An Overall Evaluation Of Contemporary College English Based On Needs Analysis

Coursebook is a significant carrier for language learning and is a major approach to acquiring language input. Comprehensive English course accounts for a large percentage among all the courses during undergraduate studies for English majors. It is carried out throughout the six terms from Grade One to Grade Three and has played a vital role in promoting students’integrated English abilities and improving their comprehensive qualities; therefore, it is quite important as to which Comprehensive English coursebook to learn. Contemporary College English:Intensive Reading (the CCEIR for abbreviation), consisting of six volumes in total, compiled by Yang Limin, was published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press in2002. It is one of the most commonly used coursebooks for English majors; therefore, the study on it is necessary.Based on Hutchinson&Waters’evaluation theories, and conducted in the forms of questionnaires and interviews, an investigation of the learners’needs and feedbacks about the CCEIR is made, and the author analyzes the matching degree between learners’needs and the coursebooks, discussing the applicability of the coursebooks. The research results reveal that the students in Nanjing University of Science and Technology maintain generally positive attitudes towards the CCEIR, and the coursebooks have high applicability and can match with learners’needs well. The coursebooks are in accord with the compiling principles well, especially in the aspects of layouts and designs, the designs of exercises and cultural background. Yet there is still something that is not to the satisfaction. In the last part of the study, the author attempts to propose some suggestions for the demerits of the CCEIR which have been discovered in this research.