ESP M.A Thesis
4 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

EG: English for Geography
ESP: English for Specific Purposes
GE: General English
HNUE: Hanoi National University of Education

Table 3.6: Learners’ attitude towards exercises and follow-up activities
Table 3.7: Learners’ preference for types of exercises and activities
Table 3.8: Learners’ suggestions for better coursebook
Table 3.9: Learners’ satisfaction towards classroom activities
Table 3.10: Learners’ attitude towards teacher’s use of language and the coursebook

Table 1: Teachers’ views of physical characteristics
Table 2: Teachers’ views of content
Table 3: Teachers’ perceived limitations of the coursebook
Table 4: Students’ reactions to the coursebook as observed by teachers
Table 5: Challenges to the students in using the coursebook as observed by teachers
Table 6: Teachers’ self-reported challenges in using the coursebook
ESP M.A Thesis
6
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Certificate of originality of study project report i
Acknowledgements ii
Abstract iii
List of abbreviations iv
List of charts, figures and tables v
Table of contents vi
PART I: INTRODUCTION 1
1.1. Rationale 1

2.2. The methodology 15
2.2.1. Participants 15
2.2.2. Data collection instruments 16
2.2.3. Procedure 17
CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 18
3.1. Results and discussion 18
3.1.1. Learners’ attitude towards learning ESP 18
3.1.2. Learners’ evaluation of ESP coursebook 19
3.1.3. Learners’ evaluation of the teachers’ exploitation of ESP coursebook 29
3.1.4. Learners’ evaluation of the teachers’ exploitation of ESP coursebook 31
3.1.5. Teachers’ views of ESP coursebook 33
3.2. Major findings 34
3.2.1. The suitability of the coursebook to the audiences 34
3.2.2. The suitability of the coursebook to the aims 35
3.2.3. The suitability of the coursebook to the content requirements 35
3.2.4. The suitability of the coursebook to the methodology 36
3.3. Recommendations 37
3.3.1. Content improvements 38
3.3.2. Methodology improvements 38
3.3.3. Other recommendations……………………………………………………… 39
PAER III: CONCLUSION 41
1. Conclusion 41
2. Limitations of the study 41
3. Suggestions for further researches 42
REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………… 43
APPENDIX 1 (Students questionnaire) I
APPENDIX 2 (Teachers’ views as stated in the interviews) ……………………….VI
APPENDIX 3 (A sample unit in the coursebook)………………………………….VIII
field and skills up to the expectation of their future employment. However, no research on
the coursebook evaluation has been carried out to see how far it meets the students’ needs
and expectations. Therefore, it is necessary to have the coursebook English for Geography
(EG) evaluated by the learners themselves at Faculty of Geography at HNUE for the
improvement of the coursebook in the following courses.
2. AIMS OF THE STUDY
This study was carried out to have a better insight into the learners’ evaluation of
the ESP coursebook at Faculty of Geography, HNUE. The aims of the study are:
- To find out students’ evaluative comments on ESP coursebook in Faculty of
Geography, HNUE.
ESP M.A Thesis
9
- To offer suggestions for further improvement of the coursebook which is
appropriate to the needs and expectations of the students in the light of learner-centered
approach.
3. RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The study was carried out to answer the following questions:
1) What are the learners’ evaluative comments on the ESP coursebook?
2) What are the learners’ expectations for learning ESP in Faculty of Geography,
HNUE?
3) How should the ESP coursebook be improved to be more relevant to the
learners’ needs and expectations?
4. SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The ESP course is only for the second year students at HNUE, thus the study
focuses on the evaluation of the second year students of Faculty of Geography at HNUE on
ESP coursebook currently used.
5. METHOD OF THE STUDY

provided including definition, purposes of coursebook evaluation, types of coursebook
evaluation, coursebook evaluation in ESP, rationales of students’ evaluation, models for
evaluation and criteria for evaluation.

1.1. APPROACHES TO ESP
A variety of linguistic scholars, such as Hutchinson and Waters (1987) and Tudor
(1993) have taken pains to study learner-centered approach. In this study, two major
approaches namely learner-centeredness and learning-centeredness will be distinguished in
the viewpoints of Hutchinson and Waters.
1.1.1. Learner-centeredness in ESP
The learner-centered approach is based on the principle that learning is totally
determined by the learner. In other words, this approach focuses on the learner. Hutchinson
and Waters (1987, p.72) states, “As teachers we can influence what we teach, but what
learners learn is determined by the learners alone.” Then, learning is seen as a process in
which the learners use what knowledge or skills they have in order to make sense of the
flow of new information. This process depends on the knowledge the learners already have
and their ability and motivation to use it. According to Hutchinson and Waters (1987),
however, a truly learner-centered approach does not really exist at the current time due to
two reasons. Firstly, it is very difficult to see how such an approach could be taken in
current institutionalized systems. Secondly, most syllabuses, materials, coursebooks, etc
which have designed and compiled for learners are pre-determined ones. Therefore, the
term learner-centeredness should be replaced by learning-centeredness to indicate that the
concern is to maximize learning.
1.1.2. Learner-centeredness vs. learning-centeredness in ESP
While learner-centered approach focuses on learner, learning-centered approach
focuses on activities. In other words, this approach considers learning process in the
context it takes place. Hutchinson and Waters (1987, p.72) note that “Learning is not just a
ESP M.A Thesis
two approaches - learner-centered and learning-centered approaches to ESP - I think
such a distinction is not necessary because learning-centeredness is part of learner-
centeredness. Therefore, in this study, the term “learner-centeredness” is used as an
umbrella term. ESP M.A Thesis
12
1.2. COURSEBOOK EVALUATION
1.2.1. Definition of coursebook evaluation
To have a good definition of coursebook evaluation, giving a good definition of
coursebook is necessary.
McGrath (2002, p.7) defines a coursebook as “a textbook on which a course is
based”. Tomlinson (1998, p.ix) shares similar point with McGrath when he considers a
coursebook as “a textbook which provides the core materials for a course”. In his
viewpoint, a coursebook 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. It
usually includes not only work on grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, functions but also
work on the skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking.
In Materials Development in Language Teaching, 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 point
out that coursebook is a type of materials.
Materials evaluation has been defined differently by different authors from their
personal stance. Hutchinson and Waters (1987, p.96) consider valuation as “a matter of
judging the fitness of something for a particular purpose”. Evaluation is, then, concerned

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), coursebook is “a resource in achieving
aims and objectives that have already been set in terms of learner needs”. For him, through
evaluation, we can assess whether the coursebook is the most appropriate for the target
learners at various levels and in various teaching settings. What is more, the evaluation
process will involve elements of comparison, especially where existing materials are being
challenged by newly produced materials.
Besides the above purposes, another author, Torres (1993) adds more purposes of
material evaluation. In his opinion, evaluation should be taken not only to assess the
effectiveness of materials but also to afford general insights how teachers use materials.
Hence, evaluation may be planned to suggest adjustments for both materials development
and professional development activities.
In summary, 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 an embodiment of the aims and methods of the particular teaching/learning
situation. Materials evaluation in general and coursebook evaluation in specific is very
necessary and important. It may be taken for two reasons: first, it confirms the coursebook
and second, it adjusts the coursebook. Then, it will increase the strengths and minimize the
drawback of the coursebook.
1.2.3. Types of coursebook evaluation
There are many different ways of dividing coursebook evaluation according to
different researchers.
ESP M.A Thesis
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According to some scholars, material evaluation in general and coursebook

- Whilst-use evaluation focuses on awareness and description of what the learners
are actually doing whilst the materials are being used.
ESP M.A Thesis
15
- 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
suitability of selection and selection procedures.
In summary, although types of materials evaluation are indicated with different
terms, there is no difference in distinguishing evaluation process. Preliminary or pre-use
evaluation establishes potential suitability of the materials. Formative or in-use evaluation
examines how materials really work in by gathering data on planning decisions,
implementation and response. Summative or post-use evaluation is used at the end of the
course in order to provide retrospective assessment and identify which strengths and
weaknesses of the materials.
The present study is a formative, while-use evaluation of the materials with a view
to understanding students’ perspectives on the currently-used coursebook so that
improvements can be made to respond better to the students’ needs and expectations.
1.2.4. Coursebook evaluation in ESP
To meet the needs of learners in colleges and universities, many ESP coursebooks
have been designed and compiled for some specific fields. However, there can be a need

being used needs to be evaluated to see whether it has worked well for the target situations
and students.
1.2.5. Rationales of students’ evaluation
Together with the worldwide trend to learn ESP, many ESP coursebooks have been
designed for some specific fields. Coursebook 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
coursebook. ESP coursebook 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
coursebook related to their own needs and expectation.
Secondly, being the people who use directly the coursebook, the learners are
believed to have information of the strengths and weaknesses of the coursebook. Therefore,
they will give comments on the coursebook according to their own needs and expections
which the coursebook designers and teachers may not be aware of.
In short, it is necessary to have the coursebook “English for Geography” evaluated
by the learners themselves at Faculty of Geography at HNUE to see how far it meets the
learners’ expectations. Also, this evaluation is valuable for the improvement of the
coursebook in the coming years.
ESP M.A Thesis
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1.2.6. Models for evaluation
According to Hutchinson and Waters (1987), evaluation is a process of matching
needs to available solutions. Thus, the evaluation process is divided into four steps as
follows:

DEFINE CRITERIA
On what bases will you judge material?
Which criteria will be more important?
SUBJECTIVE ANALYSIS
What realizations of the criteria do you
want in your course?
OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS
How does the material being evaluated
realize the criteria?
MATCHING
How far does the material match
your needs?
ESP M.A Thesis
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Another author, Littlejohn (1998) introduces the framework as follows:

MATERIAS ANALYSIS
From analysis:
1. What is their explicit nature?
2. What is required by users?
3. What is implied by their use?
To description:
- aspects of design
- aspects of publication

MATCH AND EVALUATION
How appropriate are the respects of design and the aspects of
publication to the target situation of use? ACTION

Adopt the materials
Reject the materials
Adapt the materials
Supplement the materials
Make the materials a critical object

ESP M.A Thesis
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1.2.7. Criteria for evaluation
Various scholars have suggested different ways to help evaluators become more
systematic and objective in their method of evaluation by using a checklist.


ESP M.A Thesis
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CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY
In this chapter, the current situation at HNUE related to the study will be taken in
close-up and the research methodology will be discussed.
2.1. THE CONTEXT OF THE STUDY
2.1.1. The course
Faculty of English – HNUE was founded in 2004, formerly being a division of
Faculty of Foreign Languages. At first, its primary task is to train teachers of English and to
teach General English (GE) as a compulsory subject to students of other majors. Since
2005, with the requirement of the improvements in education in general and with the
learners’ needs in particular, ESP has gained an increasing importance in teaching and
learning English. Now, therefore, Faculty of English has two fundamental tasks: teaching
English to English-major students and teaching English (both GE and ESP) to English-non-
major students.
The whole curriculum of English for non-major students is divided into 4 stages as
follows:
Stage 1 (Semester 1) consists of 75 periods of GE
Stage 2 (Semester 2) consists of 75 periods of GE
Stage 3 (Semester 3) consists of 90 periods of GE
Stage 4 (Semester 4) consists of 45 periods of ESP
Accordingly, ESP is taught to non-major students of 28 different faculties in the
third and the fourth semester. The teachers are assigned to design syllabus and coursebooks
and take the responsibility for teaching and assessing the students they teach. The
objective of the ESP course is to provide the students with linguistic knowledge relevant to
their field and skills up to the expectation of their future employment.

always try their best to give their students attractive and interesting ESP lessons. However,
due to their inexperience in ESP, they have to face with some difficulties in terms of
knowledge of the specific field they have to teach and the teaching methodologies
appropriate to ESP.
2.1.4. The students
The students whose evaluation this study focuses on are all the second-year students
of Faculty of Geography. Their age ranges from 19 to 22. They have been learning English
for the period of 2 to 12 years. Additionally, most of them are expected to learn English
related to their speciality which will help them much in studying materials for their jobs in
the future. Those factors seem to be their advantages in learning English.
However, those students have some disadvantages in learning English as follows:
The first disadvantage is related to the students’ language background. These
students come different parts of the countries, some from distant provinces and some from
rural areas with different language background and different attitudes toward learning
English. The students who come from cities have learned English a lot at high schools
before going to university whereas others who come from rural areas have learned only
ESP M.A Thesis
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little. This mixture has caused certain problems to teaching and learning because some
students find activities in classroom easy and interesting while the others find them too
hard in the same classroom. It is really a challenge for teachers in such a mixed class
because the teachers cannot meet and satisfy all students’ needs.
The second disadvantage is about the students’ learning styles. They do not have the
habit of learning independently and tend to depend much on teachers and the given
coursebook for knowledge. Accordingly, it is difficult for them to follow a new learning
style which is used in learning English in general and ESP in particular. The teachers,
therefore, have to help students be familiar with this new learning method.

A questionnaire was used as an instrument for collecting data for this study. It is
designed to collect students’ information on evaluation of the current- used ESP
coursebook in Faculty of Geography, HNUE.
The questionnaire (See Appendix 1) consists of four sections:
- Section 1 was designed to get the information of the learners: the time of learning
English, the level of English, the thought of the importance of learning ESP and their
purpose of learning ESP.
- Section 2 was designed to collect the information on the learners’ evaluation of the
current ESP coursebook for Geography at HNUE related to needs met by the coursebook,
content of the coursebook, time allocation of ESP, vocabulary, grammar, skill development
and follow-up activities.
- Section 3 was designed to gather the information about the learners’ evaluation of
the teachers’ exploitation of ESP coursebook related to classroom practice, exercises and
delivery methods.
- Section 4 was designed to collect the information about the learners’ expectations
of the course organization, the time of the course, the provision of extra materials and other
activities.
Interview
To gather more information for the study, interviews were also used as an
instrument of data collection. To make the result of the interviews objective, three
interviews were conducted with three ESP teachers of Geography at three points of time.
(See Appendix 2 for the results of the interviews)
The interviews were designed with the same questions related to the following
issues:
- Physical characteristics of the coursebook
- The content of the coursebook
- The teachers’ perceived limitations of the coursebook
- The students’ reactions to the coursebook as observed by teachers
- The challenges to the students in using the coursebook as observed by teachers
- The teachers’ self-reported challenges in using the coursebook
ESP M.A Thesis
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CHAPTER III: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 3.1. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

3.1.1. Learners’ attitude towards learning ESP
As mentioned in the previous chapter, these learners are the second-year students
who finished two semesters of GE courses and are in the second semester of ESP course.
112 students participating the research provided us with a variety of answers to the
question about their time of learning English. Most of them (42/112 = 37.5%) have learned
English for 9 to 10 years, another 29.5% have been learning English for 8 to 9 years, 8.9%
have been learning English for 2 to 3 years. Surprisingly, there are 12 students (10.7%)
have learned English for 12 years. The rest of the learners have been learning English for 5,
7, and 8 years. Additionally, most of these learners (75.9%) are at Pre-intermediate level,

40%
To apply for a job in a foreign
company
45%
30%
10%
15%
No purpose
0%

0%
0%
0%

Table 3.1: Learners’ ranking of their purposes of learning ESP
(N=120; group 1: 50, group 2: 49, group 4: 13)

ESP M.A Thesis
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Table 3.1 indicates that the most important purpose of learning ESP to many
learners is to widen ESP vocabulary and to read technical documents in English. About
47% of the learners consider widening ESP vocabulary as their most important purpose
when taking ESP course whereas only 3% of them rank this purpose of the least
importance. Similarly, reading technical documents in English is seen as the most
important purpose to most of the learners (40%). Besides, there are still 30% thinking that
improving English basis grammar is the most important. In contrast, applying for a job in a
foreign company seems to be the least important purpose to these learners when 43% of
4 (8)
8 (16)
16 (32)
21 (42)
1 (2)
0 (0) 3 (6.1)
10 (20.4)
17 (34.7)
19 (38.8)
0 (0)
0 (0) 1 (7.7)
3 (23.1)
4 (30.8)
5 (38.5)
0 (0)
0 (0) 8 (7.1)
21 (18.8)
37 (33)
45 (40.2)

3. OK
4. boring
5. very boring
The information in the
coursebook is
6. very useful
7. useful
8. not very useful
9. useless

8 (16)
16 (32)
24 (48)
2 (4)
0 (0) 19 (38)
31 (62)
0 (0)
0 (0)

7 (14.3)
19 (38.8)
21 (43)
2 (4.1)
0 (0) 15 (30.6)

The coursebook provides
learners with
10. update information
11. no update information
25 (50)
25 (50)
23 (46.9)
26 (53.1)
5 (38.5)
8 (61.5)
53 (47.3)
59 (52.7)

Table 3.3: Learners’ attitude towards the content of the ESP coursebook
(N=112; group 1: 50, group 2: 49, group 4: 13)

Topics covered in the ESP coursebook
As can be seen from Table 3.3, no one thinks that the topics covered in the ESP

enough
N/ (%)
little
N/ (%)
too little
N/ (%)
Time for the course
4 (3.6)
4 (3.6)
31 (27.7)
65 (58)
16 (7.1)
Time for each unit
13 (11.5)
19 (17)
63 (56.3)
12 (10.7)
5 (4.5)
Table 3.4: Learners’ evaluation on time allocation for ESP (N=112)

As mentioned in the previous chapter, time allocated for an ESP course is 45
periods and time allocated for each of 5 units in the ESP coursebook is 6 periods. On
answering the survey question of time allocation for ESP course, most of the learners
(58%) agree that it is little and the other (7.1%) think that it is too little. Only 4 out of 112
informants (account for 3.6%) find that it is too much and the other 3.6% find that it is
much. With respect to time allocated for each of 5 units in the coursebook, more than a half
of the learners (56.3%) claim that it is sufficient. In most of the learners’ opinion, time for
an ESP course should be 75 periods, so the coursebook should cover more topics with more
various and interesting content.