Journeys ESL EFL Series Review

1
Journeys ESL / EFL Series Review

• As review, presented and analyzed by Silvie Liao
  and David ODonnell

2
Journeys Series MakeupWhats wrong with this
picture?

• Journeys is made up of 3 levels.
• In each level there are 4 separate texts. Each
  text has 20 units.
• Reading
• Writing
• Grammar
• Listening and Speaking
• 3 Teachers books
• Tapes

3
The editor of Journeys makes several claims about
the series.

• That it is appropriate for ESL and EFL students
  of disparate levels
• That the pedagogical reason for dividing it up
  into so many books is to individualize curricula
  for students (for example using level one for
  reading, and level 3 for listening and speaking,
  if ones reading is inferior to ones speaking)

• We find that it is geared specifically towards
  EFL students in Asia.
• We suspect that it is a cynical attempt to make
  more money. There is really no good argument as
  to why a single system has to be divided into so
  many, sold separately texts. Every text needs
  to be adapted to a given set of students

4
How we reviewed the series

• Seeing as there were
• 3 levels in the series
• 4 Books in each level
• 20 Units in each book
• for a hefty 240 possible Units to code, we
  decided to do a sampling of 2 units from each of
  the twelve books.

5
Reading
Questionable relevance of input.
Best example!!!
Uniformity of tense usage. VERY un-journalistic.
Faux-naturalistic. Fake-tears to make it look as
if it was hastily torn from a newspaper.
6
Writing
Unfortunately this is not one of the most used
books in the series!
One of the few places where the series thinks
outside the box
7
Listening and Speaking
Simple pedagogically designed practice.
Teachers edition transcript. Teachers editions
are as big as phonebooks and as useful as
doorstops.
This could be termed naturalistic, but it could
just as easily be termed a pedagogically
developed exercise for practicing confirmation
and clarification.
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Grammar
We used blue for grammar, But the book didnt! ?
Metalinguistic, explicit, sythetic
Language is awkward and forced
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Naturalistic and Pedagogical input
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Journeys is

• Synthetic
• Task-supported (but not much!)
• Exercise HEAVY
• Old fashioned

• Not an integrated approach (4 skills taught in
  isolation)
• Not easily adaptable to a wide variety of
  situations.
• Not naturalistic
• Not implicit

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Grammar PPP Approach

• Target forms (presentation)
• Do it yourself grammar (practice)
• Understanding (practice)
• Pairwork (practice)
• Grammar in writing (production)
• Challenge (practice production)

14
Writing Writing Process Approach

• Generate ideas
• Practice
• Consider the audience
• Revise
• Peer-review

15
Reading strategies-based approach

• Receptive reading/ reflective reading/ skim
  reading/ scanning reading/ intensive reading
• Reading 1
• Do you know these words
• Reading for greater understanding
• Reading 2
• Reading better
• Understanding vocabulary
• Reading 3
• Challenge

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Listening/Speaking pre-, while-, post-listening

• Warm-up pre-listening, contextualize the texts
• Listening while-listening, listen intensively or
  extensively for gist or for specific information
• Pairwork post-listening, integrated with
  speaking activity
• Pronunciation (conversational speech)
• Challenge

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