Supplementing 36
3.7.2 Editing 36
3.7.2. Expanding 37
3.7.3. Personalizing 38
3.7.4. Localizing or modifying cultural/situational content 38
3.7.5. Simplifying 38
PART C: CONCLUSION 40
1. Summary of the study 40
2. Limitations of the study 41
3. Suggestions for further studies 42
References: 43
Appendices I
Appendix 1: I

viii
LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES AND CHARTS

TABLES
Table 1: Teachers and students‟ ranking of the purposes of GE Course
Table 2: Evaluation on the needs satisfied by the course book
Table 3: Students‟ speaking tasks completion
Table 4: Evaluation on the format of the course book
Table 5: Proportion of the macro-skills
Table 6: Student‟s level of proficiency in language points
Table 7: Teachers and students‟ opinion on the Practice of the course book
Table 8: Evaluation on the methodology of the course book

methodology and syllabus, it can be much more difficult to choose the best suitable
book for a particular teaching situation. In fact, there is no course book can be
absolutely ideal for a particular group of learners (Cunningsworth,1995); evaluation
and selection of suitable material would be essential and important issues for language
teachers. A thorough evaluation will pave the way for teaching staff of each
organization and policy makers to have this ability to discriminate among all the
available books in the market and considering weak as well as strong points of each
book educators can choose the most appropriate book. Therefore, in order to take the
advantage of the materials, it is necessary for individuals, especially language teachers,
to carefully examine all aspects of the materials.
The course book “New Cutting Edge- Elementary” is used for teaching Pre-
ESP for the first year accounting students at the Economics Faculty since 2008 and
also had both positive and negative response from both students and teachers.
However, up to now, no research on the course book evaluation has been conducted to
recognize its strength and weakness as well as how suitably the course book matched
the goal of the course. In response to the problem, it is an urgent demand to carry out
an evaluation of the course book to determine its appropriateness for students at our 2

college then provide the adaptation for the better use. This is also the reason for the
writer to choose the material evaluation for the thesis:
“An evaluation of the course book “New Cutting Edge – Elementary” for the
first - year accounting students of Haiphong Polytechnics College”
2. Aims of the study
The study is carried out to improve the effectiveness of teaching the course book –
NCEE for the first-year accounting students of HP Polytechnics College. So the
specific purposes of the study are as follow:
- To investigate the English teaching and learning context at HPPC.

Part I: Introduction states the rational, aim, scope, methods and design of the study.
Part II: Development is divided into three main chapters:
Chapter 1 provides the readers with literature review on the aspects relating to
material evaluation such as: materials in language teaching and learning, materials
evaluation, and evaluation types, as well as methods and criteria, purpose of materials.
Besides, in this chapter, materials adaptation for the better use has been presented.
Chapter 2 deals with an overview of current English teaching and learning
situation at Economics Faculty of HPPC, research method as well as description of
data collection procedure and data analysis procedure which involve in the research
process.
Chapter 3 presents and reports the analysis of the study and encloses
suggestions for the course book adaptation.
Part III: Conclusion summarizes the major findings, limitation of the study and
suggestions for further research.

4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT
5

The term „course book‟ means, a text book of which the teacher and each student has a
copy and which is in principle to be followed systematically as the basis for a
language course. Therefore, from the above definition one can get that a course book
must have at least being available in the hand of students and teachers, and used
systematically in a course of study, and a course of study in this article refers to an
English course of study.
The term “course book” is sometimes associated with text materials as it has been
specifically selected and exploited for teaching purposes by the classroom teacher
particularly in the local setting. Frequently, a course book is considered core materials
of a certain course. It may be accompanied with a variety of supplementary materials.
Tomlinson (1998) identified materials as anything which is used to help to teach
language learners. Materials can be in the form of a textbook, a workbook, a cassette, a
CD –Rom, a video, a photocopied handout, a newspaper, a paragraph written on a
white board: anything which presents or informs about the language. He also supposed
“the term is used to refer to anything which is used by teachers or learners to facilitate
the learning of a language”. In other word, they can be anything which is deliberately
used to increase the learners‟ knowledge and/or experience of the language.
Therefore, it is agreed that materials include anything which can be used to facilitate
the learning of a language. They can be instructional, experiential, exploratory, in that
they can inform learners about the language, they can provide experience of the
language use, they can stimulate language use or they can help learners to make
discoveries about the language for themselves.
1.1.2. Role of materials in General English Course
There are five important components involved in English language instruction namely
students, teachers, materials, teaching methods, and evaluations among which essential
constituents are the textbooks and instruction materials because these instruction

consists of attempts to predict whether or not the material will work, in the sense that
the learners will be able to use them without too much difficulty and will enjoy the
experience of doing so.
Hutchinson and Waters (1987, 96) point out that evaluation is matching process
designed to establish the degree of match between the needs and available solutions. It
refers to the attempts to measure the value of materials and is aimed at assessing the
fitness. Though each researcher has his own opinion on material evaluation, they still
come to the conclusion that evaluation is the process of collecting data giving
judgments based on the collected data, and the most importantly, evaluation must
include action.
1.2.2. Purposes of materials evaluation 7

Material evaluation plays an important part in the improvement of a language course
as it helps to identify particular strength and weakness of the material in use. After
being used for the language course in a certain time, teaching materials need
evaluating to see if they have worked well to meet the expectation of students.
Regarding the purposes of material evaluation, Sheldon (1998) has offered several
other reasons for textbook evaluation. He suggested that a thorough evaluation would
provide for a sense of familiarity with a book‟s content that assisting educators in
identifying the particular strength and weakness in textbook already in use. This would
help teachers make the optimum use of a book‟s strong points and recognizing the
shortcoming of certain exercises, tasks, and entire text.
According to Cunningsworth (1995), through evaluation, we can assess whether the
course book is the most appropriate for the target learners at various levels and in
various teaching settings.
Anderson (1992) sets out a list of purposes of materials evaluation as follow:
- To decide whether the materials have had the intended effect.

over a period of continual use. According to Tomlinson (2003:25), evaluation of this
kind can be “the most valuable as it can measure the actual effect of the material on
the users”. Basing on the data measured, evaluators can make reliable decisions about
the use, adaptation or replacement of the materials. However, this type of material is
normally time – consuming.
Generally, each type of materials has its certain strength and weakness, so it is
necessary for the evaluators to determine what type of materials evaluation will be the
most suitable for specific context. Basing on the current context of Haiphong
Polytechnics College, the writer decided to choose the in – use evaluation to measure
the appropriateness of the course book and offer some method of adaptation for its
better use.
1.2.4. Methods of materials evaluation
1.2.4.1.The impressionistic method

According to Cunningsworth (1995:2), the impressionistic method is designed to be
able to gain an impression of a book by looking rather more carefully at representative
features, such as the organization, topics, layout, visuals and the design of a unit or
lesson or more specific features, such as the treatment of particular language elements.
Therefore, this method is wide ranging but relatively superficial due to the fact that
“techniques of impressionistic evaluation cover the wide spectrum”.
1.2.4.2. The checklist method
McGrath (2002) states that “a checklist is likely to need tailoring to suit a particular
context, and this can involve a good deal more than simply deleting checklist items 9

which are in applicable. Moreover, William (1993, cited in McGrath, 2002:27) points
out that “checklist cannot a static phenomenon”. This means that the items in all
materials evaluation checklist reflect the time at which they are conceived.


10

modification. In the same opinion, Cunningsworth (1995) assures that any selection
procedure should be modified to suit personal circumstances. Therefore, selecting and
modifying particular items to produce an individualized checklist is the best method to
make sure that it is suitable to the particular teaching and learning contexts.
1.2.6. Materials evaluation procedure
Hutchinson and Water (1987) provided the four steps of materials evaluation.

Figure 1: The material process by (Tom Hutchinson & Alan Waters (1987, p.97))
The above figure shows a very logical model for materials evaluation. It is obvious
that there are four steps for defining the criteria. At first, the evaluator has to define
what bases the materials will be judged and which criteria the evaluator wants to
include in the course. The second step is to determine the subjective analysis, that is, to
identify the requirements for materials so the evaluator should describe in detail on
what criteria the course is based. The third step is to determine the objective analysis,
that is, to evaluate whether the existing materials realize the criteria set in the
subjective analysis. The last one is the matching process, which finds out how far the
material matches the course requirements.
1.3. Materials adaptation


11

setting (William, 1983, p251). That is why the textbook should be adapted. Teachers,
with direct personal knowledge of their classroom teaching, should see textbook as
their servants instead of master; as a resource or an “ideas bank” which can stimulate
teachers‟ own creative potential (Cunningsworth, 1984, p65).
According to Madsen and Bowen (1978), “every teacher is in a very real sense an
adapter of the material he uses”, and adaptation is the process of employing “one or
more number of techniques: “supplementing, editing, expanding, personalizing,
simplifying, modernizing, localizing, or modifying cultural/situational content”. At the
same time, Ellis (1986:47) mentions the process of “retaining, rejecting, reordering,
and modification”.
Whatever the definitions give, adaptations can be understood as a process of matching
so as to maximize the strength of teaching materials in context, by changing some of
the internal characteristics of a textbook or a set of materials to suit a specific situation.
Peter moor and Sarah Cunningham in 2005 which provides the students with general
knowledge of English with the integration of four skills equivalent to elementary level.
During the term, depending on the number of periods, the students have three or four
mid-term tests and at the end of each term, they will have to take the final oral test.

2.1.2. The course objectives 13

On the basis of the requirements set by Ministry of Labor – Invalids and Social
Affairs and the factual situation of teaching and learning English in Haiphong
Polytechnics College (HPPC), the following material requirements for a GE course for
first year accounting students in the two terms have been officially approved in the
Foreign Language Faculty‟s Curriculum and Syllabus, which are presented hereafter.
- Use the simple grammar structures provided in the course book.
- Be able to communicate in daily conversations in English.
- Start and maintain conversations.
- Express their feelings, thoughts and emotions.
- Read and comprehend the short paragraphs fluently.
- Write a short description of the required topic.
2.1.3. Contents
In terms of content, the course book is set to achieve the following points. At first, it is
necessary to equip students with a variety of communicative situation. Hence, the
students need to get involved in different topics that they have chances to use their
English in daily activities such as greetings, introducing themselves, talking about
family, hobbies, jobs, favorite things, etc. Besides, in each module, the book supplies
the students with topic –based vocabulary which serves as the key factor to help them
communicate successfully in English. Afterwards, as regards the language points, the
course book includes all the commonly – used grammatical items and structures in the

- Tasks (4 skills): For each module, different skills are paid attention to improve the
section of language focus and vocabulary.
In the reading and listening sections: students can understand very short simple texts
in a single phrase at time, picking up familiar names, words and basic phrases and
rereading as required. Then they can follow speech which is very slow and carefully
articulated, with long pauses for him/her to assimilate meaning. Finally, they must
listen to the CD player to check their ideas and listen more carefully to do some related
exercises.
In speaking and writing sections, pictures and discussion are used to help the
students activate their knowledge about the topic. The students practice speaking skills
using conversation pieces in listening part. Finally, students must summarize the text‟s
content to write a paragraph on the requirements of each one.
- Pronunciation: the students practice sound under the direction of teachers; and then
listening to the CD player to check. Finally, they repeat to remember and pronoun
smoothly.
There are three consolidation modules after every five modules (module 5, module
10, and module 15) which help the students to revise theories and practice more
exercises. 15

Transcription of difficult words and their meanings are presented at the end of the
course book. Besides, coming with this material are 3 CD‟s and the students‟
workbook.
2.2. Research Method
2.2.1. Research question
As mentioned earlier, the aim of this study is to answer the two following research
questions:
- How do English language teachers and the first - year accounting students evaluate

In order to evaluate the course book in terms of learners‟ need, objective, format,
content and methodology, among the most usual methods or means of evaluation,
found in a number of authors such as questionnaires, interviews, observation,
discussion, records and assessment, two main techniques for data collection used in
this study are questionnaires and formal interview.
2.2.3.1. Questionnaires
Survey questionnaire is a popular instrument in the social sciences as it is helpful
collecting opinions and would be extremely beneficial in specifying aims and
analyzing the teaching and learning situation (Litz, 2005). They have a lot of
advantages among which the most obvious may be the fact that the respondents can
complete them without any pressure; as a result, they can express their thought freely.
Besides, closely ended questions are straight forward to answer (Gillham, 2000).
In this study, two questionnaires were used for teachers and students to collect their
attitude and information on evaluation of the currently used material “New Cutting
Edge - Elementary”. Each questionnaire is divided into 6 sections:
Section 1 with three questions aims at discovering the students‟ English background,
their expectation as well as evaluation on the needs satisfied by the book from the
English course at the college.
Section 2 with four questions tries to find out whether students make any progress to
get
the objectives after the course.
Section 3 is designed to gather students‟ judgment about the current course book in
term of format.
Section 4 consists of four questions aiming at getting opinions about the content of the
materials including the topics, skills allocation in each lesson and practice exercise.
Section 5 puts its focus on finding out the appropriateness of the methodology of the
assessed book. 17

In this thesis, the data from questionnaire was processed by using descriptive statistics
which are often reported in percentage. 18

The data from the English teacher and student interviews were processed by doing
transcript first, being quoted to compare support and challenge the findings during the
course of analyzing data.
In summary, this chapter has presented the overview of current English teaching and
learning at Economic Faculty, HPPC. The reasons for choosing the research
methodology were discussed together with setting out the research questions.
Furthermore, the chapter also described the data collection as well as the analytical
procedures which lead to the result of the survey as introduced in the next chapter.