Effects Of Material Selection On Students In ELT-A Comparative Evaluation Of Two College English Textbooks

Material is an important factor in English Language Teaching (ELT). It is indispensable if we want to accomplish teaching content and achieve teaching objectives. With the development of society and economy, English is becoming more and more important. Accordingly, the role of textbooks in ELT is receiving more and more attention.Nowadays, there are a lot of college English textbooks for non-English majors in China. The author chooses two of them--21st Century College English (21stCE) and New Standard College English (NSCE) to do the research.21stCE was compiled with the guideline of College English Teaching Syllabus (CETS) issued in 1999. It has been in use in Anhui University for a whole decade and is quite influential in the field of college English teaching. In comparison, NSCE was compiled in accordance with the newly-issued College English Curriculum Requirements (CECR) in 2004. It is newly adopted for the non-English-major freshmen of Anhui University since the academic year of 2009-2010 and will gradually replace 21stCE. Students and teachers have different opinions when they are using these two textbooks. But the comparative evaluation of these two textbooks in writing is rare and needs to be developed.The author initially reviews the development of materials in China, and some criteria in materials evaluation. Then the author sets up a working model that includes two processes. First, she conducts a preliminary evaluation of the textbook as it is. Then, she carries out an in-use evaluation by interviewing the students and teachers'opinions. In the preliminary evaluation the author analyzes the coursebook from the aspects of its guideline, unit organization, compiler's claims, coursebook packages and item analysis including text topics, language knowledge (grammar, vocabulary) and language skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating). The in-use evaluation is conducted to make the author's judgement of the two textbooks formed in the preliminary evaluation less subjective. During this process, the author administers questionnaires to 160 students of different majors in Anhui University and interviews to four college English teachers to investigate the strengths and weaknesses of these two textbooks.The author hopes that this thesis will offer some suggestions for the users and compilers of college English materials and can help to improve English language teaching in colleges.