An Evaluation Of The Textbooks Of New Horizon College English

Textbook plays an important role in the process of language teaching. It can influence many aspects of teaching and learning. With the reformation of college English teaching, a large number of English textbooks are published to meet the requirement. New Horizon College English is a set of widely-used English textbooks, which are published in 2002.The evaluation of textbook is a job with great challenge. In the evaluation, not only the objective of teaching but also the learner's requirement needs to be considered. The college English curriculum requirement provides a primary basis as well as sets the goals for college English teachingThis thesis attempts to make an evaluation of New Horizon College English. It aims to evaluate how well the textbook New Horizon College English correspond with the college English curriculum requirement, whether the using of the textbook achieved the goals and objectives of the college English curriculum requirement, as well as to examine the usability, applicability, adaptability, and flexibility of New Horizon College English.By the guidance of evaluation criteria, the thesis evaluated the textbook from the aspects of design and organization, language content, skills, topics, methodology, and teacher's book. The data of the thesis is collected from questionnaires, interviews, and the corpus of the texts. This research selected both the qualitative approach and quantitative approach according to the character of the data. The data collected from questionnaires were analyzed by computer software such as SPSS. The data collected from the interview were analyzed qualitatively by observing, synthesizing, induction, and description.The results of the research indicate the New Horizon College English is a set of textbooks that basically accord with the college English curriculum requirement. The language content and the topics of it are well accepted by both teachers and students. It has great applicability and flexibility on the aspect of design, organization and skills—training. However, there is not sufficient section in integrated skills—training. The lack of learning methodology and strategy is also the insufficiency of the textbooks. Thus some suggestions are made to the textbook designers and users.