Valparaíso, Chile

Dear Mrs. Alexander, School Principal, 

I hope this message finds you in good health. As we, the English department teachers, were discussing during last Tuesday’s meeting, we are now closer to the beginning of the  school year and we ought to decide whether we will continue to use the textbook Opportunities Beginners for 9th grade, or we will use the textbook that we, the English department,  adapted for our students. Hence, this letter aims to present the reasons why you should support the decision of using the newly adapted book. This book, was selected and adapted based on what we think is more appropriate for the audience we have here at Instituto Maritimo, which certainly required extra  effort and time from our part to get it ready before classes start; however that is just the basic reason why we want to implement Instituto Maritimo English Book(IMEB) for 9th grade. 

In order to give a detailed explanation I have analyzed and compared Unit 3 from the Opportunities textbook “Communities” and Unit 8 from the Instituto Maritimo textbook “What is your neighborhood like” because they share similar contents (Places), Grammar focus (there is/there are; How much), Prepositions(next to/opposite), and language skills. (You can find more detailed information in the appendix attached at the end of this letter). So in the following lines you will find the arguments why I believe the IMEB is better for students at Instituto Maritimo, supported with theoretical data. 

First of all, according to Tomlinson (2011, p. 9) learning materials should make students feel comfortable and at ease because “they lose opportunities for language learning when they feel anxious, uncomfortable or tense”. Some characteristics that can help students feel peaceful while working on a textbook are that the pages have lots of blank space for them to write, that the images displayed are relatable and do not make them feel alienated, and that the activities are made for them to learn and not just to test their capacities. 

This principle is something that IMEB applies in an excellent manner since it is designed in a way that appeals students. The colors used are bright but not overwhelming, In comparison to the Opportunities book where everything is cramped and overshadowed by the dark color of the images, the IMEB has clear boundaries in terms of visual design. No pictures overlap the texts an if they were to overlap, the soft tones make it easy to read and do not confuse the audience. Also, the stages are clearly divided iand are well signaled with  big numbers not to mislead students, as opposed to the Opportunities book which makes it difficult to tell the activities appart and to figure out which are tasks and which are vocabulary tables.

Vocabulary and Grammar are not presented in isolation in contrast with the Opportunities book  which presents the key vocabulary of the unit as a warm up, which is not a bad idea, but isolated, without any context not logical connections to students contexts. The IMEB starts with the presentation of key words but in a context and as a matching activity so it is not just words/concepts (places) but what happens with those words (what happens in those places). This gives students the opportunity to activate their previous knowledge in a more engaging way. The following task is also much more meaningful as students need to work individually and como with a definition for the rest of the key concepts and then share it with a partner which enhances communication in the target language or at least the attempt to produce language. This kind of focus can make meaningful any activity, and can also give the student certain liberties when learning. First, as Brown (2001, p.56) proposes in his language teaching principle “Meaningful learning” students learn and retain the new knowledge better when it is related to something that is meaningful for them, in terms of interests, context, culture, previous knowledge, etc.  Secondly it can as Tomlinson (2011, p.12) stated “materials should require and facilitate learner self-investment”. This means they need to discover things by themselves for which, teachers need to give them some freedom to choose or to give their opinions. The IMEB gives learners plenty of opportunities to choose what they want to do and to give their opinion about topics, what is more it does not provide only ready made information(which Opportunities book does), it also give students the chance to come up with their own creations and ideas. 

What Tomlinson also covers in his analysis of good designed materials is that they “should take into account that learners differ in learning styles” which means that 

“those learners with a preference for studial learning are much more likely to gain from explicit grammar teaching than those who prefer experiential learning. And those who prefer experiential learning are more likely to gain from reading a story with a predominant grammatical feature (e.g. reported speech) than they are from being taught that feature explicitly.”

(Tomlinson (2011, p. 18)

Some of the styles of learning that he names are: visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, studial, experiential, analytic, global, dependent, independent. Most of them are addressed in the IMEB, which cannot be said about the Opportunities book. 

In the IMEB we find activities that involve more direct instruction (visual, studial, analytic) and others that involve movement around the classroom and listenings. The listenings are not just used to get information about a specific topic, they are also used to practice pronunciation and to notice how connected speech sounds like. This serves as an strategy to improve students’ listening comprehension and later pronunciation.  It is interesting how the IMEB tackles most of the learning styles with such simple activities, yet the Opportunities textbook only focused on one kind of learning. In relation to this, Gardner (in Larsen-Freeman & Anderson, 2011, p. 191) proposes different kinds of intelligences that teachers should have in mind while making decisions about the materials and tasks they will implement in their lessons. Some of them and that are present in the IMEB are visual, kinesthetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal. We can clearly see the visual in all the images that are showed in the textbook and how they always relate to the topic or activity they have attached. The images used in the IMEB, although are mostly drawings, they have a real impact in the way the students acquire the new knowledge as they help in the development of the tasks and make them more appealing.  Some other intelligences and learning styles are covered through gap filling activities, pair work (interpersonal), individual work (interpersonal, which includes reflection about own learning), a game activity (kinesthetic) 

Both books cover the 4 skills; however, the IMEB does not only cover them, but it also gives them a more meaningful focus. Since they are not isolated activities, they have pre and post activities that help students reflect on what the have just read/listened/wrote or what they are about to read, listen or write. Also this reflection can be conducted individually as a self-evaluation or it can be carried out as a speaking activity in pairs which helps the students share and compare their opinions and learning outcomes with their peers. This is very meaningful as they can see that they are not alone in this and can lead them to take risks in the future as their Language Ego, as Brown (2001, p.61 ) calls it keeps on developing.

The book that the English department has adapted is also superior in the sense that it does not stick to just one level of proficiency, as the Opportunities textbook does. It provides alternatives and more effort demanding tasks for students that are above the average level of proficiency of the class. This will foster students self investment (Tomlinson, 2011) and intrinsic motivation (Brown, 2001, p. 59) since the student will start searching for the rewards that he/she as a learner can obtain of the learning process, which will make the student want to pursue a better proficiency level, and which could also lead to other students feeling more motivated as they will see improvement as a possibility. 

Talking about task-based language teaching Richards & Rodgers (2007, p. 224) explain that teaching through real life tasks and activities can help students learn the target language in a more natural way, as English would be used as a medium to achieve a concrete goal. Even though, as Ellis (2009, p.237) points out, there are some researchers that doubt the efficacy of  this method because of the poor outcomes or language use that could result from a beginners class, for example, as teachers we should expect results that are appropriate for the level of proficiency of our students and guide them when we want them to go further, as Krashen suggests in his scaffolding theory. 

Despite the fact that none of the analyzed books has an explicit connection to Chilean context, the IMEB counts with more meaningful texts and activities since they can be applied to the Chilean context in a way, though it is not explicitly described in the textbook, the teachers should make the corresponding linking to students’ context. Also some of the activities can be made meaningful in the sense that students can give their opinion and can compare the things in the text with their own experiences. Moreover, one of the activities in the unit can be used to teach  how to ask for directions, even when getting info about a place not explicitly taught.  In contrast, the Opportunities book cannot even be adapted to the Chilean context because the experiences, images and stories that are presented are only focused on American culture.

All things considered, I would like to highlight that I am not, in any case trying to promote the use of the Instituto Maritimo English Book just because it has been adapted by us and I want to receive the credit. What we aim to, as the English department is to achieve a better understanding and a better teaching practice, not for our own merit and glory, but because we want our students to really get involved in the learning of a foreign language such as English. It  is really difficult to teach English in Chile and even more in a public school such as ours, so we must do our best and try to implement the materials that most adequate to students’ needs, interests, and context. We need to make them see that it doesn’t matter if they are not going abroad in the future, learning a new language can bring experiences that they do not even imagine, but for that we need to make our best. That is why I consider we should change the Opportunities textbook for the IMEB one. The IMEB offers a more students’ friendly format, which includes the activities the contents and the images used, a much more meaningful approach to English, and a more adaptable way of implementing it.

We hope you consider all the reasons I have written down and that you come with a decision that is beneficial for our students. 

I have attached the analysis I made about the two books, in case you want to take a look.

I look forward to your reply, 

Best regards, 

Claudia Pino & Ana Espinoza