Evaluation and Adaptation of Coursebook
Evaluation and Adaptation of Coursebook for EFL Senior High School Students: External and Internal Coursebook Evaluation
1. Introduction
Language teaching material plays an important role in EFL classroom. With the rapid development and competitiveness of materials publishers, ‘the wealth of published material for English Language Teaching (ELT) available on the market makes selecting the right coursebook a challenging task’(Cunningsworth, 1995, p5). However, there is no coursebook can be absolutely ideal for a particular group of learners (Cunningsworth, 1995); evaluation and selection of suitable material would be essential and important issues for language teachers. Each group of learners has its own needs and language teachers should choose suitable materials that best fit the learners’ needs in terms of the purpose of the course, learners’ language proficiency, learners’ learning styles and the aim of the materials. Allwright (1981, p5) also suggests that the role of materials should switch from ‘teaching material’ to ‘learning material’. David (2006) conducts a class-specific questionnaire survey to identify learners’ needs so as to “create in learners a level of interests involvement and investment that would not be possible to achieve with textbook-driven courses (p9)”. In this view, when evaluating materials, more emphasis needs to be put on the learners to satisfy their needs and interests.
This paper will present ways of material evaluation based on previous researches. Then, a coursebook, ‘Lung Teng English Reader for Senior High School: Volume I’ (Lin S. & Tian, W. S., 2005) will be evaluated in terms of the ‘external’ and ‘internal’ approach to material evaluation. (McDonough and Shaw, 1993). In addition, two tasks from this coursebook will be adapted to be more appropriate for the teaching context that I work in. Finally, I would like to provide teacher’s notes for these two adapted tasks. While making a retrospective assessment of
1. Introduction
Language teaching material plays an important role in EFL classroom. With the rapid development and competitiveness of materials publishers, ‘the wealth of published material for English Language Teaching (ELT) available on the market makes selecting the right coursebook a challenging task’(Cunningsworth, 1995, p5). However, there is no coursebook can be absolutely ideal for a particular group of learners (Cunningsworth, 1995); evaluation and selection of suitable material would be essential and important issues for language teachers. Each group of learners has its own needs and language teachers should choose suitable materials that best fit the learners’ needs in terms of the purpose of the course, learners’ language proficiency, learners’ learning styles and the aim of the materials. Allwright (1981, p5) also suggests that the role of materials should switch from ‘teaching material’ to ‘learning material’. David (2006) conducts a class-specific questionnaire survey to identify learners’ needs so as to “create in learners a level of interests involvement and investment that would not be possible to achieve with textbook-driven courses (p9)”. In this view, when evaluating materials, more emphasis needs to be put on the learners to satisfy their needs and interests.
This paper will present ways of material evaluation based on previous researches. Then, a coursebook, ‘Lung Teng English Reader for Senior High School: Volume I’ (Lin S. & Tian, W. S., 2005) will be evaluated in terms of the ‘external’ and ‘internal’ approach to material evaluation. (McDonough and Shaw, 1993). In addition, two tasks from this coursebook will be adapted to be more appropriate for the teaching context that I work in. Finally, I would like to provide teacher’s notes for these two adapted tasks. While making a retrospective assessment of
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