An Assessment Of New Horizon College English Based On College English Curriculum Requirements

With the exciting reform of College English teaching, publishing houses have put on sale different kinds of teaching materials. It is difficult to choose a most suitable material, and therefore material evaluation is necessary. New Horizon College English is a set of newly published and widely used College English textbooks. It is widely reviewed, but most of the reviews do not touch on the crux of it, or even worse, just lavish praise on it blindly.The author initially reviews and analyzes some relevant theoretical principles, linguistic theories, language learning theories, syllabus theories and criteria for material evaluation. Then National English Syllabus (1999) and College English Curriculum Requirements (2004) are introduced in the paper. According to the two documents, the author raises the question that is to be settled-whether NHCE meets the requirements proposed in CECR (2004). Subsequently, a deep and comprehensive study is conducted on NHCE by means of questionnaires and interviews. Meanwhile, SPSS is used to analyze data collected.Based on the evaluation, NHCE basically meets the requirements put forward in CECR (2004). However, NHCE is far from perfect due to the deficiencies of biased cultural orientation and lack of reference teaching methods or activities in Teacher's Book. At the same time, in respect of the highlights of NHCE- disks attached to the books and online course, the administrators in universities should create favorable conditions for both teachers and students to make full use of them and bring the two new techniques into full play.In the end, the author calls for a new evaluation system with Chinese characteristics which is more scientific and practical for College English material evaluation in China.