The document evaluates the English coursebook "Travelers" for 8th grade primary school students. It finds that Travelers properly designs topics that interest students, such as culture, self-care, places and the world. Each unit emphasizes similar participation of boys and girls. Attractive illustrations set themes and motivate students. Additionally, Travelers clearly adopts a three-phase reading approach and helps develop language skills through integrated tasks that promote autonomous and collaborative learning. It also encourages critical thinking through curious tips. In conclusion, the document finds Travelers' methodology suitable for both students and teachers by integrating skills through team-based and task-based learning activities connected to students' real lives.

1. Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción
Facultad de Educación – Departamento de Lenguas
Pedagogía en Educación Media en Inglés
English Methodology II
Coursebook Evaluation
English Methodology
Felix Barría Montoya
Student
Diego Ulloa Iglesias
Professor Roxana Correa Pérez

2. English Methodology Essay
For many teachers, coursebooks mean trouble because these later limit what they want to
teach students, while for others coursebooks mean a guide. Nowadays, coursebooks are
constantly updated including new and relevant topics and technological material as the case
of CD-R’s.
One of the issues when referring to coursebooks’ design is their topics. Travelers’ topics
were properly designed for students who are in eighth year of primary school considering
their interests corresponding to their age, for instance: “cultural elements”, “self-care”,
“people and places” and “all over the world”. Moreover, there is a special emphasis put on
presenting girls and boys participating in similar ways and occasions and at the end of each
unit there are also illustrated cartoons whose main characters are the same of the book, but
presented in totally different situations. These attractive illustrations set the theme and
motivate students and work together with few short activities which introduce the topic,
activate previous knowledge and raise interest from learners.
Another issue about coursebooks is the clearness of the methodology they should have.
Some of them are not clear in terms of how and what to teach, but Travelers, according to
Alvarado (2008) adopts a three-fase approach with before, while and after reading/listening
tasks (p6). Basically, Travelers helps students develop language and learning skills to carry
out sequences of tasks, among others: students become personally involved; all four skills
are integrated; autonomous learning is promoted since students become more responsible

3. on their own learning process; collaborative work and interpersonal relations are developed
by working in groups; and there is always a focus on meaningful outcome (Brown, 2007).
Task-based learning considers tasks which include for instance problem-solving techniques
and role-play techniques; however, Travelers does not cover the latter but it promotes other
tasks which require learners to use the language such the language of cooking or simply
informal language because each activity has its own context. It also promotes critical
thinking thanks to “Did you know that…” section where some piece of information which
is probably unknown by the learner is presented as a curious tip.
All in all, the methodology we find in this book is suitable both for the level of the students
and teachers. It integrates skills in order to create activities that involve not only team work
but also task based learning which is a very effective approach. All units are somehow
connected to each other and talk about topics related to the actual real life context of the
student.

4. References
Alvarado, L. (2011) Travelers 8. Chile: Ediciones Cal y Canto.
Brown, D. (2007) Teaching by principles. Pearson ESL.