English Language Course Books Research Articles

Investigating Technology Integration into English Language Coursebooks: A Systematic Evaluation

Among a variety of language learning materials, the crucial role that coursebooks have on learning and teaching processes takes a great deal of attention in the scholarly literature. English language coursebooks have been thought of as one of the most pivotal instruments for effective and systematic language learning experiences. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to address the issue of developing English language coursebooks that meet current requirements of the 21st century. This study aims to explore the extent of technological affordances in English coursebooks used in upper secondary schools in Türkiye. To achieve this aim, a qualitative methodology based on content analysis has been taken as a methodological approach. In this regard, an evaluation checklist for technology integration has been developed and used in the study. Data were collected investigating the content of the two coursebooks from the 9th grade and 10th grade used in Türkiye. Overall, the findings substantiate that despite some notable attempts to integrate technology into current coursebooks, further work is required to develop a well-designed and systematic standard for technological affordances in the content of current coursebooks. The findings provide several insights and implications for developing technology-integrated coursebooks, thus promoting technology-enhanced teaching and learning practices.

A case study of delexical nouns in an EFL setting

This paper demonstrates the relevance of delexical nouns (way, end, case and point) based on corpus findings, course book analyses and classroom experiments. To this end, first, delexical noun functions and frequencies have been studied in-depth in two large English language corpora: Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and British National Corpus (BNC). Additionally, the study reviewed the compound nouns' dictionary meanings. Two coursebooks, namely New English File and Face2Face, have been investigated to determine if delexical nouns are addressed in English language coursebooks to provide ideas to guide the learners in the classroom. Finally, a data-driven learning (DDL) experiment was carried out to assess the participants’ familiarity with the delexical nouns and their collocations. The results of the quantitative analysis from the study demonstrate that delexical nouns are introduced in the course books but are not explicitly explained. Consequently, there are no actual exercises to practise them. The classroom experiment findings reveal the participants’ positive attitude towards how the four delexical nouns, way, end, case and point, were introduced and taught.

An Analysis of Ecopedagogical Features in Turkish High School English Language Coursebooks

An Analysis of Ecopedagogical Features in Turkish High School English Language Coursebooks

Visual Metaphor in Early Second Language Education

The paper adapts the theory of knowledge enablement in knowledge-sharing companies to the needs of the second-language classroom to explicate the association between pedagogical interaction and the effectiveness of the teaching process. The goal of the inquiry is to alert language teachers to the hidden opportunities visualization and layout suggest in designing a stress-free educational environment conducive to amplifying language knowledge and skills in a context stimulating knowledge enablement. Visualization is explored at two levels: 1) the level of text layout and illustrations; and 2) the level of visual images and visual metaphors. The method of structural and functional modelling is used to present the layout of exercises and language content and the visual metaphor identification method is employed in the analysis of visual images. A conclusion is asserted of the instrumental role of visuals in English coursebooks for young learners as a medium of visual literacy and as a factor in streamlining the development of productive second language skills. This claim is substantiated by a case study that 1) demonstrates the contextualizing function of images and visual metaphors in English language coursebooks for young learners; and 2) explores the means, instruments and ways of visualizing the instructional content of two TEYL coursebooks published in 2014 and 2015.

Approaches to Teaching Agreement and Disagreement in Selected Coursebook Series

The article focuses on the explicit teaching of language used to express agreement and disagreement in the popular English language coursebooks English File and Navigate. It reviews the current research on teaching various aspects of polite language and politeness-sensitive speech acts and analyses and compares the explicitly taught phrases of agreement and disagreement in the two selected coursebook series, as well as the methods of their presentation and the amount of background theoretical information provided to students and teachers to facilitate their proper usage. Differences were identified not in the inventories and language representation of the explicitly taught phrases, but mainly in the background support available for students and teachers on their usage.

Teacher-practitioner Inquiry in Professional Development A Case of Adaptation and Resistance to Genre-based Systemic Functional Linguistic as a New Writing Instruction: A Case of Adaptation and Resistance to Genre-based Systemic Functional Linguistic as a New Writing Instruction

This qualitative study reports the results of sensemaking when teacher-practitioner inquiry in professional development (PD) is carried out for 120 Vietnamese K-12 and college teachers. The PD was designed to prepare teachers to teach with different newly-approved English language coursebooks using a genre-based systemic functional linguistic approach (SFL). During scaffolds in workshops, teaching staff guided teachers in cooperating and drafting lessons using genre-based SFL, examining the lessons’ impacts on students’ responses. Teachers also journaled to unravel the knitted instructional complexities and express their willingness to adapt to emerging teaching practices. Data were collected via the video recordings, teachers’ interviews, and content analysis of their inquiry products. Four themes representing the complexities in teachers’ sensemaking of scaffolded collaborative PD were: 1. Improved teacher agency in terms of planning and instruction; 2. Research-based experiential learning creating a venue for intrinsic motivation to innovate in instruction; 3. An overwhelming feeling of inequity between high and low-resourced instructional situations; 4. The mismatch between teachers’ advocacy for desired deep-learning approach and the traditional ideology of rote learning for exams.

Gender Representation in Secondary and High School EFL Coursebooks

This study investigates representation of male and female characters in the reading texts of English language coursebooks in the Turkish secondary and high school context. In order to examine the gender representation in reading texts, Hallidayan transitivity analysis was used; texts were analysed to to investigate representation of female and male characters as agents and the assignment of experiential processes to these characters. The findings show that as the students move up in their formal education and as the reading texts become more advanced and lengthier, the number of male agents increase radically. In addition, the agents in the most common two processes used in the reading texts are found to be predominantly male, while the remaining three processes identified were distributed between male and female agents more evenly. However, it is also found that there was still a general trend to assign agency to male characters in lengthier and more advanced texts of later years overall. The findings have implications for teachers as well as coursebook writers.

Evaluating the Long-term Effectiveness of English Language Coursebooks at Turkish Public High Schools

In this pre-use evaluation study, the long-term effectiveness of the contents of the English language coursebooks provided by the Ministry of Turkish National Education for high school students (i.e., 9th to 12th graders) in Turkey were evaluated, exploiting Tomlinson and Masuhara’s (2013) fifteen universal coursebook evaluation criteria. In so doing, the evaluators initially used the criteria independently to evaluate the coursebooks before achieving a consensus on their average scores. They discussed each criterion along with the effectiveness of the activities in two units (i.e., Unit 2 & Unit 7). The results indicated that the coursebooks are potentially quite effective in respect of providing students with communicative opportunities, use of idioms, integrated technology, self-evaluation opportunities, and illustrations in use. Conversely, some of the common deficient characteristics of the coursebooks encompass the lack of activities that promote the use of English as a lingua franca, being void of opportunities for students to continue learning English after the course, offering no flexibility for effective localization and insufficient catering for the needs of the students. All in all, the coursebooks can only be partially effective in facilitating long-term acquisition of English.

INCLUSIVE EDUCATION AND INCLUSIVE VALUES IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE COURSE BOOKS

INCLUSIVE EDUCATION AND INCLUSIVE VALUES IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE COURSE BOOKS

An analysis of the representation of cultural content in English coursebooks

PurposeThe aim of this article was to understand about cultural representation in these coursebooks and if it is reflected the status of English as a lingua franca.Design/methodology/approachThis article is a report on a case study in the form of content analysis of different categories of culture represented in English language coursebooks used in schools of Iran. In order to do so, references to source, target, international and universal cultures were classified into four aspects: perspectives, products, practices and persons.FindingsGenerally, the findings suggested that despite the high frequency of cultural elements, the representation favoured the source culture, while the target, international and universal cultures were heavily under-represented.Research limitations/implicationsApart from the valuable contributions of the study, the implications of the study are that despite the high frequency of cultural elements, the representation favoured the source culture, while the target, international and universal cultures were heavily under-represented. Therefore, the imbalance in the content of materials on different cultures needs to be redressed. While the main concern of this investigation is the frequency of appearance, which replicates the extent of source, target, international and universal cultures represented in the coursebooks, the impact of the materials, affected by how the cultural elements are used and perceived by teachers and pupils, is beyond the scope of the present study; hence, future studies in this area are deeply encouraged, and it is recommended for further research.Practical implicationsThe implications for resolving the imbalance in cultural representation are also being explained.Originality/valueBearing in mind the importance of coursebooks as well as the role of culture in teaching the English language, this article aims at understanding about cultural representation within the newly developed Iranian English language coursebooks for schools, an issue that has never been studied by Iranian scholars with respect to the newly published materials.

Evaluation of ‘English for Undergraduates’- a course-book for English Language Teaching at University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Pakistan from Teachers' Perspectives

English language course-books are inevitable in English language classes. Teachers often find English language course-books very helpful. The evaluation of English language course-books will make the course-books more effective. This study evaluates ‘English for Undergraduates’- a course-book prescribed for English language classes at University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Pakistan (UOSJP). The framework of Alan Cunningsworth (1995) is partially adapted to evaluate the book on the criteria of reading skill, writing skill, representation of culture and the organization of its contents.This research study is exploratory, based on survey research design using quantitative method. This study performs post-use evaluation of ‘English for Undergraduates’ using checklist method. Questionnaire based on adapted criteria checklist is used as a data-collecting instrument. Twenty-seven (27) English language teachers of University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Pakistan (UOSJP) are the sample of this study. Data obtained is analyzed through SPSS (version 23.0) and interpreted through descriptive statistics technique. The findings of this study reveal that ‘English for Undergraduate’ meets the low degree of evaluation on the criteria of reading, culture and organization; however, criteria of writing skill meets the moderate degree of evaluation. Keywords: Textbook Textbook Evaluation Criteria for Textbook Evaluation DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/10-22-08 Publication date: November 30 th 2020

Evaluation of the English language coursebooks used at the Turkish public elementary schools

This study sought to evaluate the English language coursebooks used at the Turkish public elementary schools. In so doing, a series of coursebooks used in English courses of the curriculum prepared by the Turkish Ministry of National Education were evaluated, using Tomlinson and Masuhara's (2013) set of coursebook evaluation universal criteria. Results indicated that the layout, listening skill, illustrations in use, and affective engagement are the positive traits of the coursebooks, while the negative features outnumber the positive traits. The evaluation indicated that the Turkish public elementary English coursebooks are void of a number of important aspects of language acquisition, including communication-based activities, continuation of using English outside of the classroom, discovery enhancing input and most importantly extensive exposure to English. The central focus of the coursebooks is on the accuracy and repetition rather than effective outcomes, meaningful communication and long term language acquisition. Most activities in all coursebooks contain practice activities, with no place for productivity and autonomy on the part of the students. Additionally, there is no sufficient personalization and the coursebooks fail to make use of what students bring to classroom. Nor are the learners required to think critically, creatively or analytically in most of the activities. The coursebooks do not encourage learners to continue learning English by themselves, thus lacks encouragement for autonomy as well. The activities are designed to practice language items within the classroom environments. Hence, learning does not go beyond the classroom environment with the help of the coursebooks. Nor do the coursebooks guide or encourage learners to make discoveries by themselves. The bombardment of repetitive practice activities that only assess accuracy does not seem to be able to lead to long-term acquisition of English.

Topic and subject in Chinese and in the languages of Europe: Comparative remarks and implications for Chinese as a second/foreign language teaching

AbstractGrammatical notions like that of ‘subject’ are widely used in second language teaching. However, while the grammatical subject is generally regarded as easily identifiable in the Indo-European languages of Europe, as e.g. English, French or Italian, and is a key element in determining word order, the application of this notion to Chinese has given rise to endless controversies. On the other hand, pragmatic-discourse considerations such as topichood, world knowledge, and context, and semantic notions such as agency, causation, and the roles of participants in the described event, appear to be more significant in Chinese as factors determining word order and interpretation of utterances. In this paper, we first provide an overview of the main differences concerning subjecthood, topichood and word order in English, Italian and Chinese, highlighting their impact on learner varieties of Chinese. We then summarise the state-of-the-art of research on subject and topic, with a focus on Chinese. Lastly, we discuss the implications of these theoretical issues for Chinese as a Second/Foreign Language teaching: to this end, we propose a critical overview of how the issue of topichood and subjecthood are treated in a sample of recent English-language, Italian-language and Chinese-language coursebooks and reference materials, and propose some recommendations for instructors.

Occupation and Gender Stereotypes in Primary School: The Case of the English Language Coursebooks in Greek Primary Schools

This research refers to gender stereotypes, which exist in English language coursebooks in Greek primary schools and the possible influence these stereotypes may exert on the choice and development of an individual's career. After conducting a content analysis on the Primary School's English language coursebooks, the results prove the existence of gender stereotypes mainly in the 5th and 6th grade coursebooks. The references and pictures, which show male performing certain occupations obviously outnumber the ones depicting female occupations. Furthermore, in the coursebooks, there are stereotypical ideas such as: manual occupations which are ruled by men, while occupations which relate to education and care are performed by women. Moreover, an attempt was made to triangulate this research with semi-structured interviews, which were conducted to English language teachers. According to the English language teachers' experiences, the existence of gender stereotypes on occupation is evident in the English language coursebooks of the 4th, 5th and 6th grades, but is minimal in the textbook of the 3rd grade. To sum up, most of the teachers, who were interviewed claim that later in life, career choice is influenced by the stereotypes which exist in the 4th, 5th and 6th grade coursebooks, but only to a limited extent. According to the teachers who were interviewed, the teaching methods and approaches, which are applied by the teachers and which concern the teaching of the coursebooks and the social and family background of the students are the main factors, which influence the student and which exert a strong impact on the student's career choice.

Gender representation in Iranian English language coursebooks

The representation of gender in foreign language teaching has attracted the attention of many scholars and has been investigated in different parts of the world. Due to its potential for deep impact on pupils, it is a matter of great concern. Discrimination against a gender group in coursebooks can lead to harmful impacts on pupils' development as well as on their future academic and career (Lee, 2018). The lack of representation of females in language coursebooks may seriously harm their ability to understand the target language as well as its culture (Rifkin, 1998).

Nacionalna kultura u udžbenicima engleskog jezika

Foreign language coursebooks, including those for English language teaching, do not only present the language itself, but also the culture pertaining to the community whose language is being studied. A large number of English language coursebooks can be found on today’s market which present the language through the culture of anglophone countries, while the culture that students originate from is generally rarely presented. Although major publishers have editions adapted for large markets, such as, for example, Indian, Chinese or some other, large European market, cultures pertaining to languages ​​with fewer speakers are generally rarely represented in coursebooks printed in anglophone countries. Although some publishers offer localised versions of coursebooks, too, the localisation is mainly applied in smaller segments, while most of the teaching material is still based on the culture of anglophone countries. Thus, coursebooks that are written by foreign authors for international markets can never fully meet the requirements of national curricula, or the needs of the participants in the teaching process. A combination of elements of different cultures is an ideal framework for language ​​acquisition in correlation with other school subjects that, by their nature, include culture, which is one of the most important aspects of contemporary foreign language teaching. Although it is indisputable that the culture of anglophone countries has to be presented in English language coursebooks, the question is which cultural elements the students will be familiar with, which ones need to be further explained, and to what extent the local (source) culture should be incorporated in the coursebook and how it should be related to the foreign (target) culture. In this paper, we will try to propose a model that can overcome these problems and offer general guidelines for writing coursebooks intended for a local market.

The Role of Culture in Foreign Language Acquisition

Language is a basic tool for communication. It expresses feelings, emotions, needs, thoughts, etc. Culture is the actual life of a particular group of people. This research aims at defining language and culture, and it examines the relationship between them as well as the important role that culture plays in teaching and learning English as a foreign language in Libya. This study is made up of two parts; theoretical and practical. The theoretical part sheds light on the relation between language and culture and on how to incorporate culture in English language course-books. The practical part includes two sections; the first is an analysis of the cultural content of the course-books used in the secondary level in Libya while the second takes care of collecting data from the target population; i.e. the students who have already finished the secondary school and are currently in the first semester at Al-Asmariya Islamic University, Libya. The targeted students belong to six faculties. Questionnaire was the tool used for collecting data for this study. The data collected was analysed statistically. The results showed that culture plays a significant role in acquiring language. Generally, there were negligible effects of both gender and school on language acquisition. Briefly, the students in the faculties of Medicine, Dentistry, and Arts hade higher scores than those of their colleagues in other faculties.Furthermore, the results indicated that the highest score was 89% while the lowest was 23%. Whereas 94% of respondents had scores greater than 40%. Anyhow, the researchers argue for the necessity of organising training courses for the teachers of English in the secondary level as well as supplying the necessary teaching aids for language classes, so that the cultural content can be taught more effectively.

On the Practice of Developing Vision-centered Tasks for the Local Materials for Learning English: A Case of Iranian Secondary Schools English Language Coursebooks

A large number of research studies have contributed to the significant role of motivation in the field of applied linguistics. Recently, based on the L2 motivational self model and the concept of ideal self, the concept of the desired second language learner vision have been introduced. However, the gap between the theories in applied linguistics and their practice in materials development is also seen in the practice of vision centered tasks for English language learners. With the publication of the new course books for learning English at Iranian secondary schools entitled PROSPECT the need for the adaptation of these local materials in light of the construction of the successful English language learners’ vision is felt. Thus, the purpose of the present study was to develop vision-centered tasks for the first book of PROSPECT series. To do so, vision-centered tasks for all the units of the book related to their themes and topics were developed based on the framework of successful language learners’ vision. First, tasks were developed to help learners create their own vision of successful learner. Next, created vision was followed by some tasks to strengthen it and make it plausible. Besides, some other tasks were developed to focus on the transfer of such visions into actions, keeping them alive as well as counterbalancing learners’ vision by their failure. The results of the pilot of these tasks indicated the success of English language learners in the construction of successful language learners’ vision. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s4p340

Socially Responsible Teaching and English Language Coursebooks: Focus on Ethnicity, Sex, and Disability

The purpose of this study is to analyze the reading passages and related pictures published in English language coursebooks in terms of ethnicity, sex and disability by relating them to socially responsible teaching. A checklist formerly used by Cunningsworth (1995) was adapted and used for the purposes of this study. This checklist included the headings of nationalities, whether any kind of disability is included or not, types of disability, number of males and females and gender specific roles attached to males and females. A total of 240 reading passages were analyzed throughout the study and frequencies and percentages for each coursebook were calculated. Results indicate that the coursebooks analyzed generally lack sensitivity to differences based on nationalities, sexes and disability. Results also demonstrate that disability gets little or no place in the coursebooks studied. Also, it was found that females are not represented equally with males. With regards to ethnicity, native speakers of English appear in the coursebooks more than non-native speakers do

Calling for English for Specific Cultures-based Coursebooks in English as an International Language Era

In recent years, the emergence of English as an International Language (EIL) has paved the way for its global speakers to use it as a means of interacting globally, and representing themselves and their cultures internationally. Although English is globally considered as an international language and as a tool to be used in cross-cultural communication with people having various first languages from different parts of the world, native-speakers’ norms and cultures still dominate the language materials that are developed to be globally used. In fact, English language coursebooks insists on bombarding the ELT world with culturally-loaded native-speaker themes, such as actors in Hollywood (Coskun, 2009). Prodromou (1988) similarly underlines the issue that the majority of English language coursebooks are published by major Anglo-American publishers in Inner Circle countries and these coursebooks include cultural situations that most students will never come across, such as ‘finding a flat in London’ (p. 80). Considering the importance given to the growing role of EIL, the issue of linguistic norms and cultural content in language learning materials has remained one of the unresolved problems in the process of materials development. A group of scholars argues in favor of localizing the materials by using the learners’ experiences and making English language coursebooks culturally responsive to their needs. The opponents solely favor the integration of the linguistic and cultural norms of the native speakers of English in language learning materials. As far as EIL is concerned, there are several aspects that need to be taken into close account when language teaching materials are being prepared to be globally used. In a nutshell, in EIL era, while preparing English language coursebooks, rather than just integrating English of Specific Cultures , the linguistic and cultural norms of the native speakers of English, as the sole reference in the contents of the English language coursebook, at least a due attention should be paid to English for Specific Cultures , the linguistifc and cultural norms of non-native speakers of English. This study recommends a group of essential features for the future English language coursebooks in EIL era.