Material Evaluation: Task Design In Some Subject-Based EST Textbooks Published In China

With the opening of China, our contact with other countries in specialized fields becomes more frequent. People who are proficient in both English and their subject areas become competitive in today's world. This social demand puts the importance of ESP on the agenda. In recent years, some Chinese educators have pointed out that subject-based ESP courses should promote practical use of the language learned. Teaching materials are an essential part within the curriculum. Given the importance of ESP in today's world, it is worthwhile for us to evaluate some of our subject-based ESP teaching materials. Do they reflect the changing demands of the society? If not, what ways can we resort to in order to seek improvement?EST is an important branch of ESP. This thesis aims to evaluate 30 subject-based EST textbooks published in the past decade in China from the angle of task design in these books. To facilitate the evaluation process, Littlejohn's definition of 'task', which has been broadened to incorporate both communicative tasks and traditional exercises, is adopted in this thesis. In the preliminary evaluation stage, the author began the evaluation by listing the major task types in these books and categorizing them according to frequency. It was found that forty percent of the textbooks chosen did not provide tasks of any sort and the range of task types found in the rest of the textbooks was rather limited. After that, the author proceeded to exam the five most frequently used task types (comprehension questions, translation, multiple choice to check comprehension, True or False statements and blank-filling with information extracted from the text) in detail, using Littlejohn's (1998) Task Analysis Sheet and a pre-specified checklist. Analyses show that although these tasks do have pedagogical values, they do not hold much potential for promoting communicative use of the language learned, nor can they adequately meet students' needs, with the underlying message being that learning EST involves reading subject-based materials in detail, doing short, closed comprehension tasks of various sorts, and attending to translation work.In order to make the judgment in the preliminary evaluation less biased, an in-use evaluation was conducted. Questionnaires were administered to junior students in Chongqing University to investigate their opinions concerning the five most frequently used task types. The data collected were analyzed in three parts. The results generally correspond with the author's judgment in the preliminary evaluation. While recognizing the pedagogical values of these tasks, students' responses also indicate the various limitations.Some limitations of the tasks evaluated can be remedied, while others cannot. Therefore, it is advisable to supplement the currently-used task forms with other forms. Issues like task variety, task setting, the task dependency principle, the designing of pre-reading and real-life tasks, as well as the interrelationship between form and function in tasks need to be considered in the task designing process. Finally, based on Kolb's model on experiential learning, a more communicative mode to task design in subject-based EST textbooks in the Chinese context is presented. This mode incorporates more communicative tasks and at the same time gives traditional task types due attention. It takes into account of both language use and usage, and can hopefully relate what the students have learned in the classroom to their target needs.