The document summarizes a teacher's views on using coursebooks for English classes. The teacher believes coursebooks should focus on students' interests and local context. While frequently using books for reading and vocabulary, the teacher supplements less with online materials for more engaging grammar activities. The teacher emphasizes practicing communicative skills like speaking and listening, especially for students only having English 3 hours per week.

1. UNIVERSIDAD CATÓLICA DE LA SANTÍSIMA CONCEPCIÓN
FACULTAD DE EDUCACION
PEDAGOGIA EN INGLES
“Coursebook Evaluation”
English Methodology II
Mg Roxana Correa
Students: Nataly Muñoz P.
Makarena Sánchez C.
Concepción, October 28th 2013 .

2. Interview prompts
Eliciting teacher’s views on coursebooks
Introduction
The following essay has as a purpose to analyse a specific teacher’s point of view
on course books. For this reason, a series of questions are provided for the teacher such as
what are your criteria for choosing a coursebook? When, why and how do you supplement
the coursebook? among others.
First of all, it is necessary to point out the fact that the chosen teacher works at a
public school and most of his course books are not necessarily based on the Chilean
Ministry of Education, but rather by some of her own. Conforming with the first question
about the importance of coursebook according to the teacher, they play a very helpful role
for English classes, but it has also been considered that they are not the only source to take
into consideration. In addition, the interviewee has stated that coursebooks should be
chosen focus on both the student’s interests and reality, such as their life, city or country.
Moreover, related to the frequency use of text books, the participant teacher has stated that
coursebooks are frequently managed through the use of reading comprehension activities
and vocabulary as well; however, the activities that are less used by her are the ones relate
to grammar activities, mainly because students tend to get bored and to lose the focus of the
class, so in order to work with the grammar area, the activities are searched in the Internet
to get better results.
Consequently, the school teacher has said that coursebooks are a supplement when
the activities are not linked with the student’s interest as previously said; instead she rather
looks for the activities online to change the mood and to obtain student’s willingness to
work, but the interviewee has not mentioned when or how to use those materials. Finally, in
the last inquiry, which is connected in terms of aspects of the language, the teacher has
recognized the idea of applying more interesting activities that are according to student’s
current context, specifically for developing communicative skills, for example oral
activities and listening activities, from this last item listening activities should be centered
in those student who only have 3 hours per week of English, because most of the time they

3. encounter huge problems for these type of task, that at the end it become a challenge to
accomplish.
As a conclusion, it should be interpreted that the teacher claimed the fact that
coursebooks should be around the student’s interest, and also should be located in their
contemporary context. Accordingly, it is also emphasized the idea of making use of online
resources that are available today on the web. At the end, she added an importance of
practicing activities related to communication skills, because of the importance that it is
attribute nowadays to English as a second language.

4. Factual details
Title: Click on. Workbook & Grammar book 1a/1b
Author (s): Virginia Evans – Neil O’Sullivan
Publisher: Express Publishing
Price: $10.000 pesos
ISBN: 1-8446-918-1
No. of pages: 120 pages
Components: Student’s Book/Teacher’s Book/ Workbook & Grammar book Student’s
Test/ Workbook & Grammar book Teacher’s/ Test Booklet/ Class Cassettes/ Audio CDs /
Student’s Cassette Cd/ Video-DVD/ Video activity book.
Level: Secondary level
Length: 1 year and half Units: 10 units Lesson/section: 5 Lessons.
Target skills: Grammar skills
Target learner: Secondary school.
Assessment: (* Poor
** Fair
***Good
****Excellent)
Rationale: Suggestopedia approach
Availability: It can be found at “Liberia Inglesa” in Concepción, Chile.
Layout/ graphics: The organization of the coursebook is organized in two parts, which is
Click on 1a and Click on 1b. First of all, each unit starts with specific vocabulary items,
and then moves to grammar, communication activities, listening activities, reading and
writing exercises. The coursebook has attractive images, and each activity has an example
to follow.
Selection/grading: The coursebook begins with a low level of English, and it goes up to a
higher level of proficiency.
Authenticity:
1° Dialogue
Discourse feature
Textbook data
Lexical density
94
78.33%
Repetition
0
0%
Back-channels
4
3.33%

5. 2° Dialogue
Discourse feature
Textbook data
Lexical density
118
79.72%
Repetition
0
0%
Back-channels
6
4.05%
3° Dialogue
Discourse feature
Textbook data
Lexical density
67
64.42%
Repetition
0
0%
Back-channels
2
1.92%
Cultural bias: British oriented.
Stimulus: Throughout the coursebook there are plenty of activities focus primarily on
grammar; however, the textbook does not provide enough speaking or reading activities for
the students so as to use the language. At the end of each book there is review which
emphasizes mainly grammar features with its corresponding exercises. Finally there is a list
that contains irregular verbs, and likewise tests in order to assess the student’s progress per
unit.
Flexibility: It would not be possible to move from one unit to the other, because the book is
designed from a basic to upper level, there are some units which ask students to use the
knowledge they already have learnt from previous topics.

6. Source: Evaluating ELT textbooks and materials by Sheldon (1988)
A comparison of textbook and authentic interactions by Gilmore (2004)

7. C- Activities
1.
Do the materials of a chosen Unit provide a balance of activities that is appropriate
for your students?
Yes
No
The material provides a balance of activities which is appropriate for students;
although, it is believed that most of the exercises are focus on grammar, which ultimately
achieves the expectations of the book. Another fact to highlight is that the unit starts from a
basic level such as vocabulary and it continues advancing to a more complex stage that is to
produce specifically in a writing task what students have learnt.
Lesson
Adopt (select)
Reject
Adapting
1st
Lesson
4
3 part a
5 part a /b
1
3 part b
2 part a/b/c
The vocabulary is The exercise is
appropriate.
similar to other
The exercises are ones.
simple in order to The topic do/don’t
rehearsal
what is not connected
they have learnt.
with the topic and
also it has not been
checked previously
in other units.
2nd
Lesson
Another
item
(spices) will be
included, as part of
the vocabulary
It is necessary to
reduce the amount of
questions; otherwise
it will take long to
finish the class.
6
9 part a
10
7 part a
9 part b
11
12 part a
7 part a
8
12 part b
The activities are
focus
on
grammar, inside a
specific context.
It is not a real
context.
The exercises are
been repetitive.
Mini-dialogue
takes time for a
normal class to do
The students should
classify
their
trimmings to the
corresponding word.
It is required add
more words.
They do not have to
Extra
Materials
Pictures
of
different
categories of
food

8. 3rd
Lesson
act out
It should be this way
in order to do the
class
more
entertaining
and
effective, in terms of
time
15 part a
17
13
14
15 part b
As students have
been dealing with
grammar features,
they could start
with
a
short
writing activity.
4th
Lesson
19
The exercises are
not quite link with
the topic
Similar activities
are been checked
before.
1
of
the
3
advertisement will
be left out, in order
to compare two of
them, and more
alternatives
are
included
in
the
reading.
The students are
asked to act out with
a short dialogue.
In this way students
will demonstrate so
far what they have
learnt.
18 part a
16 part b
20
16 part a
18 part b
19 (homework)
It
encourages
students to do a
sort of deeply
reading
comprehension
activity.
It
might
be
coherent
to
continue
doing
reading
comprehension
activities.
It will be more
entertaining
to
write
something
about the student’s
interest.
The brochure is
deleted, instead a
dialogue is included.
The students have to
create
the
appropriate title for
each paragraph.
The student should
come up with a
writing composition
about their favourite
food.
To develop writing
and creative skills.

9. 5th
Lesson
19
Review
about
what the students
have done.
2. Is there a sufficient amount of communicative output in the units (3 at least) under
consideration?
Yes
No
There is no sufficient amount of communicative output, as the title of the book
indicated, it is concentrated on grammar features, even though it covers each area
(grammar, reading, listening, vocabulary and communication), but in this opportunity the
majority of the exercises are for students to developing grammar skills.
Unit 5: “I’d love to”
Activity´s number
Activity´s name
Type
Reason
1a
Use
the
words Structural
bellow to fill in the
table
The
activity
is
guided. It starts with
grammar exercises.
1b
In pairs
Functional
The learner has to
use the language, but
the structure of the
activity is given.
4
Complete
diagram
the Functional
Even
when
the
learner produces, the
context
of
the
activity is given.

10. 6
Fill in with the Structural
correct words from
the list
The
activity
is
guided, besides the
students
use
grammatical rules.
10
Use the phrases and Functional
the prompts
The context and
instruction are given
and according to this
the learner has to
produce.
12
Read the article and Quasianswer the questions communicative
Grammar in context,
however the context
is reducing.
9
Look at the pictures Structural
and complete the
sentences
The learner follows
specific and guided
instructions.
16
Write a book review
The model of the
activity is given, so
the learner does not
produce everything.
Functional
Unit 7: “What´s on the menu?”
Activity’s number
2
Type
Structural
4
Activity’s name
Complete the
diagram
Fill in
5b
Who usually says?
Quasicommunicative
7a
Match the words in
the list
Structural
7b
Pack your picnic
basket
Social interaction
Structural
Reason
Based on grammar
features
The instructions are
given
The context is
reduced, however
grammar feature are
putted in context
The activity is
guided and the
learner using
language they will
need
The context is given,
besides students
have to produce

11. 9a
Fill in
Structural
17
Read the
advertisements and
answer the questions
Quasicommunicative
19
Look at the pictures
and answer the
questions
Functional
The instruction are
given so the student
need to follow them
using grammatical
rules
The content is in
setting and the
instructions are
precise
Students have to put
in practice the
function (grammar)
in use
Source: Communicative language teaching: An introduction by Littlewood (1981
The Practice of English Language Teaching by Harmer (1991)
Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching by Mcgrath (2002)

12. Coursebook Evaluation
The purpose of this analysis is to being able to make judgments about considering a
coursebook the correct one for applying to the students and its characteristics. As it is
known, in the field of teaching, most of the teachers rely on the usefulness that a
coursebook provides during a lesson class; however, the matter lies on choosing the correct
resource to the students, which lead us to the next question what are the necessary features
that a coursebook should have in order to obtain the correct output? For the latter, it might
be expected that teachers take many factors into consideration when selecting a textbook,
for this reason they need to think about their students' needs, interests, ability and level.
On one hand, the coursebook was analyzed by identifying under what sort of
approach it worked, connected mainly as specified before with grammar, so immediately
was expected to get students with less active participation in the usage of the language. On
the other hand it was examined by paying attention to the different areas, which are the
following: vocabulary, grammar, reading comprehension, listening, communication and
writing. Nonetheless, as it was expected by checking the pages, the coursebook was build
up focused specifically on grammar aspects. Consequently, it is believed that the aim is to
develop grammar skills for students, although the current situation asks to develop
communicative abilities, so that a student can use English language in real context.
Moreover, the most frequent techniques used by the text book were vocabulary and
grammar exercises; for example, classifying, fill in or matching concepts, for this it was
interpreted that students learnt words isolated and without frame of reference, in other
words they acquired vocabulary by memorizing it
As mentioned above, the coursebook was related to grammar exercises as a whole,
and at the same time did not present sufficient communicative amount of tasks, instead
syntax structure was the main concern, and in this case the majority of the activities
belonged to pre-communicative activities by Littlewood (1981), which the aim is to teach
grammar features step by step. Another important issue considered was the fact of the
degree of complexity that the text developed for grammar production, there were plenty of
different activities, and there was a special item for writing tips that a student could have
taken as an advice to expand their knowledge. Unfortunately, it would have been more

13. precise to teach and learn the language in a real setting, rather than separate, in order to
accomplish the student’s attention. One of the most complicated dilemmas that teachers
have to encounter is how to get students engagement with the class, especially if students
are learning a second language, and one of the alternatives is by making use of a
coursebook that can provide authentic material according to Peacock (1997), so students
can be exposed to a real context, and can be able to use it properly, and more importantly
can be motivated with the topics, activities etc.
Another important fact to take into account is the proper use of the different skills
every student has. According to Oxford (1990) the four skills that every student needs to
develop are: reading, listening, speaking and writing, these four are directly related when
learning a second language, in this case English. Grammar is sometimes seen as a skill, but
is different from the “four” previously seen. The skills are increasing during the process of
language development. In fact, the coursebook was focused strictly on grammatical rules,
grammarian vocabulary and grammatical exercises. According to Chamot (1989) different
strategies can be used in order to develop the “four” learning skills previously mentioned,
and these can be used to obtain content and also vocabulary, which was one of the goals of
the coursebook. The textbook was covered primarily on two kinds of receptive skills
listening and reading, but it kept the focus on a big amount of grammatical and vocabulary
items. Nonetheless, the productive skills are poorly covered specially speaking, only small
dialogues were found inside the coursebook. Furthermore, it can be found material for all
the different skills work; however, the material mentioned can be found inside every unit,
but not in every activity.
The topics covered by the book were directly related to the student’s interest, for example
music, food, technology, among others. This facilitated the delivery of knowledge since
students might felt motivated when reading or learning from some topic they were
interested of. Talking about listening material, we could not have access to the recorded
material so we were not able to establish, whether the material was acceptable or not.
Nevertheless, we were able to read the exercises corresponding to each recording. It could
be noticed that even when the topics of the exercises where interesting the instructions were

14. not clear enough, as a result it may be thought that the students could get easily confuse
when reading the instructions.
As previously said, speaking material are poorly covered in the coursebook. Just
few dialogues can be found in the coursebook, and even when the topics were interesting
for teenagers, the students did not need to produce too much so they were not able to speak
a lot. Furthermore, even when the amount of writing activities were acceptable the students
were not asked to produce longer pieces of writing. Instead, the students were asked to
produce specific information about attractive topics, the structures of the activities were
given and precise and the context of the work was mostly guided. An interesting point to
mention was the important of teaching a language in a real setting, something that the
coursebook did not take as a priority.
Finally, the coursebook provided all the grammatical rules that students should be
aware of, but it did not take into account the use of the vocabulary taught into a real context
in which the students could understand the topics in a better form. Also, there were plenty
of activities guided by the teacher which did not allow the students to create or to answer
the activities applying the knowledge already taught.

15. References.
Chamot, A. U. (1989). Learning strategies in foreign language instruction.
Gilmore, A. (2004). A comparison of textbook and authentic interactions. ELT journal,
58(4), 363-374.
Harmer, J. (1991). The Practice of English Language Teaching. Longman Press: England,
UK.
Littlewood, W. (1981). Communicative Language teaching: An introduction. Cambridge
University Press.
McGrath, I. (2002). Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching (Edinburgh
Textbooks in Applied Linguistics). Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, UK.
Peacock, M. (1997). The effect of authentic materials on the motivation of EFL learners.
ELT Journal, 51(2), 144-156.
Oxford, R. (1990). Language learning strategies: What every teacher should know.
Sheldon, L. (1988). Evaluating ELT textbooks and materials. ELT journal, 42(4), 237-246.