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1. Introduction
According to Richards (2001:35), course books are a key component in most language programs.
They may provide the basis for the content of the lessons, the balance of skills taught and the kinds of language practice the students take part in. Therefore,
“textbook should be carefully evaluated and selected before being used for a language program. Textbook evaluation helps the managerial and teaching staff select the most appropriate materials available for a particular course. It also helps to identify the strengths and weaknesses of a particular textbook that is already in use” (Minh 2007).
At AOF, the course book Intelligent Business, Elementary began to be used for the 1st year non-English major two years ago, but no evaluation or consultation has been conducted determine its strengths and weaknesses and to see how well it suits the desired and attainable goals of the course.
2. Materials and methods 2.1. Material evaluation
According to Hutchinson and Waters (1987:97),
“evaluation is basically a matching process, which concerns matching learners’ needs to available solutions.” They also note that evaluation is really a matter of judging the fitness of something for a
particular purpose. “Given a certain need, and in the light of the resources available, which out of number of possibilities represent the best solution. There is no absolute good or bad only degree of fitness for the required purpose”. In their work, these authors suggest four main criteria for materials including the audience, the aims, the content and the methodology:
- The audience of the materials: the evaluator should obtain information about and from learners to find out whether the materials are suitable to the student’s age knowledge of English, interest and so on. - Aims of the materials: the evaluator has to check if the materials match the aims and objectives of the course.
- Content of the materials: the evaluator has to check whether the materials language points, macro-skills or micro-macro-skills, and topics suit the learners’
needs.
- Methodology of the materials: the evaluator has to find out if techniques, aids, guidance provided in the materials satisfy the learners and the teachers of the course.
2.2. Materials adaptation
Materials adaptation is a process of matching materials with the learner’s needs, the teacher’s demands, and administration’s purpose. The aim of materials adaptation is to make the teaching materials
* M.A Academy of Finance
the most appropriate in a particular teaching context by making some changes. According to McDonough and Shaw (1993: 86) and Isakovos Tsiplakides (2011:761), what we adapt depend on the following aspects: the specific needs and experiences of their students, the general context in which the course book will be used, language use, skills, classroom organization, and supplementary material.
There are many techniques of adaptation such as adding, omitting, replacing, reordering or combining according to Gabrielatos Isakovos Tsiplakides (2011:761).
2.3. Research questions
This article aims at evaluating the course book Intelligent Business Elementary by getting both teachers and students’ opinions. Then it recommends some adaptation so that the book can meet the students’ needs and interests. These proposed questions help to achieve the aims of the thesis.
(a) To what degree does Intelligent Business Elementary satisfy students’ needs and interests?
(b) What improvements should be made to the material to meet the students’ needs and interests?
2.4. Methodology
In this study, the author employs both quantitative and qualitative approaches. To get answer for quantitative approach, there are survey questionnaires for both the teachers and the students.
In addition, teachers’ informal interviews are used to collect data according to qualitative approach.
2.5. Results
2.5.1. Evaluating the materials
Generally, this course book satisfies the needs and the interests of the students as it offers students a variety of activities to develop their communicative competences, and learning strategies. The course book provides readers with update information as it is written in partnership with the Economists which is a unique source of insights into news and business throughout the world. Through its articles, the readers remain up-to-date in the rapidly changing world of modern business. Practical and useful lessons as well as rich vocabulary about business, and helpful functional language in the book are appreciated by both the teachers and the students.
This topic-based course book has succeeded in providing accessible introduction to key concepts in today’s business world. However, the book itself fails to guide students with good writing skills without the
help of the Style Guide booklet. In addition, in terms of pronunciation, the book does not introduce any activity to help students improve their pronunciation.
Furthermore, the book is successful in supplying students with a wide range of vocabulary about business. They are the very basic ones that students need to know in the world of business. Speaking, reading and listening skills are all distributed suitably with many activities for students to practise and master. However, the book has been concluded that it lacks of writing part and has no room for pronunciation. And teachers required more time for each unit.
2.5.2. Recommendations for future material improvements
From all what has been discussed, Intelligent Business Elementary for the first year non-English major students at AOF seems to be a good book under current teaching context. However, unavoidable drawbacks of the book motivate the writer to suggest some recommendations for more effective applications of the book by using the techniques of addition, deletion and replacement, reorder and arrangement as presented in the next part.
Addition
Addition can be qualitative or quantitative. In this thesis, with its certain purposes, the researcher would like to use the qualitative one. The material already contains practice exercises for developing vocabulary, such as word- formation; gap- filling and matching the words with their definition therefore students have many opportunities to expose to language use. Speaking, listening as well as reading skill can be used without any addition. It can be noticed that all speaking tasks in the book give models for students to imitate which is very clear and suitable for the elementary students’ level. However, it is important that writing, and pronunciation activities should be more added. Pronunciation needs constant attention for it to have a lasting effect on students. There are some ways that teachers can use to help students improve their pronunciation. The most simple one is that teacher can use student talk to teach pronunciation. Teachers can have students work in group or pair. Students talk about any topics then others will help them to check for accuracy. In that way, speaking skill and pronunciation can be combined. This means pronunciation is added along with provided speaking activities in the book. Some
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other types of practice exercises on pronunciation should also be added such as word stress, sentence stress, vowel and diphthong sounds or weak form, etc. In order to consolidate grammar, some kinds of exercises need to be added such as making questions for the underlined words and/ or the answers or reorder the words to make complete sentences.
Deletion
In this material, teachers should delete some tasks or exercises, put them into the homework assignment and afterwards design some other proper tasks or exercises due to the limited time for teaching in class.
For example, in unit 8 Solutions, for the Preview part on page 68, in activity 1, the book requires students to match the dates with the inventions of a lantern, solar power, a light bulb, a torch, a gas lamp.
In fact, when teachers ask students to do that, they cannot know about the dates as well as the inventions or they just know a little. In activity 2, the book has five pictures of a battery, electricity, the sun, oil, and gas; then it asks students to match the pictures with five given words. According to the author’s opinion, that activity is too simple for students at their age. As a result, these activities can be omitted.
Replacement
It can be denied that the course book is quite perfect in the teaching-learning context at AOF.
However, it was written for both business people as well as business people, there are some activities are sometimes inappropriate for the first year students’
age and experience. For instance, in Unit 1 Contacts, speaking skill on page 10, students are asked to talk about nationalities of these companies: Shanghai Tang, Michelin, General Motors, Aeroflot, Marks &
Spencer, Banco de Bilbao, Sanyo. Students are the first year students, and this is also the first lesson, they cannot follow the task. Therefore, in any unit with unfamiliar topics, teachers should replace with a more proper one to make learning English enjoyable.
Reorder or combination
The bookmap follows the order for every unit:
Reading, Language, Vocabulary, Career skills, Dilemma & Decision. However, teachers often tend to teach Language and Vocabulary before they lead the students to the reading. As discussed above, in some cases, speaking skill and pronunciation can be combined to teach students to get the most benefit.
3. Conclusion
Materials in general or printed books play a very important part in language teaching and learning.
However, there is no “one size fits all material” to use for all types of learners that is why materials should be evaluated either pre-, in- or post-use. The results from materials evaluation help to determine whether the set of materials is suitable for a particular situation or not. Most of the materials evaluation is carried out to find out the strengths and weakness of the materials and give suggestions for improving the materials as well.
The research has evaluated the “Intelligent Business Elementary” material using for the first year non-English major students at AOF in terms of Language providing and Skill developing to find out the suitability of this material with the student’
needs and interests. From the detailed data analysis in the previous chapter, the writer can reach some conclusions for two research questions raised earlier.
Then, basing on the results of the thesis, the researchers suggests some possible methods of material adaptation by applying techniques of addition, deletion, replacement, and reorder and combination for better material teaching.
References
1. Hutchinson, T., & Waters, A. (1993), English for specific purposes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2. Hutchinson, T., & Waters, A. (1987), English for specific purposes: A learning- centred approach, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
3. Iacovos Tsiplakides. (2011), “Select an English book: theory and practice”, theory and practice in language studies, vol. 1, No.7, pp 758-764
4. McDonough, J., & Shaw, C. (1993), Materials and Methods in ELT, Blackwell
5. Minh,N.T.T. (2007), The case of English textbooks currently in use in Vietnam’s upper-secondary schools. Seameo Regional Language Centre
6. Richards, J.C. (2001), Curriculum Development in Language Teaching, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
7. Robinson, P.C. (1991), ESP today: A practitioner’s Guide, London: Prentice Hall.
8. Sheldon, L.E. (1998), Evaluating ELT textbooks and materials, ELTJ, 42(4), pp. 237-46.
1. Đặt vấn đề
Việt Nam đang trong quá trình hội nhập và
phát triển. Trong quá trình đó, mỗi sinh viên (SV) nói riêng và người dân Việt Nam nói chung rất cần trang bị cho mình khả năng sử dụng tiếng Anh tốt.
Đó chính là chìa khóa để mở cánh cửa tri thức của nhân loại, thúc đẩy thành công trong hội nhập quốc tế. Trên thực tế, dù đã ý thức được tầm quan trọng của tiếng Anh. Tuy nhiên trong điều kiện, cơ sở vật chất ở các trường đại học còn nhiều thiếu thốn, các lớp học tiếng Anh đều dao động từ 30 đến 40 SV với trình độ ngoại ngữ chênh lệch nhau và Trường Đại học Đồng Tháp cũng không nằm ngoại lệ. Việc giảng dạy giúp cho SV đạt kết quả cao gặp rất nhiều khó khăn đặc biệt trong điều kiện lớp học khá đông và
trình độ cũng không tương đồng nhau. Chính vì vậy, giảng viên (GV) cần khắc phục hiện trạng lớp học đông SV với nhiều trình độ khác nhau nhằm giúp cho SV các lớp tiếng Anh học tốt và đạt được kết quả cao.
2. Nội dung nghiên cứu 2.1. Giới thiệu chung
Điều quan trọng nhất trong lớp học đông và
chênh lệch về trình độ là phải tạo được hứng thú học tập cho SV. Với SV giỏi là những thách thức mới cần vượt qua; với SV yếu hơn là những tiến bộ từng bước rõ rệt. Vì vậy, phương pháp dạy và quản lý của GV phải luôn phong phú, linh hoạt. Trong bài báo này, tác giả đề xuất một số kinh nghiệm cải tiến khắc phục hiện trạng lớp học đông SV với nhiều trình độ khác nhau ở Trường Đại học Đồng Tháp.
2.2. Một số kinh nghiệm dạy học tích cực cho
lớp đông SV với nhiều trình độ khác nhau 2.2.1. Xây dựng nội quy chung cho từng lớp học Xây dựng quy tắc nội quy chung là một việc làm cần thiết trong lớp đông SV để duy trì kỷ luật của lớp và tạo môi trường học tập thoải mái cho tất cả SV.
GV và SV cùng thảo luận tạo nên các quy tắc chung của lớp trong đó sự nhất quán là yếu tố then chốt. Đặc biệt với các lớp đông SV, những quy tắc sau vô cùng cần thiết:
SV phải giữ trật tự, lắng nghe khi GV hoặc một SV trong lớp trình bày ý kiến.
SV làm việc theo nhóm không nói quá to để không ảnh hưởng đến các nhóm khác cũng như các lớp khác.
GV nêu trước cho SV những hình thức thưởng phạt và áp dụng công bằng với tất cả SV. Trong từng trường hợp cụ thể, nên áp dụng hình thức nhắc sau mỗi buổi học để không ảnh hưởng đến thời gian của tiết học.
2.2.2. Kĩ thuật chia nhóm linh hoạt: Phương pháp dạy học nhóm hàm chứa quá trình hoạt động để người học tích cực, tự giác chiếm lĩnh nội dung khoa học một cách chủ động và sáng tạo. Bằng quá trình động não và thảo luận tập thể, SV có cơ hội rèn luyện các kĩ năng cơ bản như kĩ năng nghe, kĩ năng nói và
khả năng bảo vệ ý tưởng bằng Tiếng Anh. SV có thể học được các kĩ thuật làm bài, phát triển ý tưởng mới từ thành viên khác trong nhóm.
a. Cách chia nhóm:
Tùy thuộc vào nội dung, tính chất, mức độ khó dễ của nhiệm vụ học tập và trình độ của SV trong lớp, GV lựa chọn hình thức chia nhóm phù hợp nhất.
Thông thường, có những cách chia nhóm sau:
- Chia nhóm ngẫu nhiên: Là các nhóm hình thành