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Butzkamm, W. (2003). We only learn language once. The role of the mother tongue in FL classrooms: death of a dogma. The Language Learning Journal, 28. 29-39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09571730385200181

Ehrman, M. E., Leaver, B. L. & Oxford, R. (2003). A brief overview of individual differences in second language learning. System, Vol. 31, 3. 313-330. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0346-251X(03)00045-9

Field, J. (2008). Listening in the Language Classroom (pp. 58-75). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Krashen, S. D. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon.

Krashen, S. D. (1998). Comprehensible Output? System, 26, 175-182.

Ministerio de Educación. (2017). Organización Curricular Inglés. Retrieved from: http://www.curriculumenlineamineduc.cl/605/w3-article-20954.html

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New Opportunities Elementary Students' Book analysis

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New Opportunities Elementary Students' Book analysis

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The very first module of the textbook is titled “Learning to Learn”. Judging from the title, what one would expect is to find learning strategies that are useful for learners; however, that is not the case. The module aims at reviewing main contents that students who are to work with this textbook should know in order to progress in their learning with the activities proposed. An important and interesting characteristic of this section, though, is in the “Function File” box in part E: Classroom Language, which provides students with language in English that they can use to communicate with their teacher so as not to overuse their mother tongue. In this part of the first module, students are also prompted to work on activities that model what imperatives are so that they can easily understand the instructions given by the teacher.

(See Picture 5)

It is possible to note that, in general, the textbook is very colourful and contains lots of images. Even so, sometimes there are no images in certain pages, but there is no excessive use of text when this happens and the activities are clearly numbered with some space between them, which makes the text not overwhelming for students. Almost all of the images used in the textbook are from real life contexts, that is about a 90% of the pictures included in it. All of these images serve as a way to connect students with the reading or listening activity that they will be doing, but they rarely seek to illustrate exactly what the activity is about; unless they are about vocabulary. Most of them are clear and accurate, which allows for an appropriate understanding of the texts.

(See Picture 6 & Picture 7)

Throughout the textbook, there are different kinds of “Function File” boxes which aim at providing students with certain lexical items that they can use in given situations. For example, the one in page 51 provides students with connectors that they can use to tell a story.

(See Picture 8)

In relation to the contents covered, the progression in grammatical forms is also very similar to Krashen (1982)’s Natural Order Hypothesis. In this textbook, the order is as follows: present simple (affirmative/negative), present simple (questions), possessive ‘s, past simple (affirmative/negatives/questions), countable and uncountables (some, any, a lot of, etc.), modal verbs, present continuous, comparatives, superlatives, future be going to, predictions will and won’t, and finally present perfect. There is a difference in that the textbook teaches the possessive first, but overall there is a correlation that seeks to move from more familiar forms to new ones on the part of students. However, it is to be noted that there is no distinction made between regular and irregular verbs, and they are taught at the same time during module 5. This could, perhaps, result a little bit confusing for students who might overgeneralise the -ed ending of regular verbs for a while.

In terms of the activities in the textbook, it is possible to notice that most skills are equally emphasised throughout its entirety. Each module exercises listening, reading, vocabulary, grammar, writing and speaking equally. What is more, the last two productive skills are placed even more emphasis through a “communication workshops” section at the end of each module which offers activities for students to exercise both skills, and there are extra activities at the end of the book for students to practice more reading/listening and writing. It is important to note that all speaking activities in the textbook are interactive; that is, they require students to talk among themselves, which gives room for mistakes, negotiation of meaning, clarification, etc., to happen and, thus, reinforcing the ideas behind the comprehensible input/output hypothesis by Krashen (1982) and fostering learning.

A very interesting and remarkable aspect of this book is that it not only exercises the productive skills in the modules and through extra activities, but it also helps learners develop strategies to learn how to effectively write and speak, as it can be evidenced in the pictures below.

(See Picture 9, Picture 10 & Picture 11)

According to Ehrman, Leaver & Oxford (2003), the use of learning strategies has several benefits for students. Some of them are that the learner will not face many hardships if the strategy is good, will make progress faster than they do without strategies, will potentially enjoy learning, will see it as more personalised learning and will be able to link it to another contexts. In other words, learners who employ learning strategies are likely to learn more than they would without using them, and will also be able to use them in new situations.

Finally, the activities in the textbook are closely related to a main activity in the module (a reading or listening one); however, the focus of these short activities is always on the main one and grammar or vocabulary are not attempted to be taught through the reading/listening texts, but rather only used as support tools for comprehension questions about them. For grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, there are different “Review” sections in the textbook that account for these aspects only.

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At first glance, when opening the textbook, we encounter two “Basics” lessons which aim at reviewing the basics that students using the textbook should know; that is, the alphabet, verbs related to instructions, the name of objects they commonly use, grammar structures they should know, the colours, etc. This overview contains various kinds of short activities which contain reading, listening, speaking, vocabulary and grammar ones. In addition, there are pictures that students can use to foster their understanding for most of the activities.

In general, the design of the textbook is really colourful and cheerful. There are colourful pictures and there is also text in every lesson and page. In spite of there being a lot of text, thought, the constant use of the images makes it not overwhelming for students.

(See Picture 1 & Picture 2)

However, it is important to note that most of the images are drawings rather than real people and some of them could be misleading as to what students are supposed to understand from them. Related to this, we can note that, in terms of usage of the mother tongue, there is nothing specified about it--whether teachers should or should not use it is not mentioned. In this sense, we are reminded of Butzkamm (2003)’s maxim 2, which warns teachers about possible misunderstandings that could result from the usage of misleading pictures in the material used, recommending teachers to not be afraid of using the mother tongue occasionally when there is a need for clarification; especially among beginner-level students, which is the kind of students that this textbook was designed for.

On a different note, it was possible to notice that the textbook’s grammatical content progresses in a somewhat similar way to what the Natural Order Hypothesis by Krashen (1982) proposes. Specifically in this textbook, the lessons progress in terms of present simple in affirmative/negative forms, possessive adjectives, present simple in affirmative/negative/questions/short answers, Wh- questions, possessive ‘s, articles, past simple, regular/irregular verbs, present continuous, modal verbs, comparatives, superlatives, simple future, going to, and finally present perfect. There is a difference in that Krashen proposes present continuous -ing is acquired earlier than regular/irregular verbs, 3rd person -s and possessive -s; however, despite this, there is a progression in these contents that clearly aims at getting students ready and scaffolding them a bit before moving to more complex forms.

Regarding the activities in the textbook, there are plenty reading, listening, speaking, vocabulary and grammar activities; however, there are no writing activities at all. It is specified that these can be found in the students’ workbook, which we speculate can perhaps be due to writing being a skill that takes time to be developed; therefore, the designers of the book might have thought it was better to leave writing tasks for students to work in them at home. In this sense, the non-existent exercise of writing in the classroom could be detrimental for students as they will not have direct help from their teacher to guide them through the process of writing. Moreover, according to the National Curriculum, it is imperative that students are able to develop the four skills in their English lessons. Were this book to be used in our national context, there would have to be modifications applied to it in order to supply writing tasks that foster the development of this skill and goes beyond mere blank-spaces completion, moving on to fulfilling communicative goals.

Another aspect to be taken into account is that the textbook includes some “language notes” boxes throughout it which clarify some of the contents. However, these boxes include explanations that, for a beginner, might be too hard to understand.

(See Picture 3)

In addition to this, the textbook also includes a “language reference” section by the end of each module, which only provides them more clarifications on contents that might still be confusing for them.

(See Picture 4)

As for the rest of reading/listening, speaking, vocabulary and grammar activities found in the textbook, they seem to be equally distributed throughout the lessons--that is, they can be found an equal amount of times. Nevertheless, there is an obvious emphasis placed on speaking, for most of the other activities relate to a speaking activity that is to be done afterwards. Perhaps this relates to the integrated skills approach that has been so popular among EFL teachers, but this approach which seeks to have students work on all language skills rather than teaching just one in isolation can be dangerous for each individual skill development (Field, 2008). In spite of this, it is still possible to acknowledge that having short activities of different kind which all aim at the same goal serves as a great scaffolding tool for aiding the learning process of students. Bearing in mind their level, it is also possible to theorise that giving them a lot of input which also requires them to produce immediate output is favorable for their learning.

Drawing on the last point made, while it is necessary that students receive input and produce output in order to learn effectively, this input and output must be comprehensible (Krashen, 1982). In this regard, we can note that the textbook aims at having students constantly interacting with each other, which should, then, result in students making mistakes, negotiating meaning, asking for clarifications, and so on. Therefore, the communicative purpose that the textbook seems to be aimed at, which also correlates with the requirements of the Ministry of Education, could be considered as, all in all, covered by the design that it has.

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The textbooks analysed in this entry are Straightforward and New Opportunities; both of them Elementary Students’ Books. The editorial of the first textbook is Macmillan and Pearson Longman is the editorial of the second one. Both of them have been designed for a proficiency level situated between A1 and A2.

The focus of the following analyses will be mainly on how the design of these textbooks account for some Second Language Acquisition theory and serve the communicative goal that English lessons should have according to the National Curriculum.

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The two textbooks analysed for this entry have some similarities and differences. On the one hand, they are similar in that they have a clear and explicit focus on teaching English communicatively, but they differ a little in how they seek to achieve this goal. While Straightforward disregards the importance of writing as a communicative skill that is useful for learners, New Opportunities exercises all of the skills placing equal importance on each of them and provides practice for each of them by the end of each module. Moreover, New Opportunities offers students strategies to effectively write and speak, while Straightforward offers no speaking strategies for students to use, at least explicitly, and only gives them instructions on how to carry out the task.

The textbooks are also similar in how they progress in grammatical aspects of the language, based on Krashen (1982)’s Natural Order Hypothesis. For this reason, both of them seem appropriate for beginner level since they start from the basics; from that which is more likely that they will more easily acquire such as present simple, and move on to more complex structures that will take them more time and background knowledge such as present perfect.

An important distinction to be made between these two books is that both of them contain a review section by the end of each module (language reference in the case of Straightforward and review in the case of New Opportunities), but the focus is totally different. In the case of the former, the focus is primarily on grammar and vocabulary in the sense that students can read the explanations and memorise the words from the vocabulary in complete isolation. In the case of the latter, the review is not at all about only reading or memorising, but rather about exercising grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation aspects that were seen in the module once again, placing emphasis solely on the activity.

Given the similarities and differences encountered, we believe that while it is true that the effectiveness of a textbook depends on how the teacher uses it in the classroom, there are much more advantages that could be taken from using New Opportunities rather than Straightforward. Even though both are for beginners, Straightforward relies too much on the metalanguage knowledge that students possess in order to teach them and, considering the level (A1-A2) that the textbook was designed for, it is unlikely that all students will be able to learn based on what they know about the language. We believe activities such as the ones found in New Opportunities that focus extensively on the skill or aspect to be learnt are much more beneficial for students’ learning.

Finally, we reinforce the idea that New Opportunities is a better option for an EFL teacher in Chile because it places equal emphasis on all skills. While Straightforward neglects the writing skill, New Opportunities tries to develop it in equal terms as the speaking skill. For this reason, considering the requirement of our National Curriculum, we believe that New Opportunities has a design that is more holistic as it also includes strategies for developing the productive skills.