对《新视野大学英语》评析.doc

《新视野大学英语》的评析

姓名：曾荣

专 业：课程与教学论

导师：柏敬泽

方向：英语教学论

年级：2004 级

摘要

大学英语教科书作为教学内容的载体在我国高校大学英语教学中起着重要的作用。今年

来，各地书店里教材琳琅满目。然而，每套教材均有其优点和缺点。事实上，如何选择一

套适合学生使用的教材变成了摆在教学主管部门和大学英语教师面前的问题。这种情况也

成了本项研究的动因。

教育部推荐了多部英语教材， 新视野大学英语》为其中之一。毫无疑问，该教材在专

家眼里是部好教材。我校以之作为课堂教学中的骨干教材已有两年多的时间。本文试图对

《新视野大学英语》作一全面审视，目的在于分析出一些参考意见。作为一篇研究教材的

论文，本为定位在对教材的分析评价上，以期满足当务如何充分使用本教材的迫切需要。

本文共分五章，每章内容扼要叙述如下：

第一章为文章的介绍部分。首先讨论了研究的背景，然后是教材评估的意义和标准，接

下来介绍了两个国外的评估模式。通过第一章的介绍，对教材评估能达到概念上的整体把

握，为其后的展开做了铺垫。

第二章着重介绍与教材评估相关的语言学习理论。其中包括语言学理论和教材的关系

以及各种教学大纲与教材的关系。

第三章是开始对《新视野大学英语》进行分析。文章先从客观的角度分析了这套教材

的组成部分，内容选择和编排。再主观评价了教材的出色之处和不足。在这一章里，文章

还重点分析了听，说，读，写四项技能在教材中的体现程度。

第四章是文章的重要部分。除了对教材的客观和主观分析评价外，教材的学习者的意

见也是评价教材是否合适的重要标准。作者设计了调查问卷以测试学生对《新视野大学英

语》的满意度，并根据调查结果总结了这套教材最受学生欢迎的地方和稍有欠缺的地方。

第五章是结论部分。文章总结了《新视野大学英语》的优点和不足，这套教材的不足

之处在于首先这套教材对阅读技能的培养力度过大而相对忽略了其他的三种技能。交流才

是英语学习的主要目的，所以教材应该着重培养学生的说话能力而非仅仅强调信息的提

供。其次 CD 光盘和网络教程都没有得到充分的使用。 再次， 这套教材没有对语法规则

和翻译技能的系统较少，这一定程度上会导致学生应对考试时的失败。 最后，作者对如

iv《

何有效使用这套教材提出了一些建议。

关键词：教材


分析


评价


新视野大学英语

v

An Analysis and evaluation of New Horizon College English

Postgraduate: ZengRong

supervisor: Bai Jingze

Grade:2004

Abstract

College English coursebooks, as a vehicle, play an important role in the instruction of

College English in the institutions of higher learning in our country. In recent years, a large

assortment of such books is available in bookstores everywhere. However, each series of

textbooks has its merits and demerits. As it is, how to find the one best suitable for the students

has become a problem that the administrative offices in charge of studies and the College

English teachers are confronted with. This situation has also inspired the motivation of this

research.

The Ministry of Education of the State Council has recommended several teaching

materials for the instruction of College English and one of them is New Horizon College

English, which is beyond any doubts a good textbook in the eyes of the experts. This textbook is

what can be called the mainstay teaching materials used in classroom teaching in our university

for over two years. This dissertation is intended for a thorough study of the textbook New

Horizon College English so as to find out some comments on it for reference. As a research

paper, it is oriented to the analysis and evaluation of the textbook to satisfy the urgent need of

how to utilize it to the best advantage. This dissertation is divided into five chapters and the main

gist o f each chapter reads as follows:

Chapter one is the introduction of the thesis. First it talks about the background of the

research, and then introduces the significance and the criterions of the textbook evaluation. Two

evaluation models are being introduced in chapter one. The introduction makes a preparation for

the whole thesis.

Chapter two talks about some language learning theories which relates to the textbook

evaluation. It includes the relationship between linguistic theories and textbook &the relationship

between teaching syllabus and textbook.

Chapter three begins to make an analysis on New Horizon College English. Firstly, the

author analyzes the components, content selections and arrangement from an objective point of

view, and then assesses the textbook’s merits and shortcomings subjectively. Also the thesis talks

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about the reflection of four skills: reading, writing, listening, and speaking in this textbook.

Chapter four is an important part of the thesis. Besides the analysis and evaluation from

objective and subjective point of view, the users’ idea is the key point to evaluate the textbook.

The author designs a questionnaire to test whether the users are satisfied to the textbook.

According to the result, the author summarizes the most popular parts of the textbook and some

issues which are not admitted by the students.

Chapter five is conclusion. Once again the thesis summarizes the merits and shortcomings of

New horizon college English. First, it pays too much attention on reading while other three skills

are neglected relatively. Since communication is the main purpose of learning English, the

textbook writer should emphasize on speaking skill training but not only on information

provision. Second, the provision of CD and online course are not in the real usage. Third, there is

no systematic introduction of grammar rules and translation skills in the textbook, which will

cause the students’ failure in the examination to some degree. Some suggestions are made to

make the usage of New horizon college English more effectively.

Key words: analysis;

evaluation;

textbook;

New Horizon College English

vii

论文独创性声明

本人郑重声明：所提交的学位论文是本人在导师的指导下进行的研究工作及取得的成

果。除文中已经注明引用的内容外，本论文不含其他个人或其他机构已经发表或撰写过的

研究成果。对本文的研究作出重要贡献的个人和集体，均已在文中以明确方式标明。本人

承担本声明的法律责任。

研究生签名：


日期：

论文使用授权声明

本人完全了解广西师范大学有关保留、使用学位论文的规定。广西师范大学、中国科

学技术信息研究所、清华大学论文合作部，有权保留本人所送交学位论文的复印件和电子

文档，可以采用影印、缩印或其他复制手段保存论文。本人电子文档的内容和纸质论文的

内容相一致。除在保密期内的保密论文外，允许论文被查阅和借阅，可以公布（包括刊登）

论文的全部或部分内容。论文的公布（包括刊登）授权广西师范大学学位办办理。

研究生签名：


日期：

导

师签名：

日期：

ChapterⅠ Introduction

1.1 Background
Recent years an ever-growing emphasis has been laid on college English instruction and
learning but the teaching effect is far from what is expected of. There are many factors that have
caused this problem. The first one is the increasing enrollment of the college students which
caused the ratio of students and teachers rise to a number that is detrimental to the teaching effect.
As the report in 2002 shows that the ratio of teacher and students in college teaching is 1:130.
The performance of students is far below the requirements under this ratio of teacher resources.
They are lack of communicative competence and may not meet the requirement of the society
and the employers.
In order to solve this problem, the Education Ministry of China implements a teaching
reform and published its new College English Curriculum Requirement For Trial
Implementation in 2004. Its purpose is that the teaching reform in the curriculum will result in
an improvement their ability in reading, writing and speaking skills in English. By developing
the student’s ability to comprehend and use the spoken English, they will find it much easier to
communicate orally, for they will substantially increased their exposure to the native speakers in
their future career along with the inevitable situation of ever-growing globalization. The
fundamental importance of spoken language as the basis for communicative competence is now
fully acknowledged. In 2004, Zhang Yaoxue, General Director of the Higher Education
Department of the Ministry of Education points out that the emphasis on the primary of spoken
language coupled with the ongoing instruction in written English will raise the level of their
communicative capacity and lead them toward a greater facility in writing and translating
competence. This new requirements will serve as a guideline for teaching non-English major
students in China and aim to cultivate their all-round abilities, especially in case of listening and
speaking.
Textbooks for college English are modified to meet the new curriculum requirement. A
lot of textbooks are available on the market. Such as New English Course (Tsinghua University
Press, 1989), College Experiencing English (Higher Education Press, 2002), New College
English (Foreign language Teaching and Research Press, 1999), New Horizon College English
(Foreign language Teaching and Research Press, 2002). It is difficult for the teachers to choose
the best one for the particular students. Teaching materials should be chosen according to the
student’s English proficiency, and can draw out most of the students’ talent to a large extent. That
is to say, though the textbook can not fit for every single student, it can be right to the students in
the majority.

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1.2 The significance of the evaluation
There are so many reasons for materials evaluation activities. First, teaching materials is
the foundation of teaching activities while good material is prerequisite for a good teaching
result. Second, as the deepening of reformation of primary education in high school, the
reformation and replacement of college English teaching materials become inevitable.
According to Cunningsworth (1984, 1995) and Hutchinson, &Water (1987), the selection of
textbooks is a major and frequent reason for evaluation. Another reason is to make effective use
of the textbook already in use, in other words, to identify particular strengths and weakness of
the material, so that optimum use can be made of their strong points, while their weaker areas
can be strengthened through adaptation or by substituting material from other books. In addition,
coursebook analysis and evaluation is useful in teacher development and helps teachers to gain
good and useful insights into the nature of the materials, hence improve their teaching
performance.
Nunan gives advice on what appears to be the most common reason for coursebook
evaluation: “when selecting commercial materials it is important to match the materials with the
goals and objectives of the programme, and to ensure that they are consistent with one’s beliefs
about the nature of language and learning as well as with one’s learners’ attitudes, belief and
preferences.”(Nunan 1991:209)
This dissertation attempts to make an analysis and evaluation of intending to discover its
merits and demerits. The aim of this study is to utilize the textbook to the best advantage both on
the part of the College English teachers and on the part of the students at the institutions of
higher learning in the western region of China. When it comes to the use of any textbook,
inclusive of New Horizon College English, the demanding job for the teachers of College
English to do is to identify what are the weak points of the students and what they need in the
study of English in order to adjust the classroom teaching of the textbook to the actual state of
the students. That is why it is a significant research work in making an analysis and evaluation of
a textbook that has been put to use.
1.3 The criterions of the evaluation
Different teachers have different ideas about what a good textbook should include, but
generally speaking, good textbooks often contain lively and interesting material; they provide a
sensible progression of language items, clearly showing what has to be learnt and in some cases
summarizing what has been studied so that students can revise grammatical and functional points
that they have been concentrating on. Textbooks can be systematic about the amount vocabulary
presented to the student and allow students to study on their own outside the class. Good
textbooks also relieve the teacher from the pressure of having to think of original material for

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every class.
Even judged by the same criterion, the same coursebook could be “good” in one context,
but not in another. For instance, the presence of cultural elements could be welcomed in a
situation where the teacher felt that they were a central vehicle for learning English; on the other
hand, they could be seen as irrelevant and even offensive in other teaching situations. (Sheldon,
1998). Teachers are consumers, just like students or educational administrators. All these groups,
of course, can have potentially different notions of what a good textbook should be.
There is a range of coursebook evaluation checklist in the ELT literature. According to
Sheldon (1988):Various writers have suggested ways of helping teachers in particular to be more
sophisticated in their evaluative approach, by positing ‘checklists’ based on supposedly
generalizable criteria. Sheldon (1988:237) suggests ‘ELT books are frequently seen as poor
compromises between what is educationally desirable on the one hand and financially viable on
the other,’ There are numerous factors to consider when choosing materials for a class and a
compromise must be reached as it is almost impossible to find a product that satisfies all of these
criteria in one neatly bound package. The same may be said of evaluative models. Sheldon states
‘It is clear that coursebook assessment is fundamentally a subjective, rule of thumb activity and
that no neat formula, grid, or system will ever provide a definitive yardstick.’ (Sheldon 1988:
245)
There are a lot of models and frameworks for assessing textbooks. However, every teacher
has different requirement to consider, some may consider the textbook’s language focus, and
some may consider its cultivating of communicative competence. According to some experts’
idea, I summarize some of the criterions that are important in my opinion.
The textbook should be compiled according to the teaching syllabus.
The textbook package should consist of a student’s book, a teacher’s book, workbooks,
activity books and cassettes.
The textbook should deals adequately with four skills and take the level and overall aims
into account.
The materials should be at the right level for the students, not to complicated and not too
simple.
The textbook should set its materials in social and cultural contexts that are comprehensible
to the learners.
The materials the textbook chooses should be authentic.
The materials should be interesting and suitable for the age group of the students.
The textbook should be suitable for individual learning.
The students’ center role should be assured by the textbook.

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The textbook should make sure that students can obtain language focus and grammar points
after learning.
1.4 Two evaluation models
1.4.1 Hutchinson and Waters’ model
Hutchinson and Waters (1987:96) point out: ‘Evaluation is a matter of judging the fitness
of something for a particular purpose. Given a certain need, and in the light of the resources
available, which out of a number of possibilities can represent the best solution? Evaluation is,
then, concerned with relative merit. There is no absolute good or bad----only degrees of fitness
for the required purpose.”
Hutchinson and Waters (1987:97) divide the evaluation process into four major steps:

1)
2)
3)
4)
Defining criteria
Subjective analysis
Objective analysis
Matching

Hutchinson and Waters (1987:99) present their