Using the criteria given on page 192 in your textbook, evaluate an ESL text for a speaking/listening course. Make sure you provide the following information:
(a) a full bibliographic reference for the textbook
(b) the positive aspects of the book - what would make you want to use it in a class, and for what level/age would it be appropriate?
(c) the possible drawbacks of this book - what aspects of this book would make you hesitant to choose it for a class? why?
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(a) a full bibliographic reference for the textbook
(b) the positive aspects of the book - what would make you want to use it in a class, and for what level/age would it be appropriate?
(c) the possible drawbacks of this book - what aspects of this book would make you hesitant to choose it for a class? why?
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Fuchs, M., Bonner, M. & Westheimer, M. (2012). Focus on Grammar 3 (4th ed.). White Plains, NY: Pearson Longman.
ReplyDeleteI recommend this book for high-intermediate adult English learners who want to refine their grammar and writing skills. For my students, studying this book in 2 x 48 hour course blocks was extremely challenging. The exercises reinforce the grammar points well and provide free text production and editing. The content is current and addresses American culture in a fun and informative way. This book would be appropriate for high-intermediate level adult English learners studying to improve their grammar skills. I have not fully explored all the features of the online student and teacher content. The website has additional student exercise and teacher resources, techniques, tools and ideas. The drawbacks of this book are listed in #12 below.
From Table 11.2 on p 192: Textbook evaluation criteria
Goals of the Course: This textbook will help accomplish the course goals for an intermediate grammar course. This book will be used for two 48-hour courses – Intermediate A (Unit 1-16) & B (Unit 17-32).
Background of the students: The book contains basic cultural information that is appropriate for adult students living in the US.
Approach: The book takes a very mechanical approach to presenting grammar clearly and provides many examples of grammar in context (in standard American English).
Language Skills: This is a grammar book. Pronunciation and listening exercises are included on a CD. The speaking and listening skills are somewhat less emphasized.
General Content: Real-world topics that students would likely encounter in their daily lives provide emphasis for the grammar points in each unit. It is up to date with references to cultural norms for blogs and email.
Quality of practice material: The book provides a multitude of exercises with plenty of variety. The CD (if used) provides additional audio exercises. Teachers may need to adapt exercises for the classroom if they wanted more free exercises. Exercises range from controlled (fill in from word bank) to free (write a paragraph).
Sequencing: The book is appropriately sequenced for an intermediate grammar class.
Vocabulary: This book does not place a huge amount of emphasis on vocabulary. Each unit follows a basic theme with specific content, but the book does not contain significant vocabulary that the learner will not be familiar with.
General sociolinguistic factors: This book presents American English. The cultural content is American culture, but a balanced approach to understanding and appreciating other cultures is emphasized.
Format: The book is a soft-cover book, so its durability is limited. The layout is somewhat busy. The illustrations are clear and support the text.
Accompanying materials: The student materials include the textbook, a workbook (which we will not use) and a CD with audio exercises for each chapter. Students can also use the website learning and assessment program for additional homework exercises.
Teacher’s Guide: The teacher’s guide provides excellent methodological guidance, however the organization and presentation of the material could be improved. For example, information for unit 1 is spread between pages 15-20, 173, and 186-187. Although this is an improvement over the previous edition, it is a frustrating teacher’s manual to use. The teacher’s guide provides alternative and supplementary exercises for students and answer keys. It is appropriate for non-native speaking teachers. Additional teacher content is online.
First, I have to say that I studied this book in an institute here in the US, and I found it very interesting, informative and challenging!
ReplyDeleteThe Book: Blass, L. & Hartmann, P. (2007). Quest listening and speaking 3 (2nd ed). McGraw-Hill companies Inc. NY.
Target Students: Advanced ESL students who are planning to attend one of the US University.
The book’s structure:
•Consists of 4 units, 8 chapters.
•Each unite discusses issues related to an academic discipline such as Anthropology and Economics. .
•Each chapter discusses topics related to the unit’s theme, and has a specific goals and listening, critical thinking and test-taking strategies.
•Each unite offers three different listening materials one of which represents a social English the other two represent broadcast and academic English.
•Each chapter offers reading passages and writing activities.
•Each chapter has a pre listening, while listening and after listening activities.
•Each chapter has a vocabulary focus activities.
•Each chapter has thinking ahead and discussion activities.
•There are three appendixes; one has the most frequent academic vocabulary, the other one has the vocabulary introduced by each chapter, and the last one list the skills used in each exercise in the book.
Advantages:
•The materials are authentic and highly informative.
•The topics are controversial enough to start a healthy conversation between the students.
•The topics and the material are cultural-based.
•The book prepares the students to academic work.
•The book integrates the four language skills in a very effective way.
•The book has a teacher guide copy that consists of teaching techniques, quizzes, answer keys, expansion activities and special TOFEL preparation activities.
•The goals and strategies of each chapter are listed in the beginning of the book.
•The activities range from closed to open ended.
•Grammatical and linguistic notes are introduced in each chapter.
•Different types of vocabulary exercises are offered.
•The book comes with tapes and videos to support the lessons.
•The book has attractive pictures and organized layout.
Disadvantages:
•The book has controversial topics that require open minded students.
•The book has no workbook.
•There are a few communicative activities aside from the discussions.
•The level of the material is very high. Students who are a little bit lower than advanced won’t survive.
•Does not fit an EFL environment.
Molinsky, Steven J. and Bliss, Bill (2001). Side by Side, Book 2, Third Edition. White Plains, New York: Pearson Longman.
ReplyDeleteI would recommend this textbook for the advanced beginner learning English that needs re-inforcement of the basic English language listening, speaking, reading and writing skills.
1. Goals of the course. This textbook focuses on lifeskills while teaching grammar points and functional communication skills. .
2. Background of the students: The students that use this book are adult Spanish speakers with little or no formal education.
3. Approach: This book takes a very regimented approach to learning grammar.
4. Language skills: This book does touch on all four of the language skills, although reading and writing skills are not given as much prominence.
5. General content: The positive to this book is that it follows a clear path with functional communication skills such as food shopping, comparisons, job interviews, health, occupations, directions and more. It is certainly suitable for a novice English speaker and does cover quite a bit of material. However, sometimes the authenticity of the language is not there.
6. Quality of practice material: Most of the exercises are good re-inforcements of the lessons being presented. Most of the exercises in the book are controlled. For the most part, directions to the teacher are clear although a fair portion of it can be confusing to the students especially if they have not been previously taught a concept utilized. The book does encourage active participation by the students. Review is limited to re-doing the activities from the lesson. The teacher's guide does have extra suggestions for activities to supplement the lessons. Grammatical explanations are provided for the teacher but are sometimes very confusing and do not seem to build logically.
7. Sequencing: This book is sequenced by a combination of grammatical structures, skills and situations. For example, food was grouped all together throughout past tense, partitives, imperatives and simple present tense as units following one another.
8. Vocabulary: Each chapter in the book starts out with vocabulary appropriate to the lesson. There is NO strategy for word analysis which I think is a big negative. Some of the vocabulary is not really relevant and the teacher must substitute vocabulary that might be more useful.
9. Sociolinguistic factors: This book features standard American English. There is some use of very basic slang, and there are American cultural experiences featured throughout.
10. Format: The book is very well laid out, easy to read, has lots of interesting illustrations and easy to fill in exercises. Sometimes the exercises and the pictures are a little busy, with students checking out the illustrations rather than doing the work required.
11. Accompanying materials: The workbook corresponds well to the textbook. There are no audio tapes, all listening exercises are read by the teacher. There is a set of flash cards that corresponds to the lessons in the textbook and these are very useful for prompting 'stories' or just vocabulary drilling. There are chapter tests in the workbook that can be assigned as homework or done in class. I usually copy them and have the students do them in class and then go over them the next class session.
12. Teacher's guide: The teacher guide features supplementary exercises and activities for each chapter. There is a grammar explanation and step by step directions for presenting the beginning of each lesson. I do not think that it would be very suitable for a non-native English speaking language teacher, as some of the lessons are confusing and not complete and are difficult for this native English speaker to present.
My biggest criticism of the textbook is that it only partially explains many of the grammar lessons and 'assumes' that the students know many things that they do not which causes a lot of backtracking during class sessions.
Michael McCarthy, Jeanne McCarten, Helen Sandiford. (2005). Touchstone Level 1 Student’s Book. Cambridge University Press.
ReplyDeleteI would first like to say that I have not worked with this book personally. I am familiar with this book and believe it would act as a good resource to have in a class, but I am not speaking from personal experience.
This book has many positive aspects:
1. Goals: this book would be used for students of beginning to high beginning levels who strive to strengthen conversation skills and to adapt to a culture that primarily uses the english language.
2. Background of Students: Students of this class would be adults or young adults who do not necessarily share the same language or culture. Students will have little to no formal education and their primary motivation will be to learn how to use everyday english in real life situations.
3. Approach: This book is a very practical approach for learning language. It utilizes spoken speech rather than written.
4. Language Skills: This book primarily focuses on speaking and listening skills but incorporates a good amount of reading and writing skills as well, although in a conversation environment.
5. General Content: This book focuses on conversation strategies. It uses common questions and vocabulary used in conversation. It uses appropriate and real life topics and pushes students to use inductive skills.
6. Quality of practice material: There are a wide variety of exercises including controlled (question-answer, display), semi-controlled (question-answer, referential) and free (Composition and Interview). Active participation from students is encouraged throughout the book, especially in the form of speech. Also, a lot of the material overlaps throughout the book.
7. Sequencing: This book is appropriately sequenced for a conversation class. It begins with basic conversation strategies and then moves up to more complex conversation panels and ideas.
8. Vocabulary: The vocabulary used in this book is varied and, for the most part, relevant. Most of the beginner vocabulary focuses on basic conversations that would come up in a casual conversation.
9. General Sociolinguistic Factors: Audio CD includes different dialects and accents of English.
10. Format: This book uses special notation to indicate stress/intonation to help students not only pronounce words correctly but also to use conversation skills well (asking questions, inferring, etc..)
11. Accompanying Materials: This book offers a student workbook that is useful for students to do extra/more in-depth work that goes along with the Student Book. It also offers an audio CD and a Teacher’s Edition.
Some drawbacks:
3. Approach/Language Skills: This book limits students to learn only basic conversation skills. Although reading and writing are encompassed in this book too, the language used is primarily “conversation” or casual language.
5. General Content: This book claims it is for low beginning students, but I would only use it for beginning - high beginning students. Some strategies and vocabulary seem pretty advanced. Also, some sample conversations sound forced or too casual.
6. Quality of practice material: Grammar rules are only briefly mentioned and never explained thoroughly.
9. General Sociolinguistic factors: This book does not include a variety of English. It provided some different dialects and pronunciations, but primarily uses the english spoken throughout the U.S.
10. Format: The book and its general layout is quite busy. There are pictures, diagrams and grammar explanations all over the page. It’s overwhelming even for a native english speaker. I would hesitate using this book for the sake of my students' sanity.
a.) Mosteller, L. & Paul, B. Survival English: English through Conversations (Book 1). 2nd ed. White Plains, NY: Prentice Hall Regents, 1994. Print.
ReplyDeleteb.) And c.) I found this book when looking through resources at the library for supplemental material for a beginning Spanish ESL course. It is primarily composed of worksheets, with some inductively presented grammar points. What I’ve found particularly attractive about it is its potential for reproducing worksheets, vocabulary lists, and puzzle activities (it is printed in a very simple, black and white format, and allows photocopying for noncommercial educational use), and its systematically presented, timeless material. Its positive and negative points are evaluated below in the format of Brown’s Table 11.2:
1. Goals of the Course: As its title states, the purpose of this book is to equips its users with basic conversational skill for a number of daily interactions. Chapter topics range from personal identification to family, transportation, and health.
2. Background of the students: This book is strongly intended for student with little or no previous introduction to English, and does not make use of any L1 content. It is simple enough to be used for children, but the content (such as visiting a doctor, talking about occupations) may be of more interest to adults. Also, this book is designed to equip students to live in an English speaking environment, rather than for use in an EFL context.
3. Approach: Very simple, inductive, and with a heavy reliance on pictures. If I use this particular text, I would want to supplement with additional grammar instruction (to make the skills acquired by the student more productive and applicable) and act out some real life practical scenarios using the material presented in the book.
4. Language skills: The book does not come with any CDS or audio material, and focuses mainly on writing and reading to learn phrases for speaking.
5. General Content: Relatively timeless materials that could be supplemented with some specifically recent content. For example, in the section about following a recipe, students could also be introduced to searching for online recipes, or following instructions on packages.
6. Quality of practice material: Plenty of simple worksheets. However, a teacher would need to adapt some of these to interactive situation and group work to maintain a communicative classroom. The book, as far as I can tell, contains no directions to the student or the teacher (but a teacher’s manual is available), but rather presents examples of how to do each activity.
7. Sequencing: Topic and situation based. Vocabulary and grammar build up to each topic.
8. Vocabulary: Almost all vocabulary is basic and defined by means of pictures. No space is devoted to strategies for word analysis, however using pictures helps students learn the words by meaning and not translation to L1.
9. General sociolinguistic factors: This book focuses on general American English, and probably should be supplemented with specific cultural material and mention of common slang. A mention of dialects around the world may be appropriate once students reach an intermediate level.
10. Format: My eyes don’t reach sensory overload when I look at the pages!! This format is simple, not too busy, and easy to follow. However, I would appreciate a layout that categorized vocabulary words into nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.
11. Accompanying materials: A teacher’s guide is available, and photocopying is permitted. I expect to add much of my own supplemental material/activities.
12. Teacher’s guide: I have not seen this book yet.
a. Weinstein, Nina J. Whaddaya Say? Guided Practice in Relaxed Speech (2nd ed.). White Plains, NY: Pearson Education.
ReplyDeleteb. This book is all about comprehending reduced forms (gotta, gonna, wanna, dunno, watcha, etc). I believe it would be good supplemental material for a speaking and listening course. I like it because it focuses on these reduced forms that are so present in natural, oral speech, yet not often featured in many textbooks I’ve seen. I think this book would be most appropriate for highly proficient students who already have some oral fluency.
c. While introduction of some reduced forms may be OK in beginner or low-intermediate levels, I don’t believe this book would be appropriate for lower levels since there is no focus on vocabulary or grammar outside of the reduced forms. Another drawback is that there is no teacher’s book, no supplemental material, and since this book is no longer in print, it’s not available to buy new. The audiobook is not reliably included when this book is bought used (the cassette was not included when I bought it used), and therefore presents a problem for the listening comprehension sections. Also, the cassette in CD format is not available at all. Until this book is available new with the audio, it may not be a practical choice as a textbook. However, the material from this textbook may be appropriate as supplementary material.
Textbook evaluation criteria:
ReplyDelete1.Course Goals: This book will help accomplish listening comprehension and production of reduced forms in relaxed, casual speech.
2.Student Background:
a.I believe this textbook’s material is relevant for teenagers and adults, but perhaps not for children as it mostly focuses on form.
b.It can apply to any native language and culture
c.Students will need some proficiency with the TL to apply this material
d.If the students are motivated to speak and understand reduced forms used in rapid and casual English conversations, this material may interest them.
3.Approach:
This book would be most appropriate for a communicative approach, especially if the larger goals of the course are to prepare students to use spoken English conversationally with native speakers.
4.Language skills:
a.Listening: This book focuses on listening comprehension of relaxed, fast pronunciation. Each unit has ample listening exercises of dialogs. A cassette accompanies this book. However, since this book is out of print, the audio is in cassette form and is hard to come by. A teacher might have to create audio from scratch if the cassette cannot be located. I found myself in this position when I bought this book used, since it’s not available new. The audio was not included and a CD is not available for this book.
b.Speaking: The speaking practice includes repeating the reduced forms, comprehension questions to be answered in pairs, and open discussion.
c.Reading: The students have the dialogs in two forms –careful speech, and relaxed speech. However, there are not reading comprehension exercises.
d.Writing: Considering reduced forms (would have woulda, going to gonna, etc.) are not generally accepted in writing, this book focuses less on writing these forms, although there are fill in the blanks in each unit.
5.General content:
a.Validity: I believe this text could enhance students’ listening comprehension of rapid pronunciation, and to some extent enhance students’ pronunciation. But writing and reading gains may be negligible.
b.Authenticity of language: Students have opportunities for authentic language use in open discussion in which they can practice the reduced forms. However, additional grammar and vocabulary are not presented in this book. Students may or may not have the proficiency to engage in open discussion. Considering that, this book would be most suited to upper intermediate and advanced levels.
c.Appropriateness and currency: current topics are not discussed in this book.
d.Proficiency level: This book is pitched to intermediate to high-intermediate students to “understand English as it is really spoken”. I believe this book is pitched accurately, and can be used for advanced levels as well.
6.Quality of practice:
a.Exercises: The exercises tend to be either very controlled (fill in the blank), or open discussion questions. Since the exercises are mostly between these two extremes, the students would benefit from supplemental material such as exercises and tasks that are between controlled and open.
b.Clarity of directions: they are simple and clear.
c.Active participation: participation is encouraged throughout.
d.Grammatical explanation: it must be deductive because the reduced forms are not elaborately explained. For example, for want to / wanna, it is not mentioned that there are restrictions to using this form (*Who do you wanna pay the bill?). The instructor would need to be aware of the form restrictions, and help the learner produce the reduced forms appropriately.
e.Review material: Any review material is in the form of recycled forms as the book progresses. There are no explicit reviews.
(SORRY. It won't let me post everything altogether because it's too long, so I have three separate posts)
ReplyDelete7.Sequencing: The book is possibly sequenced by frequency and complexity of the reduced forms.
8.Vocabulary: Apart from the reduced forms, there is no focus on vocabulary. A learner would need to already be familiar with the vocab used in this book.
9.General sociolinguistic factors: Neither variety of English nor cultural content is discussed.
10.Format:
a.Clarity of typesetting: clear
b.Use of special notation: * for reduced forms. Ex: *Kant *cha find an apartment?
c.Illustrations: cartoons
d.Layout: easy to figure out and consistent throughout the book.
e.Size: thin, standard height and width
f.Quality of editing: appears to be OK.
g.Index, table of contents, chapter headings: easy to read and use.
11.Accompanying materials: as far as I can tell, there are not separate books for the teacher and students. There is a cassette, which I mentioned earlier is hard to come by because this book is no longer being printed new. The audiocassette is not available in CD format, and there is no accompanying video or any other supplementary materials.
12.Teacher’s guide: there is no separate teacher’s guide for this textbook. In the introduction, there are teaching suggestions for the units’ features. There is no methodological guidance, alternative or supplementary exercises, but there are answer keys. It is unclear whether this text would be suitable for a non-native speaking teacher.
(a) Molinsky, S., & Bliss, B. (2001). Side by Side (Book 1). White Plains: Prentice Hall Regents.
ReplyDelete(b) The target audience for this book is beginning young-adult and adult learners of English familiar with the English alphabet and their sounds, how to read in their own language, and basic interactions, environments and responsibilities in industrialized society. This book is professional quality but accessible, being full of easy to understand illustrations & practical examples. The content systematically builds on itself with frequent review and helps students learn how to read, write, speak, and listen. The material is relatively recent but timeless in that it deals with common, everyday activities and situations. It provides a student workbook & teacher’s guide with focus, examples, how to teach, exercises, & expansion activities for every page of the textbook. Its expansion activities include a range of difficulty levels for above level, level, & below level students.
(c) This book is not for beginners who aren’t familiar with the English alphabet, phonics, or how to read and write. The reading passages are actually quite advanced. This book lacks a syllabi, lesson plan, or estimated times of activities/lessons. It assumes rather than gives motivation to learn. It doesn’t instruct teachers on how to respond to students’ questions or assignments. Perhaps the most glaring weakness especially in light of this class is this book doesn’t teach communicatively. The chapter titles are all grammar based such as “the to-be verb” so that the teacher doesn’t know what situations the book is preparing students to function in or what tasks to accomplish. The activities the teaching guide gives do not put students in hypothetical ‘real-life’ contexts or focus on helping them produce language for themselves.
Stefani Goode
ReplyDeleteLocke, Angela. (2007). Center Stage 4: Express Yourself in English, Teacher’s Edition.
New York: Pearson.
Goals of the course: This textbook will introduce students to a structured format for learning English it includes a balanced of listening and speaking activities, as well as, reading/writing and grammar activities.
Target Audience: Intermediate – Advanced ESL College students, adults.
Text Stucture
• Text is part of a series (Levels 1-4)
• Covers Grammar, Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, Critical Thinking.
• Text is broken into units
Strengths
• Students get a full English course.
• The text (Teacher’s Edition includes a multilevel strategy for pre-level, at-level, and above-level students).
• Text gives suggestions for pair work as well as ideas for classroom or group discussions.
• The text rolls grammar, dictation, speaking, and listening exercises all together.
• The text provides some basic activities for pronunciation.
• The chapters/ sections cover various topics that students may find interesting.
• The student book includes graphics and color images, so the students may stay engaged and motivated with the text.
• The layout is not overwhelming and the graphics break up the text without being too heavily graphic or text based.
• Each chapter/ section is setup the same way, so students have a constant format.
• The text is easy to read and follow, so students should be able to read and understand the text.
• The student books have a simple paperback binding while the teacher’s edition is a spiral-bind paperback text.
• The editing was done well. The there is no more than three fonts used on one page, bolding isn’t overused, and the font is easy to read.
• The cover is clean and clear but not to busy.
Weaknesses
• The text doesn’t cover all the vital survival vocabulary, so supplementary texts, activities, and exercises are needed.
• Needs a more detailed pronunciation section and activities.
• The text does include some type of assessment, but teachers’ might want to create their own tests to supplement.
• Teacher will have to provide detailed pronunciation activities as well as more topics for speaking.
• If students lose the audio CD the teacher should create a backup or have other listening audio available. The actual audio CD is priced rather high at $41.52 used according to Amazon.
Cost Effectiveness
• Teacher Edition: $ 43.07 from Pearson: Longman
• Teacher Edition: $ 28.00 from Amazon
• Student Edition with self study CD-ROM: $43.07 from Pearson: Longman
• Student Edition: $ 25.00 from Amazon (CD-ROM may not be available)
• Without having a sample CD, one can only guess which English dialect is used for the dialogues.
Suggestions
• Pearson offers more supplementary material within this series.
o Center Stage 4: Practice Book ($ 12.20)
o Center Stage 4: Life Skills and Test Prep Book ($ 21.73)
o Teacher’s Edition: Life Skills and Test Prep Manual ($ 5.53)
o Center Stage 4: Transparencies Level 4 ($ 43.07)
I would use this text in an intermediate/ advanced ESL class and I would use it for adults or college-aged students, since this text seems geared for that.
This book tries to cover not just listening/speaking but also reading/writing and grammar. It lacks in some basic survival vocabulary as listed in the weaknesses but it also lacks interesting dialogues. Though it does try to help with pronunciation it isn’t formatted for the learner’s L1 so instructors will have to know their students backgrounds and possibly provide supplemental activities to help students with pronunciation. This is a well-rounded textbook but for strictly listening/speaking I would hesitate with this book because I would want more focus on listening/speaking as well as pronunciation.