| Business English(hereinafter called BE) undergraduate program aims to foster talents with solid command of English language skills, social-cultural awareness of English speaking countries. Thus, Business English(A Comprehensive Course)(hereinafter called BE textbooks), the teaching materials of core courses under the business English undergraduate program shall play a role in fulfilling the aforementioned objectives. However, according to teachers' feedback and evaluation, BE textbooks possess flaws, waiting to be further revised.This thesis utilizes case study to explore BE textbook performance. The checklist is tailored on the basis of concrete demand of The National Criteria of Teaching Quality for BA Program in Business English(hereinafter called National Syllabus) and Mc Donough &Shaw's external and internal evaluation theory. Then with reference to the tailored checklists,questionnaires are designed to capture students' remarks and to evaluate whether BE textbooks are aligned with the needs of students. Currently, general English TEM-4 is a requisite examination for students from BE program in Guangdong University of Foreign Studies(hereinafter called GDUFS) and Guangdong University of Technology(hereinafter called GDUT), and the business English TEM-4 examination is not mature enough to be accepted as a certificate for BE programs currently, so corpus tools are utilized to explore coverage rate of general English TEM-4. Meanwhile, given that learnability and difficulty of BE textbooks influence learners, corpus tools are also applied. In order to verify the results of general overview, questionnaires and corpus analysis, interviews are conducted with teachers.Consequently, merits and drawbacks can be drawn to furnish suggestions for revising BE textbooksIn the external evaluation, BE textbooks turn out to be adequate to some extent for it aims at students who are exactly the learners in the Business English program, providing teacher's books, a list of new vocabulary, different topics of business and opportunities of practicing the four basic language skills. However, it doesn't perform satisfactorily in objective congruence,contents relatedness, learnability and difficulty suitability. The textbooks fail to cover the vocabularies of TEM-4. And contents lack business–related element. The fluctuation of difficulty scores in the main texts indicates the difficulty of this textbook is not well arranged from easiness to difficulty.Suggestions have been put forward in terms of methods, language content, subject matter,balance of skills, progression and grading, cultural content and image. Firstly, listening exercise can cover TEM-4 related practice. Additionally, each unit can focus on polishing one writing skill with one or two paragraphs and exemplary reading materials can be selected to guide learners. Besides, warm-up activities section of BE textbooks can be abridged to enable teachers cover other important aspects. Secondly, abstracted materials from Wall Street Journal and New York Times, etc., can replace the teaching materials in Book 3 and Book 4.As to Book 1 and Book 2, intensive reading can include general English materials, while materials of business element can be added to extensive reading. Thirdly, collecting written and oral business English materials from authentic communication and building business English corpus are essential in updating the subject matter in BE textbooks. Business dialogue can be included in the previous part of Book 1, rearranging the order of each unit by reference to the result of Readability Analyzer. Each unit shall act as an intermediate role linking previous and post units. Appropriate selection is indispensable to emphasize high quality rather than quantity. Additionally, appealing pictures shall be updated with striking colors and charts. Pictures that exemplify complicated matter in a direct manner are preferred. |
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