VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES
  

LƯƠNG THỊ MINH THU

AN EVALUATION OF THE ESP COURSEBOOK FOR
SECOND-YEAR STUDENTS AT MARINE ENGINE
DEPARTMENT-VIETNAM MARITIME UNIVERSITY (VIMARU) (Đánh giá giáo trình tiếng Anh chuyên ngành dành cho sinh viên năm
thứ hai Khoa Máy Tàu Biển - Trường ĐH Hàng Hải Việt Nam) M. A. MINOR THESIS
MAJOR : ELT METHODOLOGY
CODE : 60 14 10
HANOI - 2012

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Declaration i
Acknowledgements ii
Abstract iii
List of abbreviations iv
List of charts, figures and tables v
Table of contents vi
PART 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale 1
1.2. Aims of the study 2
1.3. Research question 2
1.4. Scope of the study 2
1.5. Method of the study 3
1.6. Design of the study 3

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1. Introduction 4
1.2. Textbook, course-book and material 4
1.2.1. Definitions 4
1.2.2. Roles of teaching materials in a language program 4
1.3. Course-book evaluation 6
1.3.1. Definition of course-book evaluation 6
1.3.2. Why course-book evaluation 6
1.3.3. Types of course-book evaluation 7
1.3.4. Course-book evaluation in ESP 9
1.3.5. Why students’ evaluation 10

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3.1.2. Learners’ evaluation of the current ESP course-book 25
3.1.3. Learners’ evaluation of the teachers’ exploitation of ESP materials 33
3.1.4. Students’ suggestions 34
3.1.5. Teachers’ views of ESP course-book 36
3.2. Major findings 37
3.2.1. The suitability of the course-book to the audience 38
3.2.2. The suitability of the course-book to the aims 38
3.2.3. The suitability of the course-book to the content requirements 38
3.2.4. The suitability of the course-book to the methodology 39
3.3. Recommendations 41
3.3.1. Content improvements 41
3.3.2. Layout improvements 42
3.3.3. Methodology improvements 43
3.3.4. Other recommendations 44

PART III: CONCLUSION
1. Summary of the study 45
2. Limitations of the study 47
3. Suggestions for further research 47
4. Conclusion 48
REFERENCE
APPENDIX 1 (Students questionnaire in English)
APPENDIX 2 (Students questionnaire in Vietnamese)
APPENDIX 3 (Teachers’ views as stated in the interview)
APPENDIX 4 (Checklist for evaluating ESP materials by Hutchinson and waters)
APPENDIX 5 (A sample of an original unit

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Chart 1: Students’ levels of English
Chart 2: The aims of the material
Chart 3: The usefulness of tasks and exercises in skill development

Figure 1: Stages in the ESP process
Figure 2: The material evaluation process

Table 1: Students’ time of learning English
Table 2: Students’ ranking of their purposes of learning ESP
Table 3: Students’ needs met by the ESP course-book
Table 4: Students’ attitude towards the content of the ESP course-book
Table 5: Students’ attitude towards time allocation for ESP
Table 6: Students’ attitude towards vocabulary and grammar
Table 7: Students’ attitude towards language skills covered
Table 8: Students’ attitude towards tasks and exercises
Table 9: Students’ satisfaction towards classroom activities
Table 10: Students’ suggestions
Table 11: Students’ opinions towards teacher’s use of language and the course-book

Table 12: Teachers’ views of content
Table 13: Teachers’ perceived limitations of the course-book
Table 14: Students’ reactions to the course-book as observed by teachers
Table 15: Challenges to the students in using the course-book as observed by teachers
Table 16: Teachers’ self-reported challenges in using the course-book 3
PART I: INTRODUCTION
1.1. RATIONALE
It goes without saying that English is by far the most popular language of all.

on the course-book evaluation has been carried out to see how much it meets the
students’ needs. For these above- mentioned reason, the researcher decided to choose
materials evaluation as the theme of this minor thesis titled as:
AN EVALUATION OF THE ESP COURSEBOOK FOR SECOND-YEAR
STUDENTS AT MARINE ENGINE DEPARTMENT_VIETNAM MARITIME
UNIVERSITY (VIMARU)
1.2. AIMS OF THE STUDY
The paper aims at evaluating the course-book English for Marine Engine
Students and Ship‟s Engineers to see how far it is suitable to the second-year students
at the Marine Engine Department, VIMARU. The specific aims are:
 to evaluate the appropriateness of the material to the course requirements in
terms of aims, content, and methodology
 to offer some suggestions for further improvement of the course-book which is
appropriate to the needs and expectations of the students
1.3. RESEARCH QUESTION
The following research question is raised for exploration:
To what extent does the ESP course-book English for Marine Engine Students
and Ship‟s Engineers at Marine Engine Department-VIMARU meet the course
requirements in terms of aims, content, and methodology?
1.4. SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The ESP course is only for the second year students at VIMARU, thus the study
focuses on the evaluation of the second year students at Marine Engine Department-
VIMARU on ESP course-book currently used.

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Hutchinson and Waters (1993) and many other language evaluation experts
agreed that evaluating a teaching material is a complicated process based on different
criteria such as audience, content, physical appearance, cultural bias, needs…
However, because of the constraint of this kind of research, the researcher just focuses
on three criteria: aims, content, and methodology.

course-book evaluation; course-book evaluation in ESP; why students’ evaluation;
techniques, models and criteria for evaluation. Last but not least, previous studies on
materials evaluation are mentioned.
1.2 TEXTOOK, COURSE-BOOK AND MATERIALS
1.2.1. Definitions
McGrath (2002, p.7) defines a course-book as “a textbook on which a course is
based”. Tomlinson (1998: p.ix) shares similar point with McGrath when he considers a
course-book as “a textbook which provides the core materials for a course”. In his
viewpoint, a course-book is used to provide as much as possible in one book and it is
designed to serve as the only book which the learners necessarily use during a course.
In Materials Development in Language Teaching (Littlejohn, 1998) the term
“materials” is defined as “anything which is used to help to teach language learners. It
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 whiteboard.”
(Tomlinson,1998: p.xi). Therefore, it can be pointed out that course-book is a type of
materials.
1.2.2. Roles of teaching material in a language program
The relationship between materials and other components in language teaching
such as students, teachers, teaching method and evaluation have been controversial for

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many years. Since the end of 1970s, there has been a movement to make learners rather
than teachers the center of language learning. According to this teaching approach,
learners become the targets of teaching and learning process. Therefore, materials,
curriculum, teaching method and evaluation should be designed for learners and their
needs. For the teaching and learning English to be successful, besides teachers,
learners, curriculum, method and evaluation, materials play a decisive part in language
teaching and learning. The importance of teaching and learning materials cannot be
denied and so far, there have been a great number of discussions on different
perspectives on the role of materials in relation to other elements. Teaching materials

systematic appraisal of the value of materials in relation to their objectives and to the
objectives of learners using them.” (Ellis, quoted in Figen, 2002, available at
http://www.metu.edu.tr./home/wwwsbe/thabs/2002/EDS.htm)
Hutchinson and Waters (1993: p96) also give definition of materials evaluation,
as “Evaluation is a matter of judging the fitness of something for a particular purposes.
Given a certain need, and in light of the resources available, which is out of a number
of possibilities can represent the best solution?” In other words, “Evaluation is
basically a matching process: matching needs to available solutions.”
In conclusion, from the general definition of evaluation and the definition of
specific area of materials evaluation, it can be inferred that materials evaluation
involve the determination of what needs to be evaluated, the objectives and
requirements of the materials, and the judgments of the value of the materials being
evaluated in relation to the objective and requirements determined.
1.3.2. Why course-book evaluation
Evaluation plays a very important role in the development of materials.

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Robinson (1991) asserts the importance of evaluation as to provide the
advantages, disadvantages and the effectiveness of the being used materials so that the
material can be decided to be reused, adapted to meet the needs of the particular
teaching situation or changed.
Also, Ellis (1997) points out two reasons for materials evaluation. Firstly,
evaluation is carried out to choose among the available materials the most suitable one
to use for a particular situation and such valuation is taken before the course takes
place. Secondly, evaluation is carried out to determine whether the material which has
been chosen works for that situation after it has been used for a period of time. This
helps to decide whether to continue using the material or to replace it with a better
material.
In the words of Cunningsworth (1995: p. 7), course-book is “a resource in
achieving aims and objectives that have already been set in terms of learner needs”.

According to Dudley-Evans & St John (1998: p.128), this type of evaluation is
obtained to “assess impact and to provide information that can be fed into repeat
versions” of the material. In addition, they believe that summative evaluation is
especially valuable for durable courses. Also, Richards (2001) claims that this type of
evaluation can determine the effectiveness of the material. Findings will help to decide
whether to use the material again or not; which tasks and activities are suitable and
which are not; which aspects of the materials need to be changed and how to modify
them to make the materials more effective and efficient for future use (Ellis, 1997). In
short, summative evaluation is carried out to determine the worth and value of teaching
materials after they have been used.
In addition, there is another way of dividing materials evaluation introduced by
Tomlinson (1998) and McGrath (2002). These authors identify three types of materials
evaluation namely Pre-use, Whilst-use and Post-use.

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Tomlinson (1998: p.xi) who affirms that evaluation is “the systematic appraisal
of the value of materials in relation to their objectives and to the objectives of learners”
distinguishes three types of materials evaluations as follows:
- Pre-use evaluation focuses on predictions of potential value.
- Whilst-use evaluation focuses on awareness and description of what the
learners are actually doing whilst the materials are being used.
- Post-use evaluation focuses on analysis of what happened as a result of using
the materials.
McGrath (2002) shares the similar point with Tomlinson when he introduces
three concepts: Pre-use, In-use and Post-use. From his opinion, McGrath (2002) claims
that these three types and their purposes are interrelated.
- Pre-use evaluation establishes potential suitability.
- In-use evaluation gathers data on planning decisions, implementation and
response; may stimulate preliminary reconsiderations of selection criteria.
- Post-use evaluation uses data on in-course use and data on effects to access


teaching-
learning
Figure 1: Stages in the ESP process
(Dudley-Evans and St. John, 1998: p. 121)
Obviously, materials evaluation is an indispensable part of the key stages in
ESP process (Dudley-Evans and St. John, 1998). In other words, course-book over a
period of being used needs to be evaluated to see whether it has worked well for the
target situations and students.
1.3.5. Why students’ evaluation

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Together with the worldwide trend to learn ESP, many ESP course-books have
been designed for some specific fields. Course-book evaluation in ESP is an
indispensable part of the key stages in ESP process (Dudley-Evans and St. John, 1998),
and students’ evaluation is really necessary and important because of the following
reasons.
Firstly, in addition to teachers, students are the most important users of the
course-book. ESP course-book is designed to provide the learners with some basic
concepts and knowledge relevant to their field and skills up to the expectation of their
future employment. As a result, the students can give their own evaluative comments
on the course-book related to their own needs and expectation.
Secondly, being the people who use directly the course-book, the learners will
have information of the strengths and weaknesses of the course-book. Therefore, they
will give objective comments when they are not the course-book designers.
In short, it is necessary to have the course-book “English for Marine Engine
Students and ship‟s engineers” evaluated by the learners themselves at VIMARU to
see how far it meets the learners’ needs. Also, this evaluation is valuable for the
improvement of the course-book in the coming years.
1.3.6. Techniques of materials evaluation

data collection in this study.
1.3.7. Models for evaluation
According to Hutchinson and Waters (1993), evaluation is a process of
matching needs to available solutions. The evaluation process is divided into four steps

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as follows: Defining criteria; Subjective analysis; Objective analysis; Matching. The
above steps are presented in the following diagram as the following: Figure 2: The material evaluation process( Hutchinson and Waters, 1993: p. 98)
In Hutchinson and Waters’ view, a teaching material in general and a course-
book in particular has to suit the needs of a number of parties such as teachers,
students, sponsors, so it is important that the subject factors should not be allowed to
obscure objectivity in the early stages of analysis. In order to have an objective
matching, it is advisable to look at the needs and solutions separately. However, in the
final analysis, any choice will be made on subjective ground.
In summary, Hutchinson and Waters (1993) suggest the model for material
evaluation that presents a logical procedure. This model also has a clear-cut description
of the stages and criteria, which are presented systematically. Besides, it can help the
researcher knows exactly what must be done to analyze the material in comparison

flexibility of materials
- Other criteria: price, quantities, availability
In summary, choosing appropriate criteria plays a very important in evaluating
the suitability of the material in general and the course-book in particular to the
learner’s needs and expectations. Together with the evaluation model by Hutchinson
and Waters, the list of criteria for evaluation introduced by them appears to be more
suitable to the ESP course-book at VIMARU
1.4. PREVIOUS STUDIES ON MATERIALS EVALUATION
Evaluation is obviously a world-wide activity which has been more and more
appreciated by teachers and researchers. According to Brown (1989, p223), evaluation
is the systematic collection and analysis of all relevant information necessary to
promote the improvement of a curriculum and assess its effectiveness and efficiency.
Up to now, there have been many studies done in the field of evaluation of ESP

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materials. Many of these studies have brought about good improvement for the
textbooks or teaching materials themselves and for ESP courses. We can count on
Figen (2002), Griffiths (1995), James (2002) or Nguyen Thi Thai Ha (2004,), Vo Thi
Anh Dao (2004), Tran Thi Thuy Nga (2005), Dong Thi Hien (2006) or Hoang Thi
Tham (2007). These evaluation had been done on different kinds of materials such as
ESP for engineering students, for Electronics and Telecommunications students, for
marine students, for information technology students or medical students. Vo Thi Anh
Dao (2004) made an evaluation on the ESP textbook used for the students of
Husbandry and Veterinary Science in 2000. Nguyen Thi Thai Ha (2004) evaluated the
ESP material used for freshman postgraduate students at Hanoi University of
Technology in 1999. Vu Thi Lua (2005) had a critical look at the ESP course book for
students of Business and Management at Hanoi UBM and then she made some
recommendations for a better use. Dong Thi Hien (2006) made an evaluation of ESP
materials used for the second year students of Security at People’s Security Academy.
All of these researchers of ESP materials aimed at finding out the strengths and the

Therefore, this chapter can be seen as the theoretical foundation for the applications for
the study and the improvements that should be made to the course book “English for
Marine Engine Students and Ship‟s Engineers” for second-year students at Marine
Engine Department, Vietnam Maritime University.
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CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY
2.1. INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, the current ESP teaching and learning situation at Vietnam
Maritime University (VIMARU) related to the study will be taken in close-up and then
the research methodology will be discussed.
2.2. THE CONTEXT OF THE STUDY
2.2.1. An overview on Vietnam Maritime University and the Marine
Engine Department
Founded in 1956, The Vietnam Maritime University (VIMARU) has been a
leading university of Vietnam in the maritime section. With total number of nearly
16,000 students who study 19 (nineteen) fields of education and constant-annual
enrolment of 2,400 to 3,000 students, VIMARU nowadays has been being assigned for
educating higher education level graduates of nautical science, marine engineering,
electrical and electronic engineering, shipbuilding, sea-transport economics, waterway
engineering and all the other fields relating to the national maritime sector. Besides, the
University also educates postgraduates of Master of Science (Msc.) and Doctor of

working on board the ship. At the end of the course, the students are able to achieve:
- Listening skills: listening and understanding common orders and instructions
on board the ship as well as in the engine room.
- Speaking skills: communicating with multilingual crews on board vessels and
in the engine room
- Reading skills: reading and comprehending manuals for operating equipment
and engineering documents.
- Writing skills: writing letters, messages and engine log-book.
2.2.4. The ESP course-book
The following is a description of the ESP course-book currently used: