Evaluation of Textbooks & Development of Supplemental Materials
Evaluate two textbooks (and/or other materials) for a particular context and create materials on your own to supplement a unit in one of the textbooks.
Step 1: Gathering Materials to analyze A number of the ESL/EFL textbooks and materials may be found in the library. These collections are a valuable place to start, but they are not comprehensive. To locate other materials you might interview local ESL teachers and perhaps other veteran teachers you know. What texts do (or did) they use in their teaching, and what are the strengths and weaknesses of those texts?
Step 2: Evaluating Two Textbooks Once you have selected two textbooks that are appropriate for your context, you will need to do an in-depth evaluation (and comparison) of the two texts. For this paper, “evaluation” will mean the following: ? Identifying the theoretical and methodological basis of the textbooks (notional-functional, communicative, audio-lingual, etc… or a combination of approaches). Often this is described in the preface of the book or the teacher’s guide, but you may also derive it inductively from the table of contents or from exercises in the book. ? Thinking critically about how culture is presented in the materials. How is American culture presented? What other cultures are represented, and how are they treated? Would the materials be appropriate for the students in the context you have chosen? What changes or elaborations might you have to make as a teacher? ? Thinking critically about the exercises and tasks in the materials. Do they seem appropriate for the background, learning goals, and level of proficiency of the students in your context? Are there too many exercises (or too few) for each unit? Which exercises and activities would you use, and which would be optional or left out of your teaching plans? (You may wish to examine one chapter or unit for this analysis rather than discussing the entire book.) ? Evaluating the textbook as a whole in terms of layout, visual aids, authenticity of language, and other global concerns.
Step 3: Developing Supplemental Materials Select one lesson or unit in one of the textbooks and develop additional materials on your own to supplement the textbook. To accomplish this, you will need to do the following: 1. Identify the specific lesson or unit in the textbook that you are supplementing 2. Provide an outline of the additional materials that you will create 3. Create the materials themselves and include in your paper. You should create a minimum of three (3) exercises/activities, and they should appear in your paper in the format that you would give to your students. These materials may include controlled, guided, and free activities and tasks.
Step 4: Writing the Paper although the above requirements may seem somewhat mechanical, I would urge you not to use an “outline” format for your paper (i.e., simply “listing” a collection of ideas). Instead, organize the paper in any way you wish and try to make I flow in a readable fashion. Use paragraphs as the organizing principle and break the paper into several sections, but don’t create too many subsections.
The specific parts of this paper will include:
A. An introduction, including a description of the teaching context and goals
B. Evaluation and critical analysis of the two textbooks (and/or other published materials) for this context (at least five pages of analysis)
C. An outline of a published textbook lesson or unit which includes the supplemental materials that you will develop
D. The activities/tasks that you have developed (at least three controlled, guided, and/or free activities)
E. A conclusion to the paper, summarizing the insights you gained from the process of materials evaluation and development
F. An appendix with photocopies of tables of contents from the two textbooks and a photocopy of the unit or lesson you focused on for materials development outline and activities, which can be single-spaced.
The appropriate length of this paper is about 10 pages, double spaced in 12- point Arial type. (APA format)