Evaluation Of College English Speaking Materials In Use By Means Of Needs Analysis And Teaching Materials Evaluation

Spoken language production—learning to talk in a foreign language—is often considered to be one of the most difficult aspects of language learning for the teacher to help the students with (Brown & Yule, 2000). However, many studies indicate that the majority of college graduates are insufficient in spoken English, which are also accompanied by negative feedbacks from employers of various fields (Liu Ying, 2000; Sun Jiandong, 2001; Yu Chunhua, 2003; and so on).To solve this dilemma, in the year of 2007, College English Curriculum Requirements (CECR) was issued, which highlights the cultivation of college students' oral communicative competence, including listening and speaking. Consequently, for the students to keep up with the new requirements in CECR and to meet the social needs for more practical English users, a trend of revising and adapting ESL teaching materials begins.To present exactly to which extent these new materials meet students' needs in terms of speaking, it is worthwhile to evaluate the existing College English speaking materials in China. This essay is aimed to carry out an in-depth internal and external evaluation of three spoken English teaching materials widely used by Chinese non-English majors by means of Needs Analysis and Teaching-Material Evaluation.The essay first analyzes the college teachers' and students' needs for speaking by means of needs analysis questionnaires. Then an internal analysis are made on the three sets of College English speaking materials in terms of compiler's words, framework, tasks, topics and teacher's book, etc. Finally, teaching-material evaluation questionnaires are administrated in order to collect both teachers' and students' views on their corresponding in-use College English speaking materials to better examine the extent to which these materials satisfy their users' needs in various aspects.After matching the findings from needs analysis and materials evaluations, it is found that both teachers and students are generally satisfied with these three materials. However, according to the research, these materials are insufficient respectively in terms of teaching time allotment, task designing, background knowledge, vocabulary and structures, teacher's book, etc.