Evaluation of English Textbooks for Grade 12 under the National Foreign Language Project 2008 – 2020

This paper sets out to examine the effectiveness of the two English textbooks for grade 12 students in delivering the Vietnam National Foreign Language Project (Project 2020). At the surface level, the textbooks were designed to correspond closely with the two major goals established by Project 2020, including the development of learners' communicative competences and intercultural communication (Hoang, 2016). However, a comprehensive analysis and evaluation, substantiated by existing literature, revealed that in terms of communicative competences, the implementation of the textbooks in the classroom remained quite problematic and incompatible with what they were originally set out to achieve. Meanwhile, with regard to intercultural communication, the lack of a multilingual English model and advocacy of native speakerism were found potentially to hinder students' ability to speak successfully with global English users. With this in mind, the researcher has proposed several measures to optimize the use of the given textbooks in delivering Project 2020.