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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES
*****************

ĐOÀN PHƯƠNG NGÂN TEACHERS’ AND STUDENTS’ EVALUATION OF
ENGLISH 1.1 TEXTBOOK IN USE AT VIETNAM
UNIVERSITY OF COMMERCE
ĐA
́
NH GIA
́
CỦA GIA
́
O VIÊN VÀ SINH VIÊN VỀ GIÁO TRI
̀
NH
TIẾNG ANH 1.1 ĐANG SƯ
̉
DU
̣
NG TAĐOÀN PHƯƠNG NGÂN TEACHERS’ AND STUDENTS’ EVALUATION OF
ENGLISH 1.1 TEXTBOOK IN USE AT VIETNAM
UNIVERSITY OF COMMERCE
ĐA
́
NH GIA
́
CỦA GIA
́
O VIÊN VÀ SINH VIÊN VỀ GIÁO TRI
̀
NH
TIẾNG ANH 1.1 ĐANG SƯ
̉
DU
̣
NG TA
̣
I TRƯƠ
̀
NG ĐA
̣
I HO

vi
List of Tables ……………………………………………………………………
vii
List of Figures and Charts……………………………………………………….
viii
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………….
1
1.1 Rationale of the study………………………………………………………….
1
1.2 Aims of the study………………………………………………………………
2
1.3 Research questions……………………………………………………………
2
1.4 Scope of the study……………………………………………………………
2
1.5 Significance of the study………………………………………………………
2
1.6 Overview of the paper …………………………………………………………
3
CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW ………………………………
4
2.1 Materials……………………………………………………………………….
4
2.1.1 Definition …………………………………………………………………
4
2.1.2. Categories of materials ……………………………………………………
4
2.2 Material evaluation ……………………………………………………………
5
2.2.1 Definitions of material evaluation …………………………………………

3.3.1.1 Student questionnaire……………………………………………………
16
3.3.1.2 Teacher questionnaire ……………………………………………………
17
3.3.2 Interviews……………………………………………………………………
17
3.4 Procedures ……………………………………………………………………
17
3.5 Data analysis …………………………………………………………………
18
CHAPTER FOUR: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION ………………
19
4.1 Results and discussion…………………………………………………………
19
4.1.1 Questionnaire results ………………………………………………………
19
4.1.1.1 Student questionnaire results ……………………………………………
19
4.1.1.2 Teacher questionnaire results ……………………………………………
23
4.1.2 Follow-up interview results …………………………………………………
28
4.1.2.1 Student follow-up interview results ………………………………………
29
4.1.2.2 Teacher follow-up interview results ………………………………………
31
4.2 Major findings …………………………………………………………………
32
4.2.1 Summary of main findings…………………………………………………
32

Agree
D
Disagree
EFL
English as Foreign Language
M.
Mean
N
Neutral
Ord.
Order
SA
Strongly Agree
SD
Strongly Disagree
Sd.
Standard Deviation
VUC
Vietnam University of Commerce

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LIST OF TABLES

Table
Page
3.1 Description of Student Participants
15
3.2 Description of Teacher Participants
16

9
Figure 2.2: A preliminary framework for materials analysis and
action by Littlejohn (1998)
10
Chart 4.1: Students‟ main studying purposes for the course
20
Chart 4.2: Teachers‟ Opinions on Purposes of the Course
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undeniably, contributed greatly to the English language teaching and learning there, but for
some unanticipated problems, it remains unsatisfactory. As a matter of fact, no research on
evaluation of this textbook had been carried out to see how far it suited the course. Thus,

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this study was conducted to evaluate the textbook and suggest ways to improve the quality
of the textbook as well as the course.
1.2 Aims of the study
This study is aimed at evaluating English 1.1 textbook used at Vietnam University of
Commerce from perspectives of teachers and students. It is designed to find the strengths
and weaknesses of the textbook, and also suggest some solutions for further improvement
of the textbook which undoubtedly will enhance the learning efficiency as well as
stimulate students‟ interest in the language learning process.
1.3 Research questions
In order to meet the aims of the study, the following research questions are generated:
1. What are the strengths of English 1.1 textbook from the perspective of teachers and
students at Vietnam University of Commerce?
2. What are the weaknesses of English 1.1 textbook from the perspective of teachers and
students at Vietnam University of Commerce?
1.4 Scope of the study
As its name “ Teachers’ and Students’ Evaluation of English 1.1 Textbook in Use at
University of Commerce” suggests, the thesis will focus on the communicative nature of
the English 1.1 textbook and the ease of its use from the perspectives of teachers and
students in the studied context. The textbook will be evaluated under certain categories
namely aims and approach, design and organization, topic, language content and
language skills.
1.5 Significance of the study
The findings of the thesis give teachers and students at Vietnam University of Commerce a
comprehensive look at their textbook. They have a systematic evaluation of the book

(1998), materials are a “term used to refer to anything which is used by teachers or learners
to facilitate the learning of a language”. He affirmed teachers can adapt materials
according to ages and proficiency level of the students.
2.1.2 Categories of materials
Materials can vary from textbooks, audio, and video tapes to electronic documents like
power point files or e-books. According to McGrath (2002), these materials can be
categorized into four main types.
Published materials
This category includes books and reference materials such as dictionaries, grammars, test
practice materials, tapes accompanying coursebooks or supplementary skills books.
Authentic materials
Authentic materials are those taken from real life. They consist of newspaper, magazines,
user manuals, leaflets and brochures, foreign mission information, letters faxes, emails,
videos (films or documentaries) and songs.
Adapting and supplementing published materials

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Materials in this category are those refer to published ones that have been adapted or
supplemented in some way. These cut-up materials can be self-standing or deliberately
designed to supplement the coursebooks.
Specially-prepared materials
This kind of materials proves to be useful as there is always a need for material that is
more precisely tailored to the needs of students working on their own.
Whatever types of materials they are, EFL materials should be appropriate to the specific
body of learners. In other words, when choosing EFL material, factors like learners‟ level,
needs, culture, course‟s length, and objectives should be taken into consideration. Whether
an EFL material is appropriate calls for material evaluation.
2.2 Material evaluation
2.2.1 Definitions of material evaluation

evaluation and retrospective evaluation. They are respectively designed to make a
decision regarding what materials to use, to determine which best suited to their purposes
and to examine materials that have actually been used, to determine whether the materials
have “worked” for them.
According to Ellis, retrospective evaluation can be impressionistic or empirical.
Impressionistic evaluation is characterized by teachers‟ assessing whether particular
activities “work” during the course and at the end of the course their summative judgments
of the materials are made. Empirical evaluation is time-consuming as teachers have to
collect information in a more systematic manner; they report using students‟ journals and
end-of-course questionnaires to judge the effectiveness of their teaching, including the
materials they used.
This particular paper can be classified as the „retrospective‟ type of evaluation in which an
attempt is made to check the characteristics of the textbook under study against a list of
criteria proposed by Cunningsworth (1995), which will be presented in the subsequent
part.
2.2.3 Purposes of material evaluation
According to Swales (1985, cited in Low, 1987, p. 21), there are very few published works
about the effectiveness of coursebooks in use. Teachers, material designers and education

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researchers tend to be less reflective about what is happening when one textbook is used.
Many reasons can be account for this. Firstly, it attributes to a centrally prescribed
curriculum and coursebooks. Secondly, it is the workload and time constraints so teachers
have little time or motivation to judge the fitness of the textbooks.
As discussed earlier, materials, especially authentic materials, play a significant role in
foreign language teaching. They are not simply the everyday tools of the language
teachers; they are a representation of the aims and methods of the particular
teaching/learning context. In the words of Cunningsworth (1995, p. 7), coursebook is “a
resource in achieving aims and objectives that have already been set in terms of learner

learners to a point where they can use the language for their own purposes, and this goes
far beyond manipulating structure drills.
Keep your students’ learning needs in mind.
If materials meet students‟ learning needs, they will surely motivate the students. Learning
needs are not limited solely to considerations of the language. Learners have intellectual
and emotional needs too. Course materials can help by using subject matter that is
intellectually stimulating and to which the students can relate personally. It is also
important that materials should include different types of activities like whole class, group
work, pair work and individual. This is because students need to be catered for both as
individuals and as members of a group. Within the space of one lesson, a student may act
alternately as an individual and a group member, depending on several factors including
the sort of exercise he is doing, the skills that are being practiced and his own learning
strategies.
Consider the relationship between language, the learning process and the learner.
These are vital aspects of language teaching. It is now a common belief that there is no one
„best‟ way of learning and that learners adopt different learning strategies, often switching
strategies from time to time.
These principles are realized in the criteria checklists that Cunningsworth released in 1995.
These checklists will be revisted in the subsequent part.

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Looking from different viewpoint, material evaluation should be based firstly on theory of
learning and teaching. This is the foundation for second language teaching and learning. A
teacher/ an evaluator must acquire this theory before conducting any research on material
evaluation. Second language acquisition (SLA) research findings are another guiding
principle for material evaluation. Research findings on SLA are mortar that build language
teaching and learning qualities. They help teachers find way to improve their teaching
effectively. When one has to evaluate a material, these research findings assist him/her
with criteria checklists and models for the evaluation. He/she can adopt or adapt one

evaluated realize the criteria?
MATCHING
How far does the material match your needs? 20

In Hutchinson and Waters' point of view, teaching - learning materials must meet the
demands of teachers, learners and sponsors; so in the early stage of analysis the subjective
factors should not be allowed to obscure objectivity.
To ensure an objective matching, it is advisable to look at the needs and solutions
separately. But in the final analysis, any choice will be made on subjective grounds.
Hutchinson and Waters also point out that the subjective analysis should not be seen as "a
fixed set of requirements" (1987: 97)
On this issue, Littlejohn (1998) suggests a preliminary framework for material analysis and
evaluation as following:
Figure 2.2: A preliminary framework for materials analysis and action by Littlejohn
(1998)
The diagram shows that the two steps of describing target situation and analyzing materials
are conducted spontaneously and independently. After that, match and evaluation are taken
which reveals the level of appropriateness to the target situation. From these analyses,
decision on materials is reached in the last stage.
MATCH AND EVALUATION
How appropriate are the aspects of design and the

have suggested ways of helping teachers to be more sophisticated in their evaluative
approach, by presenting evaluation 'checklists' based on supposedly generalizable criteria
that can be used by both teachers and students in many different situations.
According to Sheldon (1988), no general list of criteria can ever really be applied to all
teaching and learning contexts without considerable modification. However, most of these
standardized evaluation checklists contain similar components that can be used as helpful
starting points for ELT practitioners in a wide variety of situations. Criteria should help
evaluate both physical and logistical characteristics of textbooks (Williams, 1983),
(Sheldon, 1988), (Brown, 1995), (Cunningsworth, 1995) and (Harmer, 1996). Other
important criteria that should be incorporated are those that assess a textbook's
methodology, aims, and approaches and the degree to which a set of materials is not only
teachable but also fits the needs of the individual teacher's approach as well as the
organization's overall curriculum. Moreover, criteria should analyze the specific language,
functions, grammar, and skills content that are covered by a particular textbook as well as
the relevance of linguistic items to the prevailing socio-cultural environment. Finally,
textbook evaluations should include criteria that pertain to representation of cultural and
gender components in addition to the extent to which the linguistic items, subjects, content,
and topics match up to students' personalities, backgrounds, needs, and interests as well as
those of the teacher and/or institution.
Recent researches on material evaluation have used variable checklists. Ali Jahangard
(2007) proposed a cross-checklist to evaluate EFL textbook taught at Iranian Public High
Schools. In his research, he “browsed about 10 checklists proposed by different authors
and selected 13 features which were common to most of these checklists to do the
evaluation”. Followings are his checklist:
1. Are objectives explicitly laid out in an introduction, and implemented in

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the material?
2. Good vocabulary explanation and practice


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Developing and using scientific and mathematical ideas
Textbooks should provide a wide range of problem-solving and practice tasks to help
students see the link between concepts and skills.
Project by Nguyen (2007) on evaluation of Vietnam upper secondary English textbooks
adopted checklists provided by Cunningsworth (1995) with some modification. These
checklists, which include two parts, cover the most important evaluation criteria.
Quick-reference checklist
- Aims, approaches and principles
- Design and organization
- Topic
- Skills and language contents
- Teachers‟ books
Checklist for communicativeness
- General evaluation
- The teaching of listening skills
- The teaching of speaking skills
- The teaching of reading skills
- The teaching of writing skills
- The teaching of grammar
- The teaching of vocabulary
- The teaching of phonology
These checklists appear to be more suitable to the evaluation of English 1.1 textbook.
They are adapted and modified to be questions with options to gain objective evaluation
from teachers and students at VUC. Together with the materials evaluation model by
Hutchinson and Waters which was deliberately chosen as basis for conducting the
research, these criteria appear to be more practical and manageable in the time constraint
of the thesis and in the context of VUC.

dealing with problems, participating in discussions.

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The textbook consists of 8 units, Supplementary grammar, and key to supplementary
grammar. Each unit is divided into four or five sections which are Starting up,
Vocabulary, Reading, Listening and Skills. Starting up includes activities such as
listening, speaking or vocabulary exercises to warm students up. Vocabulary activities
extend learners‟ vocabulary in a given lexical area and give them the opportunity to
practice the new terms in both controlled and free contexts. Reading texts always present
new language and vocabulary, and help students practice information-finding or general
comprehension. Listening activities give practice in understanding new language in its
spoken form, in listening for specific information, in understanding the gist of the
dialogue. Skill activities are used for discussion around a theme, to access students'
knowledge of a language point, and to provide controlled and free practice of target
language. After each unit, teachers revise English basic grammar using the Supplementary
grammar part. Teachers usually have 150 minute class time to cover content of each unit
plus grammar.
3.2 Participants
The participants in the study were 100 first - year economic majored students from
Vietnam University of Commerce. These students have taken English 1.1 course. They
come from five faculties of VCU: Business Administration (23 informants), Economics
(18 informants), E-commerce (21 informants), Finance and Banking (16 informants.), and
Hotel and Hospitalism (22 informants). The participants had learnt EFL for at least 7 years
in lower and upper secondary schools before enrolling in university programs. A general
description of students‟ variables is reported in Table 3.1 in number and percentages.
Table 3.1 Description of Student Participants (N=100)
Variable
Age


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experience and academic degrees. These variants are reported in Table 3.2 in number and
percentages
Table 3.2 Description of Teacher Participants (N=8)
Variable
Academic Degree
Sex
Teaching experience
Bachelor
Master
In-program Service
Male
Female
1-5 yrs
≥6 yrs
Number
3
4
1
1
7
3
5
Percentage
37.5%
50%
12.5%
12.5%
87.5%

into Vietnamese, the learners‟ mother tongue (see Appendix B).
3.3.1.2 Teacher questionnaire
This questionnaire was created to determine the teachers‟ evaluation of English 1.1
textbook (see Appendix C). The content and format of the teacher questionnaire is similar
to student one. Like the student survey, the teacher questionnaire consisted of two parts,
with the first part designed to collect demographic information related to purpose of the
study.
The second part included 33 statements (items 2-34) to which the teachers responded
according to a five-point Likert-type scale. Items 2-3 asked the teachers to respond to
statements about aims and approach of the textbook, items 4-7 about the design and
organization, items 8-12 related to the topics, items 13- 18 concerning the language
content, and items 19-34 about the language skills.
3.3.2 Interviews
In order to provide a deeper understanding of students‟ and teachers‟ evaluation of English
1.1 textbook, it was deemed useful to conduct interviews. Interviews were conducted with
all 8 teachers and a subgroup of 22 students randomly selected from those who had agreed
in advance to participate in follow-up interviews for the purpose of the study. The
interviews were audio-taped and then transcribed to be analyzed
The questions in both learner and teacher interviews were the same. (See Appendix E).
However, the interviews with the students were conducted in Vietnamese, their L1, to
overcome likely deficiencies in their ability to speak and understand the target language.
These interviews were transcribed and translated into English.
3.4 Procedures

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The required data was collected at the end of English 1.1 course in May, 2010. As
mentioned earlier, the plan was to use questionnaires and follow-up interviews in order to
collect the required data for the purpose of the study
The questionnaire was administered by the researcher in person to ensure effective