Evaluating College English(New Edition)

College English teaching has made great contribution to the talent cultivation in the past twenty years, but with many problems, so it cannot meet the requirement of the social economic, scientific and cultural exchange. (Zhang Yaoxue, 2002). This calls for an overall reform of language teaching, including teaching staff, curriculum, syllabus, teaching materials and evaluation system. The National Education Committee has done such work, including the reform of CET Band Four and Band Six, revisal of National College English Syllabus in 1999, and the compilation work of new English teaching materials like the 21st Century College English, New College English (Zhejiang University), and College English (New Edition). Materials play an important role in curriculum, since they have much to do with the content and form of teaching and learning. As the core of language curriculum, teaching materials should reflect the development of science and technology, the latest theoretical and practical researches of language teaching.The thesis makes a study of the materials evaluation criteria, and evaluates the College English (New Edition) (hereafter, NE). The author holds that a desirable college English material can justify these foals and fully promote language teaching and learning. In an attempt to see whether NE can really meet the goals, the author read extensively on the materials, and made an investigation into the users of the material, by means of questionnaires, interviews and classroom observation. And the research findings are:NE provides substantial input and promotes output; the starting point in NE is much higher; skills are practiced in discourse level; autonomous and cooperative learning models are advocated in NE; but it overemphasizes reading.The significance of the thesis is to draw attention to the language materials evaluation work, equip English teachers with material evaluation methods, and to shed light on the change of teaching/learning model in the classroom.