The Evaluation Of Computer English Coursebooks

The coursebook has become an almost universal element of ELT, playing a vital and positive part in the everyday job of teaching and learning of English (Hutchinson and Torres, 1994). Nowadays there are tens of Computer English coursebooks in Chinese book market, which are published at different times and with different levels. In Chinese teaching context, there is a tendency that CE course teachers select coursebooks just according to their personal preferences at random. The current situation of using CE coursebooks at CQUPT is as follows: (1) CE course teachers simply depend on one book selected according to personal preference. (2) CE course teachers usually select a CE coursebook for students, but they seldom teach it in classroom. They may prepare other materials for students. (3) CE teachers compile CE teaching materials completely by themselves, which will inevitably affect the result of teaching. Therefore, CE teachers have to face the task of conducting coursrebook evaluation for purpose of coursebook selection, adaptation, even development of new coursebook.In terms of coursebook evaluation, there are many theories we can draw upon on coursebook evaluation, which are dispersed in the works of such overseas linguists as Sheldon (1987), Grant (1987), Hutchinson and Waters (1987), Robinson (1991), Mcdonough and Shaw (1993), Cunningsworth (1995), Penny Ur (1996), Breen & Cadlin (1997), Tomlinson (1998), etc.. In their works, the evaluation definition, significance, roles, purpose, criteria as well as approaches are introduced to guide the implementation of coursebook evaluation. Although there are many criteria in theories of coursebook evaluation works, they are not universally suitable for specific evaluation context. Whereas there is no existed suitable checklist with evaluation criteria for Computer English coursebooks, a working checklist with evaluation criteria is proposed to evaluate the three Computer English coursebooks.This paper conducted a small scale systematic evaluation for the three sets of Computer English coursebooks used at ChongQing University of Posts & Telecommunications (henceforth CQUPT), Couputer English (Liu Zhaoyu, 2002), Couputer English (Song Defu & Si Aixia, 2002) Couputer English (Zhang Ling, 2006).The theoretical framework referenced in this thesis mainly derived from linguistics theories, learning theories, syllabus theories and particularly ESP evaluation theories proposed by Hutchinson & Waters (1987) and McDonough and Shaw (2002). First of all, a specific evaluation criteria checklist for Computer English coursebooks is proposed. Next the three sets of Computer English coursebooks are evaluated in a matching way for external, internal and overall evaluation to find out the deficiencies and weaknesses of them and offer some valuable suggestions to teaching administration and Computer English course teachers for future selection, adaptation, even development in new Computer English coursebook design at CQUPT.