APPLIED LINGUISTICS for BA Students in English
COURSE-BOOK EVALUATION
General characteristics of course-books
Grant (1987) remarks that the perfect textbook as such does not exist, however, he adds that there is a best book available for every teacher and their learners due to the wide range of published materials on the market. The ideal course-book should satisfy three conditions, namely that it should suit learners’ needs, interests and abilities, it should suit the teachers, and it also has to meet the needs of official public teaching syllabuses or examinations.
Course-books can have numerous roles in foreign language teaching and might be used for presenting language material, providing learners with a wide range of activities, providing learners with grammatical rules and exercises, vocabulary and phonetic transcriptions; they can also stand for a given syllabus; they can instigate autonomous learning; they may be considered as a set of guidelines along which young, unexperienced teachers can manage their lessons. Teaching systematically without a course-book would be very difficult for most teachers, besides, learners also do require a course-book. “They find that a folder full of classroom handouts fails to satisfy in ways that a textbook can. A folder is no substitute for a textbook”, which “offers a systematic revision of what learners have done”, and functions as “a guide to what they are going to do” (Grant 1987:7-8).
Harmer also enumerates a number of obvious advantages of course-books:
”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 of vocabulary presented to the student and allow student to study on his own outside the class. Good textbooks also relieve the teacher from the pressure of having to think of original material for every class” (Harmer 1983:219).
Zalánné and Petneki (1997) remark that a course-book highly influences teaching styles and students’ learning styles. It might be useful to try out new materials after a certain period of time in order to reassess and refresh the way one teaches. Zalánné and Petneki (1997) advise teachers to define their relationships to course-books, which can help them avoid overestimating the role of the printed materials they use.
There are a number of other important rules, worth being kept in mind during language courses. Teachers should not, for instance, insist rigidly on their printed materials, especially if they do not completely satisfy learners’ needs. It is also advisable to study thoroughly the comments in the teacher’s book attached to the course package so that one can have a clear-cut picture about the authors’ intentions, aims and objectives within each unit and the whole material as well. Every teacher has to be aware of the fact that their attitude towards the course-book they use in class will have a great impact on students’ opinions on the book as well as the language itself. Making students assess the materials they work with may also reveal new pieces of information about the course-book. Both students and teachers can benefit from such a common assessment. It will probably result in better classroom cooperation. Using course-book exercises, however, as a means of keeping discipline in the classroom will definitely contribute to students’ negative feelings towards the materials and thus reduce their classroom efforts. (Zalánné – Petneki,1997)
Harmer (1983) implies that course-books can have negative effects on teaching as well, since they tend to concentrate on introducing new language and controlled work, which might result in teachers’ depending heavily on the course-book. ”Textbooks also tend to follow the same format from one unit to the next” (Harmer 1983:219). This rigid sequence, as Harmers remarks, makes each unit look more or less alike.
A teacher ”who over-uses a textbook and thus repeatedly follows the sequence in each unit may become boring over a period of time for he will find himself teaching the same type of activities in the same order again and again. In such a situation, even with good textbooks, students may find the study of English becoming routine and thus less and less motivating. Classes will start appearing increasingly similar and the routine will become increasingly monotonous” (Harmer 1983:219-220).
Harmer (1983) states that course-books are written for a general class made up of general students, however, every class is different from each other.
Hutchinson and Waters define what course materials are supposed to do. They identify six main purposes of materials:
- ” Materials provide a stimulus to learning. Good materials do not teach: they encourage learners to learn.
- Materials help to organize the teaching-learning process, by providing a path through the complex mass of the language to be learnt.
- Materials embody a view of the nature of language and learning.
- Materials should try to create a balanced outlook which both reflects the complexity of the task, yet makes it appear manageable.
- Materials can have a very useful function in broadening the basis of teacher training, by introducing teachers to new techniques.
- Materials provide models of correct and appropriate language use” (Hutchinson – Waters 1987:107-108).
This list might be completed with the following points enumerated by Zalánné and Petneki (1997):
- Course-books can create a basis for the teaching and learning of other foreign languages.
- They control the rhythm of teaching and learning.
- They help teachers’ work by providing them with language resources such as texts and different kinds of exercises.
