Unit 14 Evaluating and Adapting Textbooks

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Unit 14 Evaluating and Adapting
Textbooks
Welcome
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Teaching Objectives

• 1.Why what do teachers evaluate and adapt?
• 2.How do teachers evaluate textbooks?
• 3.How do teachers select textbooks?
• 4.How do teachers adapt textbooks?

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I. Why what do teachers evaluate and adapt?

• With the rapid ELT development in China, more
  and more textbooks have made their way to the
  market. Choosing the right textbook is becoming
  more and more important at all levels of ELT in
  schools.

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• With the effort from textbook writers, ELT
• researchers and classroom teachers,
• textbook evaluation and selection have
• evolved from ad hoc (???)to
• systematic action. Although most
• classroom teachers will not
• be involved in the production of textbooks,
• all teachers have the responsibility for
• textbook evaluation, selection and
• adaptation.

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• So far we have been using the term textbook.
  However, the focus of this unit is far more than
  just textbooks. Nowadays, textbooks in
  traditional pedagogy have evolved into a great
  variety of resources used in language classroom
  such as audio cassettes, videos, CD-ROMs,
  dictionaries, grammar book, readers, workbook,
  teachers books, photocopied materials,
  flashcards, and other authentic materials, such
  as newspapers, photographs, advertisements,
  radio/TV programmes, etc.

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• In many cases the term materials is used in
  place of textbooks, which refers to anything
  that is used by teachers or students to
  facilitate the learning of a language. The term
  textbooks is still widely used, but its
  reference has expanded from books to all the
  materials used around or independent of the
  books.

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II. Evaluating textbooks

• Good textbooks should have the following
  features.
• 1. Good textbooks should attract the students
  curiosity, interest and attention. In order to do
  this, textbooks should have novelty, variety,
  attractive layout, appealing content, etc. Of
  course they should also make sure that learning
  really takes place when the students use the
  textbooks. It is not necessarily enough that
  students enjoy the textbooks.

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• 2. Textbooks should help students to feel at
  ease. The layout of presentation, tasks and
  activities, and texts and illustrations should
  all look friendly to the students so that they
  feel relaxed when seeing them.

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• 3.Textbooks should help students to develop
  confidence. Good textbooks help to build up
  students confidence by providing tasks or
  activities that students can cope with.
• 4.Textbooks should meet students needs. What is
  covered in the textbooks should be relevant and
  useful to what the students need to learn and
  what they want to learn.

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• 5.Textbooks should expose the students to
  language in authentic use. Generally speaking,
  textbooks written in authentic language are more
  motivating and challenging.
• 6.Textbooks should provide the students with
  opportunities to use the target language to
  achieve communicative purposes.

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• 7.Textbooks should take into account that the
  positive effects of language teaching are usually
  delayed. Research into SLA shows that it is a
  gradual rather than an instantaneous process and
  that this is equally true for instructed learning
  (formal learning). So it is important for
  textbooks to recycle instruction and to provide
  frequent and ample exposure to the instructed
  language features in communicative use.

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• 8.Textbooks should take into account that
  students differ in learning styles. Tasks and
  activities should be variable and should cater
  for a range of learning styles so all students
  can benefit.
• 9.Textbooks should take into account that
  students differ in affective factors. Good
  textbooks should accommodate different
  attitudinal and motivational background as much
  as possible.

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• 10. Textbooks should maximise learning potential
  by encouraging intellectual, aesthetic and
  emotional involvement which stimulates both right
  and left brain activities. Good textbooks enable
  the stud5nts to receive, process and retain
  information through multiple intelligences.

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III. Selecting textbooks

• --we select after we evaluate. However,
  evaluating textbooks is one thing, selecting
  textbooks is quite another.
• --When we evaluate a textbook with an intention
  of adoption, we try to match what is offered by
  the book with the needs of our language
  programme.
• --Go over the 3 questionnaires.

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IV. Adapting textbooks

• Maley (1998281) suggested the following options
  to adapt materials
• 1.omission the teacher leaves out things deemed
  inappropriate, offensive, unproductive, etc.,
  for the particular group.
• 2.addition where there seems to be inadequate
  coverage, teachers may decide to add to
  textbooks, either in the form of texts or
  exercise material.
• .

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• 3.reduction where the teacher shortens an
  activity to give it less weight or emphasis.
• 4.extension where an activity is lengthened in
  order to give it an additional dimension. (For
  example, a vocabulary activity is extended to
  draw attention to some syntactic patterning.)

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• 5.rewriting/modification teacher may
  occasionally decide to rewrite material,
  especially exercise material, to make it more
  appropriate, more communicative, more
  demanding, more accessible to their students,
  etc.
• 6.replacement text or exercise material which is
  considered inadequate, for whatever reason, may
  be replaced by more suitable material. This is
  often culled from other resource materials.

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• 7.reordering teachers may decide that the order
  in which the textbooks are presented is not
  suitable for their students. They can then decide
  to plot a different course through the textbooks
  from the one the writer has laid down.
• 8.branching teachers may decide to add options
  to the existing activity or to suggest
  alternative pathways through the activities. (For
  example, an experiential route or an analytical
  route.)

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V. Conclusion

• Firstly, teachers need to have the authority to
  evaluate, select and adapt textbooks. In many
  cases, teachers are simply told to use a certain
  textbook. In worse circumstances, teachers are
  told how to use a book. Some teachers are even
  criticized for intentionally leaving out
  activities that they do not consider appropriate
  or necessary.

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• Secondly, teachers have to have the initiative
  to evaluate, select and adapt textbooks. Very
  often, with a heavy workload, teachers simply do
  not have the time or energy to do anything beyond
  lesson planning and marking students homework.
  Without explicit encouragement from authorities,
  many teachers do not make an effort to evaluate
  and adapt textbooks.

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• Thirdly, teachers need to know how to evaluate,
  select and adapt textbooks. At the time when this
  book is being written, very few ELT teacher
  education programmes in China offer specific
  training in materials evaluation and design, and
  publications on ELT materials are hard to find.
  If textbook evaluation is ever done, it is mostly
  ad hoc impressionistic judgement based on
  experience or intuition. It is the concern for
  this deplorable situation that made the authors
  incorporate this last unit into a methodology
  book, which, in normal cases, would not touch the
  material world.

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VI. Assignments

• 1. Review the unit do all the exercises.
• 2. Write a teaching plan of reading class based
  on the Reference Book of TLEBC.

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Thank you ! Good bye !