An Evaluation of the Textbook English 6: A case study from secondary schools in the Mekong Delta Provinces of Vietnam

The present study evaluates English 6, an official textbook used for grade 6 pupils in all secondary schools all over Vietnam, in the teaching and learning context of the Mekong Delta. The research was conducted in two stages: a theoretical evaluation and an empirical evaluation. The theoretical evaluation was based on the researcher’s experience, expertise, and the literature on textbook evaluation. The empirical evaluation was based on data collected from 22 teachers and 313 pupils at 8 different secondary schools in four different provinces in the Mekong Delta in the form of questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, documents and classroom observation. The evaluation sought to find out the users’ views on the textbook, its impact on users and the users’ recommendations for improvement.

The results of the evaluation show that the textbook
• suits the teaching and learning context and culture,
• gives much help to both teachers and pupils,
• receives positive responses from teachers and pupils.

Beside these merits, the textbook needs to be improved in the following ways:
• More varied types of activities, especially ones which help pupils practice using the target language communicatively, should be added to the textbook content.
• Free practice activities should be added after the controlled ones to help pupils practice speaking and writing creatively.
• The textbook should be supplemented with language material from different resources such as picture stories, comic strips, etc.
• The supporting resources need to be more widely available and better, both in terms of physical appearance and quality.

The findings also indicate that textbook writers should carry out learner needs analysis before writing new textbooks to make sure they meet learners’ needs.