The Evaluation Of Civil Engineering: English For Highway And Bridge Based On Hutchinson&Waters’s ESP Materials Evaluation Criteria

Recently, English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has received worldwide attention.Studies conducted in the field of ESP are mainly focus on discourse analysis,teaching methodologies, needs analysis, curriculum design, etc, while researches onESP coursebook evaluation are relatively fewer, especially on English for CivilEngineering (ECE) coursebook evaluation.The present thesis aiming at analyzing it in a systematic way to investigate itsoutstanding features and weaknesses, tries to evaluate Civil Engineering: English forHighway and Bridge on the basis of the ESP coursebook evaluation criteria proposedby Hutchinson and Waters.In accordance with the ESP coursebook criteria proposed by Hutchinson andWaters, this thesis evaluates the target coursebook in terms of audience, aims,content, methodology and other criteria to examine whether the coursebook conformto those criteria required. Besides,274undergraduate students majoring in RoadBridge and River-Crossing Engineering in Chang’an University,10graduatestudents who are employed in different companies, and4ECE teachers are selectedto carry out a survey design to investigate whether learners and teachers are satisfiedwith the coursebook through questionnaires and interviews.The target coursebook contains a large amount of reading materials, readingexercises, and translation exercises, which can improve learners’ reading andtranslation ability. The types of topics cover all the five main subjects of CE,therefore the types of topics comprehensive. With reference to the arrangement ofthe content and sequence, the content arranged throughout the book is by the samepattern of main text-wordlist-exercises-reading material, which is clear andsystematic so that it can increase learning efficiency. In addition, the content of thecoursebook is sequenced from general to specific. Such a sequence helps learners tohave a general understanding of the subject before exposed to more specific topics,which can facilitate language learning by form systematic order in learners’ mind.Besides, the target coursebook is flexible enough to allow learners to start and continue their learning at any time because each lesson within it is designed asindependent as possible. Since it provides wordlists, translation of each article, keyto exercises and sources of each article, the target coursebook can be self-studied.Apart from the advantages, shortcomings of the target coursebook also exist.With a very small amount of teaching materials and exercises about writing,speaking and listening, it cannot meet the needs of learners to improve their Englishproficiency in terms of writing, speaking and listening. Besides, the text typesemployed in the target coursebook are not diversified, therefore it cannot arouselearners’ interest, and is not helpful in learning efficiently. Furthermore, the types ofexercises are not various, which cannot arouse learners’ interests, and are difficult toguarantee learners to consolidate their English knowledge by practicing them.The present thesis contributes to ECE materials evaluation. It helps ECEteachers to select appropriate teaching materials for learners, and also providessuggestions to improving ECE materials design to some extent.