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First Portfolio Entry

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The textbook chosen for this analysis is English in Mind (second edition). The level is 3B, which is equivalent to a B1 level of proficiency, and the editorial is Cambridge University Press. The second edition that we are working with was published in 2011 and includes both the Student’s Book and Workbook. This textbook was used in 12th grade at Colegio Seminario San Rafael, Viña del Mar four years ago.

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The contents of the textbook are mostly related to the personal feelings of the students (with units such as “Be honest!”, “Love”, “Hopes and fears”, “Happiness”, etc.), and there are many activities in which students work based on how they feel.

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(Student's Book)

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(Workbook)

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In addition, another relevant aspect to note about this textbook is that it is really colorful, even though it includes way more text than pictures. As a final note, the textbook also includes a CD rom to be used with the listening activities and a variety of games to practice or study either at home or in the computers lab.

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The Textbook and the National Curriculum

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The Textbook and the National Curriculum

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Writing

In the national curriculum, students in 12th grade are supposed to write descriptive or narrative types of textbooks of about 150 words. In English in Mind, students are supposed to write texts with specific purposes (mainly texts expressing opinions). In most of the tasks the rhetorical situation is clear and, additionally, some strategies are implicitly suggested for the student. In the workbook, there is special emphasis on these strategies. It is interesting, though, that there are not many writing tasks as compared to grammar focused tasks, vocabulary focused tasks or reading activities. To be more specific, there is one writing task per unit approximately.

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Speaking

In relation to speaking, according to the National Curriculum, students are expected to actively interact with their classmates and teacher in class. Based on our analysis of the textbook, we can see that it incorporates speaking in different activities, such as in warm ups, pre tasks, and speaking activities itself. For that reason, we believe that the skill is constantly promoted and used, just as what the Minister of Education proposes (Ministerio de Educación, 2017).

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Listening

Regarding the listening skill, the Curriculum states that students should be able to identify general and explicit information in both monologues and dialogs. In relation to what the textbook offers, it is very close to that. First of all, it is important to mention that it seems that the book gives great importance to develop the skill since, per unit, there are from five to eight listening activities. Also, the questions require the students to predict, then get, and finally check explicit information from the audios, so we can conclude that the learning process is scaffolded.

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Reading

Similarly to the prior skill, the National Curriculum states that, in relation to reading, students should be able to identify general and explicit information in texts. On the other hand, the reading tasks the textbook has make the students retrieve general and specific information, both explicit though. However, how the questions are asked make the task less challenging. To be more specific, even though the book is slightly more advanced that what the Minister proposes, the type of questions do not make the tasks that difficult. Some of the exercises we could find are matching sentences, organizing paragraphs, and short-open questions.

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First of all, it is important to summarize what we have analyzed in the prior section. First, the textbook has a great emphasis on grammar; in fact, the Workbook covers mainly that aspect. Also, a lot of input is provided through audios and texts. To be more specific, the proportion of texts activities (either spoken or written) in comparison to productive activities (speaking or writing) is about 5:1.

Based on the previous results, we can infer that the book might have been composed under the Social Constructivist Approach. This means that an underlied belief is that language is socially constructed, that the cultural factors that surround the learner influences his/her knowledge (Vygotsky, 1980). For that, a lot of input is needed plus enough practice of the content covered.

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As we mentioned before, the book is really attractive for the students. Apart from being colorful, it has a lot of images (at least two per page). The images are of both cartoons and real life places and people; however, to be more specific, cartoons are more often found throughout the pages. To provide a more specific analysis, we will explain the use of images in detail.

Also, we think that all the pictures are used for a pedagogical purpose. What we mean is that there is no picture for mere decoration. The reason why pictures are present is to activate prior knowledge in case they know what the topic is about (a variety of them make reference to well-known objects or people), or to contextualize the them so they can picture what is going to be discussed.

On the other hand, and as we know, the images present in the book represent different aspects of the culture by either objects, nature, and/or people they focus on. First, we will pay attention to the objects and to what they are present for. For this, it is important to mention that there are many reading tasks per unit; to be more specific, about 4 of long texts of 200 words each. In relation to that, all of the images of objects are useful to understand key ideas of the texts/reading tasks. Apart from developing reading skills, the texts seems to have the purpose of teaching about the English-Speaking culture. For example, some of the topics covered are: Paul Morris’s life in Italy  (an Australian driver), Two Lives (a novel written by Helen Naylor, an English writer), or Conspiracy Theory (an American movie), among others, each of these are pictured through their corresponding image.

The second aspect that we will cover is images of nature. As it was stated before, the text provides information about the English-Speaking countries. However, if we analyze the pictures of nature -including places and animals-, we can see that the book educates students not only about powerful countries, but about a variety of places, species, and monuments from around the world. For example, there are photos of animals that were thought to be extinct from New Guinea and there are pictures of animals to explain the concept of “cryptozoology”, making references to different areas that have not been really explored by humans yet. All of the graphic elements mentioned before are used to teach the students about living beings that are not very well-known because, according to the book, humans have prioritized other things. We think that, in this sense, the book allows students to develop critical thinking and to learn about things they might have not heard before.

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Thirdly, in relation to people, the book works with the same group of friends throughout the chapters. The four of them are two boys and two girls. They apparently are British teenagers, all of them have white skin with brown hair, except for one girl who seems to be Afro-descendent. As we mentioned before, the book has photos of real people and cartoons. In relation to real people, there are only pictures of the four friends, who appear the same number of times, and pictures of famous people for specific tasks. Among these we can find Michael Jackson, Robbie Williams, and some movie characters. However, as we mentioned in the beginning, the vast majority of pictures are of cartoons.  We believe this may have been done on purpose in order to avoid stereotypes or to give more importance to certain races or gender (the cartoons are equally distributed too).

As we have analyzed, the book seem to have an accurate use of images of a variety of objects, animals, and places. Nevertheless, what we were not able to find in regular situations or examples is people with physical disabilities. We believe that it is simply due to the lack of inclusion. Nevertheless, we think that it is a detail that should be taken into consideration because, although the book includes a variety of cultural differences, not only students but also teachers with physical impairments may feel discouraged because they will not be able to feel represented with the materials they are working with.

Probably all of us would agree with the following idea: if you see that you share some characteristics with a group of people, then you will feel encouraged and motivated to be part of that group. Consequently, if you feel you do not have many things in common, then you will lose the interest on that. We are referring to the the idea of identity. It is extremely important that students feel that they belong to the world they are learning about. The texbook teaches them that everybody and everything is important, regardless the importance they receive. This last idea is strongly related to the Affective Filter Hypothesis. It suggests that in the learning process there are a variety of affective variables involved. For that reason, it is important teachers are aware of that and make everything possible to respect them (Krashen, 1998).

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Krashen, S. (1998). Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning.

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

Vygotsky, L. (1980). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard university press.