DSOM Model-based ESP Textbook Evaluation

The latest Guidelines of College English Teaching(draft)has included English for specific purposes(ESP)as one the three major components of college English teaching.For the first times,it demonstrates its connotation,features and course arrangement etc.ESP courses point to the use of English,aiming to enhance students' ability to apply English in professional and academic communication,and improve their related competency.Therefore,ESP teaching has become more and more important.Since textbook is a significant part of language teaching,ESP textbook certainly plays an important role in facilitating students to develop their profession-related language skills.However,compared with foreign textbooks,China's ESP textbooks are less developed.They are criticized as overemphasizing professional knowledge and ignoring the training of language skills of the subject.The thesis aims to reveal the specific problems of domestic ESP textbooks,and provide a possible evaluation method beneficial for textbook compilation and adaptation.A multiple case study involving three ESP textbooks was conducted in order to demonstrate the evaluation process.The three cases are “Computer Professional English Course” “Advertising English” and “Logistics English”,which are currently used by students who have taken ESP courses in G University in China.Based on Waters and Hutchinson's DSOM textbook evaluation model,the research follows the steps of “defining criteria”,“subjective analysis” “objective analysis” and “matching”.It conducted a questionnaire survey and examined related features of the three ESP textbooks with the assistance of corpus tools,in order to find out whether they match students' needs.The results show that the three cases do not appropriately satisfy students' needs in terms of aims,content and methodology.First of all,six groups of ESP language skills including listening,speaking,reading,writing,vocabulary and learning strategies are all perceived as necessary by the students,but only vocabulary and reading skill are placed importance in the textbooks,thus the training of other skills are obviously ignored.Secondly,although all three books involve a wide range of discourse functions,there are more drawbacks than merits regarding to text features,recycling,organization and difficulty.Thirdly,both “Advertising English” and “Logistics English” do not contain enough types of exercises,activities and language guidance.All three textbooks do not provide supporting learning materials.The evaluation of the three ESP textbooks not also emphasizes the importance of needs analysis,but also illustrates the capability of corpus tools in objectively describing some significant elements of textbooks.They may help evaluators to make more accurate assessment.With the uncovering of problems of ESP textbooks,it may also be easier for publishers,colleges and teachers to select,adapt and make use of the textbooks,and further improve the quality of ESP courses.