The document is an evaluation of the 'Global English' coursebook by Jolanta Polk Reyes, assessing its suitability for 12th grade students in Chile. While the book effectively covers reading and listening skills, it lacks depth in speaking and writing activities, making it less effective for developing productive skills. The evaluation highlights both strengths and weaknesses, concluding that teacher involvement is crucial to maximize the book's potential in the classroom.

1. 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

2. I. Factual Details of the Coursebook
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
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

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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

7. 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?

8.  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.

9. 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.