Textbook Evaluation

Textbook Evaluation

Natalia González

Faculty of Education English Language Pedagogy Didáctica 2 Textbook Evaluation

I.

FACTUAL DETAILS

Title: Teens Club. Author: Lina Alvarado Jantus. Publisher: R&B EDICIONES. Price: Free. No. of Pages: 111. ISBN: 978-956-8694-08-1. Components: Student’s book, workbook, reading booklet, CD-ROM, Teacher’s book. Level: 2nd grade high school. Units: 4. Lessons: 2 per unit. Sections: 7 (Getting Ready, Before You Start, Reading, Listening, Your English in Action, Unit Check, Final Reflection). Target skills: Reading, listening, writing, speaking

II.

ASPECTS AND COMMENTS

Faculty of Education English Language Pedagogy Didáctica 2 Textbook Evaluation

a) Do the materials provide a balance of activities that is appropriate for your students? Yes_x__ No___ Comment: The balance provided is appropriate for the students in terms of developing skills, as the book includes reading, listening, writing and speaking in every unit. According to the book, the main objective is to appeal to teenagers by providing them with materials related with their own reality.

b) Is there a sufficient amount of communicative output in the materials under consideration? Yes___ No__x_ Comment: There are not enough activities related to communication. The speaking activities at the end of every unit are rather poor and the tasks are

Faculty of Education English Language Pedagogy Didáctica 2 Textbook Evaluation

more concentrated in teaching grammatical structures. Although it is hard to get students involve in a communicative environment as their speaking abilities regarding fluency and vocabulary are not the best in our public (municipal) schools, the textbook should provide activities in which the teacher can make an instance for students to speak. On the other hand, there are a lot of activities that involve written production.

c) Do the materials provide enough roughly-tuned input for your students? Yes_x__ No___ Comment: Several activities and materials are at a higher level of proficiency the student’s current one. This is a good thing in terms of challenging the students with the material without being overwhelmed by its difficulty.

III.

REPORT

Based on the following aspects above, the textbook provides a certain structure in which some of the factors included like providing cultural bias the book highlights aspects of English speaking countries, such as information related to school life and subjects, historical and geographical facts, cultural heritage and teenage styles are meant to raise students’ awareness of the target culture, and, at the same time, develop a richer perspective of their own culture. Also, the coursebook responds to the students’ needs in terms of flexibility, appropriacity and accessibility. On the other hand, there are some aspects to improve like for example the guidance, as the coursebook alone is not enough and the linkage, as the coursebook should include more online material. In relation to the materials, the book provides a balance and the integration of skills within different activities.

Faculty of Education English Language Pedagogy Didáctica 2 Textbook Evaluation

Among other aspects, the amount of communicative output is not enough in spoken activities. On the contrary written ones are sufficient. Overall, this coursebook offers a wide variety of topics and tries to integrate the four skills, although it needs improvement regarding the students’ learning styles and activating the students’ involvement in a communicative and interactive way in the class.

IV.

QUESTIONS

Language Content

1) The main grammar items are covered for each level, but satisfying the learners’ needs is the teacher’s task, as he/she has to deal with different grammatical aspects in an appropriate amount of time to ensure the learning so students can move forward to the unit without having blank spaces in between.

2) There are vocabulary activities and material through which students develop effective strategies for learning and keeping vocabulary records. A systematic use of dictionaries is also encouraged.

Faculty of Education English Language Pedagogy Didáctica 2 Textbook Evaluation

3) No, the coursebook include oral practice, but details in pronunciation are omitted.

4) Style and appropriacy are deal with according to the level of formality of every activity, so language style is matched to every social situation such as writing an email to a friend or writing an application for a job for example.

Skills

1) Reading, writing and listening are covered according to the aims and syllabus of the course, but the speaking skill needs improvement as my course aims is directed to a more interactive and dynamic class, regarding a communicative approach.

2) As the textbook is designed for integrating the four skills, every unit includes all of these in every unit based on a specific topic. The activities are designed to provide students with the language and skills they will need to complete the tasks successfully. This approach helps students to see language as a necessary tool, and gives the grammatical and lexical content a clear purpose.

Faculty of Education English Language Pedagogy Didáctica 2 Textbook Evaluation

3) The reading material of this textbook is one of the most significate aspects of it. There are sufficient reading activities; the vocabulary of the activities is suitable with the students’ level. In terms of motivation and interests the reading material shows a lot of cultural diversity and also the language is show in a contextualized way for the students.

4) The listening material is well recorded; some of the records are authentic, as they include native speakers talking in real situations. There are questions, vocabulary and activities for understanding the listening task. Most part of the listening activities include the missing vocabulary in boxes.

Faculty of Education English Language Pedagogy Didáctica 2 Textbook Evaluation

5) The oral practice and speaking activities are not that well designed, as the context does not provide students with real situations that they will have in their lives.

6) The writing activities are suitable as it is approached as a process, so it makes students aware of the steps that need to be taken when writing, such as making lists, drafting, and discriminating between main and secondary ideas.

Topic

1) There is a lot of material to generate interest from part of the students, for example in unit 3 (see example below) we can see a real context which is in this case “television” and TV programs that are well known to everyone, but it depends on the teacher to make this materials work and to get motivate students motivate into the process of learning.

Faculty of Education English Language Pedagogy Didáctica 2 Textbook Evaluation

2) There are 4 units in the textbook; each of one is related to topics, which are the followings: “Student life”, “Challenges”, “Arts and Entertainment” and “How About Working”. I think the variety is well distributed and it is sufficient to cover the syllabus.

3) The topics are designed for create students’ awareness. However there is not so much of it left into practice, as is just mentioned in the objectives of the unit.

Faculty of Education English Language Pedagogy Didáctica 2 Textbook Evaluation

4) The topics are sophisticated enough and sometimes a little bit above the learners’ language level, which is not that bad as it helps to provide a roughly tuned input.

5) It is hard to get students involved and related to the social or cultural context presented in these textbooks, mainly because the interest they have in learning a new language is not very much. They often are not motivated to learn English as they do not think it is going to be relevant in their lives, and I’m referring in most part to public schools (municipal) because I’ve seen this at my teaching practice.

6) Yes. There is no discrimination found in this textbook whatsoever.

7) In terms of diversity the textbook has a wide variety as I mentioned above. We can see this in the following unit.

Methodology

Faculty of Education English Language Pedagogy Didáctica 2 Textbook Evaluation

1) Content-based instruction and task-based learning: as I said before this coursebook helps students develop language learning skills to carry out tasks related to the content.

2) It can be expected a development of learner autonomy which totally match to the expectations and deals with different learning styles.

3) Vocabulary: The key vocabulary in each lesson is presented in the Key Word Spot.

Grammar: As I mentioned above, students are presented with an inductive task in a section called Language Spot, in which they have to figure out how the structure works in English, discovering both the use and the form. They are not as suitable as I would prefer teaching new language items with a inductive approach, which refers to the process of “discovering” general principles from facts.

4) The methodology adopted through the lessons is a three-phase approach consisting of before, while and after listening and reading activities.

Faculty of Education English Language Pedagogy Didáctica 2 Textbook Evaluation

5) Communicative skills are supposed to be integrated with the other skills to encourage communication.

6) Yes, the material includes developing students’ awareness of how they learn and how they develop their learning strategies, to become more effective and independent learners. But is the teachers’ task to encourage students to analyze their learning process, making them think about the problems they have faced and how they could improve their performance. This is supported in this textbook in a section called “Reflection Spot”.

Faculty of Education English Language Pedagogy Didáctica 2 Textbook Evaluation

Final Score: 13 points.

V.

RECOMMENDATION

The evaluation and analysis of the “Teens Club” textbook, which is the official English textbook of the Mineduc, lead me to the conclusion to use it with the students of second grade of high school, since it fulfils the requirements of the syllabus and most part of the students’ needs taking into consideration that the textbook will be used just as a guide for the teacher who has the task to supplement it with other materials in order to perfect it.

Faculty of Education English Language Pedagogy Didáctica 2 Textbook Evaluation

According to Cunningworth (1986), no coursebook will totally be suited to a particular teaching situation. The teacher will have to find his own way of using it and adapting it if necessary. So we should not be looking for the perfect course book which meets all our requirements, but rather for the best possible fit what the book offers and what we as teachers and students need. In addition, the book meets the teaching objectives and its availability and free cost allows all the students to own one. Finally, as an important aspect to consider, this book shows more context to Chilean students than a standard one from English speaking countries would do. It also provides a wide variety of topics and promotes awareness of the target culture and at the same time develops a richer perspective of the students’ own culture.

Faculty of Education English Language Pedagogy Didáctica 2 Textbook Evaluation

REFERENCES

Bülent, İ. N. A. L. Coursebook Selection Process and Some of the Most Important Criteria to be Taken into Consideration in Foreign Language Teaching.