Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción

Faculty of Education

English Language Pedagogy

COURSE BOOK EVALUATION

Bryan Abos-Padilla V.

Camila Muñoz F.

Teacher Astrid Guerra

Noviembre 11, 2014

I. Factual Details of the Coursebook

II. Coursebook Assessment

ASSESMENT (*Poor **Fair ***Good ****Excellent)

Factor Rating Comments

Rationale *** The book is written to cover the expected knowledge

for the fourth year of high school provided by the Chilean ministry of education and fulfill this objective accordingly, but does not really fit with the

communicative approach

Availability **** It is easy to obtain a copy of the book. There are even digital copies that can be downloaded for free

User definition **** There is a clear specification of the target age range,

culture, assumed background, probable learning preferences, and educational expectations

Layout/graphics *** In spite of being plain, the graphics are useful and

complements the written text

Accessibility **** Everything in the book is organized and can be easily found. Also, there is a page that explains the iconography used on the book

Linkage ** The units and exercises connect in terms of theme, situation, topic, and grammatical/lexical progression. Also, the input and the exercises are in close proximity.

Although the pattern of skill development is not strong

Title Global English Course book Author(s) Jolanta Polk Reyes

Publisher Cal & Canto Editions ISBN 978-956-8623-97-5 No. of Pages 151 pages

Level 12 grade (4th grade high school) Length 1 cm

Physical Size 275x219 mm Units 6 units Lessons 2 Lessons per unit (Reading and Listening)

Sections Reading – Listening – Language Note and Application Task Sections

Target Skills 4 skills: Listening, Reading, Speaking and Writing Target Learners 12 grade students from Chilean High Schools Target Teacher High school teacher from a Chilean High School

Components Students’ book, Teacher’s book, CD and Printable Test Others Application Tasks, “Just for fun” Sections, Chilean

Connection activities, Consolidation activities and Test for each unit (Knowledge and Self-Evaluation

enough in the productive skills

Selection/gradin

g

**** There is a discernible system of learning in the book, it

provides the student with reading and listening activities that provides input, and then there are speaking and writing (productive) activities. Through

the whole unit you can clearly see the grammatical and lexical features that are supposed to be taught

Physical

Characteristics

**** There is enough space to write short answers or to fill

in the gap, and the long answers are supposed to be answered orally or to be written in the copybook

Appropriacy *** The information in the book is substantial and covers

the necessities of the students according to their level, but for graphical reasons is not engaging enough

Authenticity ** The reading material is adapted for the level of the students, doesn’t use much authentic material, but it is

realistic enough to provide a good context for learning

Sufficiency ** The book should be enough to fulfill the basic needs of the students, but the teacher should use some extra

authentic material in their classes and enhance the productive skills by their own

Cultural bias **** At the end of each lesson there is a section called

“Chilean connection” that provides a text about something related to Chile that relates somehow the contents learned in the unit with the Chilean society

Educational

validity

*** The textbook take account of broader educational

concerns, and is also in tune with them. But lacks reinforcement of writing and speaking

Stimulus/practic

e/ revision

**** The interactive material provides input and activities to

evaluate the outcome of it

Flexibility **** As done in class, the activities in the book can be adequate according to the teacher’s and the student’s

needs

Guidance **** Lacking activities related to productive skill can be consider a strength in this particular point since allows the teacher to be vested with the guidance of the class

Overall value

for money

**** Since the commercialization of this book is forbidden,

the value of it is high because in spite of it shortages, it provides good activities for controlled and semi

controlled tasks.

a) Do the materials provide a balance of activities that is appropriate for your

students?

Yes___ No_X_

Comment: The input that activities that enhance the receptive skills is enough for

the student can be able to develop more complex activities than the ones

proposed by the book for engaging free production in terms of meaningful

communication

b) Is there a sufficient amount of communicative output in the materials under

consideration?

Yes___ No_X_

Comment: Precisely, the weakness that the book presents is the lack of

communicative output and the little difficulty of it.

c) Do the materials provide enough roughly-tuned input for your students?

Yes_X_ No___

Comment: both the aural and written input provided by the book is high quality

and really well adapted for the target level of the students.

III. Coursebook Aspects

Language Content

Analyzing the aspects of language content that appear in the course book, it is

possible to find that the text does cover the main grammar items that a 12th grade

student should know, according to their personal needs and level of English. In terms of

vocabulary, it has in each lesson some useful language notes or tips to help the learners

understand new content in a more accessible and easier way, defining some complex

concepts and explicating important English structures that they may use throughout the

units. The quantity and range of vocabulary is appropriated for the level and the text

book not exemplify one variety of English, but it provides words from different types of

English language, such as American or British English, for instance.

When analyzing the aspects of pronunciation, the book does not focuses on the

intonation that students may use in words and sentences, leaving this specific task up to

the teacher for speaking activities, which are not relevant to the planning of the lessons

of the book, but they are indeed presented as a way of answering questions to apply the

new content and these activities does not deal with the structures and conventions of

language. The same situation occurs with writing activities that does not present a

complete guidance of how to write properly long pieces of writings.

Skills

In terms of skills that may develop by a course book, this text presents different

activities to foster the four basic skills: Reading, Listening, Writing and Speaking, there

is an evident lack of content presented in those activities, mainly because as it was

previously mentioned, the student’s book does not cover writing or speaking in a

practical level, but only as a way to check vocabulary or new content. In this terms,

these activities are not suitable in the guidance, accuracy or organization of long pieces

of writing as well as real-life interactions. Another existing gap is related to the integrated

skills activities, which are not embraced in the course book, for the reason that all the

lessons are divided in order to develop a specific communicative ability and not

altogether.

On the other side, the strength of the book design is that the topic chosen for

each activity are appropriated and interesting for sixteen and seventeen year-old

students, since they are related to modern topics and feelings that teenagers experiment

at that age. The text book also contains sufficient reading and listening materials and

activities throughout the units that are well adopted to students’ needs.

Topic

As most of the course books from Chilean Ministry of Education (MINEDUC), this

one is divided into six units, which all develop different lexical items associated to

updated subjects that may enhance the students’ awareness and at the same time

enrich their experiences about global issues.

In relation to content, the pieces of writing contain a fair amount of jargons or English

terminologies that approximate students to different cultures and lifestyles of English

speaking countries. A strong point that the book has in favor is that portrayed female

role equally as men’s in the different activities, it has sections of important Chilean

people, as a way of connecting the new content to a known and Chilean character, and

women are importantly mentioned on the activities, however, the book does not

represent all the different groups of people that exist in every society and may be found

in a global world; the text just present a stereotype of people though the whole book in

their pages, images or even in the various activities.

Methodology

In the methodological terms, the course books delivered by Chilean MINEDUC are

mainly centered on a communicative approach, since its principal aim is to develop

communicative skills in the students, however, the book does not fulfill this objective

satisfactorily, for focusing essentially in developing receptive skills instead of productive

skills. In spite of this fact, the book presents appropriate input for students, in relation to

new content, so the teacher may use it effectible in the productive activities and take

them to the next level, which should be more extended and realistic as well.

On the one hand, the level of active learner involvement from the book, responds to

the students’ needs, engaging them in each activity with attractive and interesting topics

that may achieve the expectations of the learners. On the other hand, the techniques

used to present new language items to the students are completely suitable and

accomplish the minimal requirements that students should manage. To make it easier

for the teacher the task of teaching new vocabulary or unfamiliar content to the class,

the book has some useful language notes in each unit that explains in detail the English

structure that students have to use to complete the activities. In this way, the book give

some guidance to the students in terms of learning strategies, but they must be enhance

and teach by the teachers primarily.

In order to develop the different skills correctly, specifically listening and reading, the

units are sectioned in pre, while and post activities, in a way of helping the students to

understand the materials and analyze them precisely. The communicative abilities, on

the contrary, are not developed in the same way, for not being extensively covered by

the course book.

IV. Analyzing Aspects of the Course book

Does the book suit your students?

1. Is it attractive? Given the average of YES PARTLY NO

your students, would they enjoy using it?

2. Is it culturally acceptable? YES PARTLY NO

3. Is it about the right length? YES PARTLY NO

4. Does it achieve an acceptable balance YES PARTLY NO

between the relevant language skills,

and integrate them so that work in one

skill area helps the others?

Does the book suit the teacher?

5. Is there a good, clear teacher’s guide YES PARTLY NO

with answers and help on additional

activities?

6. Are the recommended methods and YES PARTLY NO

approaches suitable for you, your

students and your classroom?

7. Are the approaches easily adaptable YES PARTLY NO

if necessary?

8. Does the book use a ‘spiral’ approach YES PARTLY NO

so that items are regularly revised and

used again in different contexts?

Does the book suit the syllabus and the examination?

9. Has the book been recommended or YES PARTLY NO

approved by the authorities?

10. If it does more than the syllabus requires, YES PARTLY NO

is the result an improvement

11. Is there a good balance between what YES PARTLY NO

the examination requires and what the

students need?

V. Course Book Recommendation

Nowadays, English language is compulsory in every school and high school. For

that reason that there is so much competence among schools about which of them has

a higher percentage of students speaking English; therefore, most teachers demand top

quality materials to use in the classroom. Every school chooses the English

coursebooks that they needs depending on what level they expect students to reach at

the end of the school year; for example, some educational institutions might aim to

generate students who learn how to speak better than to write, more vocabulary than

grammatical features, more reading abilities than speaking abilities, among others. All

these aims are particular from each school, this means that every school make its own

choice according to what is said by the ministry. In this review, we are going to analyze

“Global English” coursebook, which author is Jolanta Polk Reyes, and it was published

by “Ediciones Cal y Canto”, in order to decide about its quality when implementing it as

teachers.

The first matter of analysis is the language skills that the book aims to develop. It

cannot be said that the book does not aim to enhance the four abilities; nevertheless, in

our opinion the activities which enhance receptive skills. The coursebook is rich in aural

and written input. The variety of text types is wide enough to provide both lexicon and

grammatical structures which students can acquire in context. The same happens with

listening activities. They enhance vocabulary and, more importantly, phonetic features

which with enough practice, can help learners to improve oral fluency and accuracy.

Nonetheless, as we know, while theory says one thing, practice tells us another. As

previously mentioned, the input provided by the book is wide, but the outcome it

demands is too basic for the level the students are on. The speaking activities are just

limited to answering questions and do not gives them a real context to be immersed on.

Even though Global English coursebook is based on a task base approach, the

production of the book is fairly minimum and does not require deeper levels of

understanding such as analysis, so the instructions provided, more than acting as a

guidance, limits the students’ production process.

To conclude, we could notice that skills and methodology are very important

aspects when talking about teaching-learning process, because the sufficient

development of the four skills can become students into integrated speakers of English

as a foreign language. In addition, to know the methodology is very helpful for teachers,

because in this way teachers can implement in a better way the activities presented in

the book. All the exposed in the previous paragraphs demonstrate that “Global English”

coursebook is a very useful tool in the area of learning the grammatical system, but it is

clearly focused on some skills more than in others. This coursebook has its

weaknesses, but also it has its strengths, therefore the failure or success of the class

depends ultimately on the way the teacher present the input material and the tasks.