An Evaluation On Experiencing English-Listening And Speaking From The Learners' Perspective

As a major component in the implementation of an English course, English coursebook is best seen as an essential factor contributing to the accomplishment of teaching content and the achievement of teaching objectives. Its significance is self-evidently justified and cannot be neglected particularly for Chinese college students who still greatly rely on coursebook both in and out the classroom. With the reform of college English teaching, a variety of coursebooks are compiled and published in the market which are claimed to be in line with the National College Syllabus (1999). As one of these coursebooks, Experiencing English has been popularly adopted in plenty of colleges and universities since its first publication. The importance of listening and speaking skills was emphasized in College English Curriculum Requirements (For Trial Implementation) which was published in 2004. This study has conducted an evaluation of Experiencing English - Listening and Speaking, an English coursebook series used by the first and second year learners (they have used this book for two tears) in Inner Mongolia Normal University, with the aim of knowing the extent to which this coursebook can meet the needs of sophomores. The thesis attempts at evaluating Experiencing English - Listening and Speaking based on the relevant evaluation theories and statistic software analysis of SPSS 13.0. The evaluation adopted the following steps: First, the evaluation theories and some relevant researches are listed. And then, based on the relevant theories, the questionnaire was designed for the learners. The questionnaire includes three parts: the first part contains some basic questions about the learners themselves, like how many years do those learners learn English and what are their marks of the College Entrance Examination; the second part was designed to find out the target need of those learners who are using Experiencing English - Listening and Speaking; the third part is the main part of this questionnaire, it includes multiple choices related to the content and the design of the coursebook.The result shows that Experiencing English - Listening and Speaking satisfied most of the learners'needs. Those learners expressed their satisfaction at the choice of topics and the design of listening materials, and at the same time, a deficiency of the exercises on vocabulary and speaking materials was discovered.Lastly, some suggestions are put forward based on the significant findings of the survey. The significance of the thesis is that the evaluation has been done by another important user of coursebook - learners. From the subject of evaluation, the thesis found out different learners'attitudes towards this coursebook; from the object of evaluation, whether the excellent design answers for the learners'needs has become another important part of the evaluation. The result of the evaluation of Experiencing English - Listening and Speaking in Inner Mongolia Normal University may be of some help in judging and determining the appropriateness of using the coursebook in the local area, and offer some suggestions for further improvement of the coursebook.