This document provides details about an activity analyzing English language textbooks. Students were asked to analyze activities from several textbooks - Made in Corrientes, Cuaderno de Trabajo para el Aula de Inglés, Project English 1, and Flashlight 1. They found that Made in Corrientes and Cuaderno de Trabajo respected learners' identities and presented a plurilingual perspective by incorporating local Argentine culture. However, Project English 1 and Flashlight 1 presented a monolingual British perspective that did not consider learners' backgrounds. The students concluded these textbooks promoted an implicit anglocentric and imperialist view of English teaching.

1. PRACTICE II, DIDACTICS OF ELT. Prof. ADJUNTO REGULAR Estela N.
Braun. Teacher Assistants: Prof. Vanesa Cabral and Prof. Johana Herran.
STUDENTS’ NAMES: ​Rasilla César, Martínez Rocío
PRACTICAL 3:
Critical Analysis of Textbooks and Integration of main concepts in Module
1:
(*) Media: You will create a google.docs and you will work in pairs. You will
share the document with us: ​braun.estela@gmail.com​.
PART 1:
Visit the following materials available online.
a. ​http://www.mec.gob.ar/direcciones/modalidades/deib/made-in-corrientes
-corner
b. Cuadernos de Trabajo para el Aula de Inglés ,4° Año EP. (Open zip
attachment)
c. Project English 1 and Flashlight 1 culture projects.
1. Find publication details: author/s, year, publishing companyanalz,
kind of distribution for materials.
2. Choose an activity from each textbook; mention pages. Describe the
activities in detail and analyse them critically bearing in mind the
theoretical background provided till now. Use APA citation, example:
Phillipson, R. (1992). ​Linguistic imperialism​. Oxford [England] ; New York:
Oxford University Press.
Barboni,S. (2011). ​Enseñanza de Inglés e Identidad Nacional. ​Buenos Aires,
Editorial El Margen.
3. What view of English language teaching does each textbook
represent?
4. How are learners’ identities regarded?
5. Which variety of English is taught? Why?
6. Is there a monolingual or plurilingual perspective present in the
textbook? César
7. What is the role of culture as presented in the activities?
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2. ​1- a)/ ​http://www.mec.gob.ar/component/jdownloads/send/35-mic/1464-mic3
Made in Corrientes
1- ​ ​Book: M.I.C: Made in Corrientes 3
Authors:
Lic. Mirta Clarisa Godoy
Esp. Clavia Analía Córdoba
Esp. Alicia Cecilia Canevaro
Prof. Etel Itatí Aguirre
Prof. Belkis María Aranda Ansermet
Prof. Gisela Barenboim
Prof. Anabel de los Ángeles Córdoba
Prof. Iván Matías Zampedri
Prof. NSE. María Sofía Lorenzo
NSE. Edith Alejandra Lencina Malgor
Year: ​Primera Edición 2017
Publishing Company: ​Tinta a Tiempo
Kind of distribution for materials: ​Material designed for public schools and
free for students.
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3. 2.a We chose an activity from the section ´Play Time` (pages 8-9) that is similar
to the Game of the Goose.The children have to roll the dice and depending on
the number they get they have to fulfill different tasks. Each number
corresponds to a particular place from Corrientes province, and some of them
make participants lose a turn. What called our attention about this game was
the fact that it is based on a mix of two different cultures, one of them, the
argentinian culture. This book challenges the ordinary book of English that
spreads European culture as the one that should be followed and stigmatises
the others, as if English were the only language that deserves to be learned.
Some examples are:
● Stages are represented by locations in Corrientes, not in places that are
far away from our reality.
● Usage of names and words that are characteristic from our culture:
Tincho and pastafrola.
● Different drawings that show fauna and flora from the province in
question.
We believe that this type of activities have a stronger impact in the
learning of students because they can make connections between what they
are studying with what they see everyday, making the contents easier to
understand. Besides, we also think that is a remarkable step to break with the
standards imposed by ethnocentric and anglocentric thoughts.
Excellent analysis.
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4. 1- b) Book: ​Cuaderno de Trabajo para el aula de Inglés de 4 EP.
Authors:​Mg. Silvana Barboni
DGP. Adriana Murúa
Prof. María Jimena Somoza
Prof. María José Suarez
Lic. Nadia Romero Marchesín
Year: ​2013
Publishing Company: ​Dirección General de Cultura y Educación
Provincia de Buenos Aires.
Kind of distribution for materials: ​Materials designed for public schools.
2-b) ​We selected an activity from page 6 that contains several characters,
with different ages, nationalities, likes and dislikes, etc. Besides there is a
blank space in which students can write about their personal information.
This kind of exercises show a great respect for diversity and, once more, as
the previous task, they contribute to the idea of multiculturalism, with all
cultures at the same level.
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5. 1- c) ​Flashlight 1:
1-​ Davies P. and Falla T. (2006). ​Flashlight 1: Combined Student’s Book
and Workbook. ​Oxford, England. Oxford University Press.
2- ​This activity belongs to page 55 from the book mentioned in the previous
point and consists in choosing the correct answer of a series of questions
related to factual and relevant information about the United Kingdom (which
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6. countries set up the UK?, name of different celebrities and a famous football
team from there, etc.).
Activities like this aren’t useful for kids from other cultures such as latins
or oriental among others, because they try to teach English taking into
account just one model, the one they (british books) suppose is the best to
follow. They don’t respect diversity and also want to show the world aspects
related to their own culture which won’t make children from other countries
feel identified with; this is not appropriate to achieve meaningful learning
because if students can’t find connections between the language and
situations related to their own experience this will make learning much more
difficult for them.
1-c) Project English 1
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7. 1) Hutchinson T. (1986). ​Project English 1: Test Booklet. Oxford,
England. Oxford University Press.
2) In this particular activity from page 13, children are asked to make some
maths exercises calculating the distance between different areas of
England. This type of activities do not end up being useful for them
because they do not know the places they are talking about, therefore,
their names will not be stored in their long-term memory. ​Meaningful
learning cannot be achieved through this type of activities. Besides, they
project implicitly one culture as superior than others, since they try to
spread their ideas, cultures and beliefs as the knowledge that every
student must have (According to this book ideology, England cities
represent essential knowledge that children should know).
3- English language teaching each textbook represents:
Made in Corrientes book and Cuaderno de Trabajo para el aula de Inglés
de 4 EP:
These books value diversity. They teach English language mixing the
language with local customs, names, food, beliefs, etc. to make it easier for
students to apprehend the language. Two variables are essential in this
approach: the fact that the children know about what they are studying, and the
fact that they feel identified with the topics seen, and therefore can contribute
more in class and build significative experiences that guarantee learning.
English language teaching in the quiz about United Kingdom and
the activity “English across the Curriculum”:
In the first activity, the one about the UK, children have to know deeply
about the UK culture to have good results in the quizz, while other places and
its traditions are forgotten. Besides, the section in which this exercise appears is
called ​Focus on the world​. The fact that only one country is developed deeply in
a section that is supposed to teach about thousands of countries shows us that
the book is based on an imperialist perspective.
The second activity is intended to incorporate contents from other
subjects in the English class. When it comes to learn about geography, the
author chooses a map from England which is far away from the students’
realities.
All in all, these books’ selections are not neutral, every time they choose
one idea, they leave others aside. The fact that the English culture is always
present in textbooks tells us that there is an implicit anglocentric view lying
beneath the books’ ideology. These type of exercises try not only to teach about
the language, but also to impose a ´general knowledge´ about the cultures that
publishing companies consider worthy.
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8. 4- How are learners’ identities regarded?
In ​Made in Corrientes and ​Cuaderno de Trabajo para el aula de Inglés
de 4 EP learners’ identities are fully respected. The books mingle the two
languages, but making strong emphasis on the argentinian culture. For this
reason we can see words or names such as John, Tincho, or pastafrola. Even
the animals they learn are the ones that they can appreciate everyday in their
own landscapes. In this sense, the English class does not become a completely
different class in which they learn about ideas or contents they do not
understand (as it happens with the activities from English Project 1 or Flashlight
1), but rather a class in which they can be themselves and continue learning
about their roots using another language to express their ideas.
5- Which variety of English is taught?
When children start to learn English, teachers must show them a model
to follow from which they will take the grammar, the syntax, the phonetics,
etc. As they become more familiarized with the language, they should be
exposed to a wide variety of accents, so as to know that the language is
spoken worldwide and there is no accent preferable to another.
6- Is there a monolingual or plurilingual perspective present in the
textbook?
To develop this activity we should establish a different focus for the
activities we have chosen from the different books (Made In Corrientes 3,
and Cuaderno de Trabajo para el aula de Inglés de 4 EP.) and for those you
have provided us.
In the first two a plurilingual perspective prevails over a monolingual one,
this can be observed through different examples such us Argentinian
names, typical food, cities, animals and plants, which we have mentioned in
previous activities and that conserve their original pronunciation from the
country they belong to in some cases (e.g. “Tincho”, “Pasta Frola”). And in
the activity from the other book you have got blank space in which you can
write your name among other different personal pieces of information and,
depending on the country you live in you will write and pronounce your name
according to your language/dialect/accent, and that is something that should
be respected in every part of the world.
The other two activities reflect the opposite case, that is to say a
monolingual perspective predominating. They seem to be taken from some
book from the United Kingdom and show places, pictures, a football team,
celebrities, a flag and a building which belong to Great Britain, there is no
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9. mix of different languages nor even dialects or words, they restrict
themselves to spread and teach the English Language used in UK.
7- What is the role of culture as presented in the activities?
Culture plays a central role in all the activities, in the first two because
the culture of both countries is denoted, we can observe two different
languages working together for the same task and for the same purpose that
is to teach a language and to use it in different contexts and this idea is
relevant to show that all the languages and cultures are at the same level
there is no country or language or culture more important than the others.
In the other activities it (culture) also has a strong impact because by
showing just the culture and language from the United Kingdom they are
trying to create the concept of a hegemonic country, superior to any other
and the rest of the countries should follow its rules and behaviour, what is a
concept emphatically erroneous.
PART 1: EXCELLENT ANALYSIS AND REFLECTION.
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