Textbook Evaluation

Natalia Gonzlez

Faculty of Education
English Language Pedagogy
Didctica 2
Textbook Evaluation

I.

FACTUAL DETAILS

Title: Teens Club.

Author: Lina Alvarado Jantus.
Publisher: R&B EDICIONES.
Price: Free.
No. of Pages: 111.
ISBN: 978-956-8694-08-1.
Components: Students book, workbook, reading booklet, CD-ROM, Teachers
book.
Level: 2nd grade high school.
Units: 4.
Lessons: 2 per unit.
Sections: 7 (Getting Ready, Before You Start, Reading, Listening, Your English in
Action, Unit Check, Final Reflection).
Target skills: Reading, listening, writing, speaking

II.

ASPECTS AND COMMENTS

Faculty of Education
English Language Pedagogy
Didctica 2
Textbook Evaluation

a) Do the materials provide a balance of activities that is appropriate for your

students?
Yes_x__ No___
Comment: The balance provided is appropriate for the students in terms of
developing skills, as the book includes reading, listening, writing and
speaking in every unit. According to the book, the main objective is to
appeal to teenagers by providing them with materials related with their own
reality.

b) Is there a sufficient amount of communicative output in the materials under

consideration?
Yes___ No__x_
Comment: There are not enough activities related to communication. The
speaking activities at the end of every unit are rather poor and the tasks are

Faculty of Education
English Language Pedagogy
Didctica 2
Textbook Evaluation

more concentrated in teaching grammatical structures. Although it is hard to

get students involve in a communicative environment as their speaking
abilities regarding fluency and vocabulary are not the best in our public
(municipal) schools, the textbook should provide activities in which the
teacher can make an instance for students to speak. On the other hand,
there are a lot of activities that involve written production.

c) Do the materials provide enough roughly-tuned input for your students?

Yes_x__ No___
Comment: Several activities and materials are at a higher level of
proficiency the students current one. This is a good thing in terms of
challenging the students with the material without being overwhelmed by its
difficulty.

III.

REPORT

Based on the following aspects above, the textbook provides a certain structure in
which some of the factors included like providing cultural bias the book highlights
aspects of English speaking countries, such as information related to school life
and subjects, historical and geographical facts, cultural heritage and teenage styles
are meant to raise students awareness of the target culture, and, at the same time,
develop a richer perspective of their own culture.
Also, the coursebook responds to the students needs in terms of flexibility,
appropriacity and accessibility. On the other hand, there are some aspects to
improve like for example the guidance, as the coursebook alone is not enough and
the linkage, as the coursebook should include more online material.
In relation to the materials, the book provides a balance and the integration of skills
within different activities.

Faculty of Education
English Language Pedagogy
Didctica 2
Textbook Evaluation

Among other aspects, the amount of communicative output is not enough in

spoken activities. On the contrary written ones are sufficient.
Overall, this coursebook offers a wide variety of topics and tries to integrate the
four skills, although it needs improvement regarding the students learning styles
and activating the students involvement in a communicative and interactive way in
the class.

IV.

QUESTIONS

Language Content

1) The main grammar items are covered for each level, but satisfying the learners
needs is the teachers task, as he/she has to deal with different grammatical
aspects in an appropriate amount of time to ensure the learning so students can
move forward to the unit without having blank spaces in between.

2) There are vocabulary activities and material through which students develop
effective strategies for learning and keeping vocabulary records. A systematic use
of dictionaries is also encouraged.

Faculty of Education
English Language Pedagogy
Didctica 2
Textbook Evaluation

3) No, the coursebook include oral practice, but details in pronunciation are
omitted.

4) Style and appropriacy are deal with according to the level of formality of every
activity, so language style is matched to every social situation such as writing an
email to a friend or writing an application for a job for example.

Skills

1) Reading, writing and listening are covered according to the aims and
syllabus of the course, but the speaking skill needs improvement as my
course aims is directed to a more interactive and dynamic class, regarding a
communicative approach.

2) As the textbook is designed for integrating the four skills, every unit includes
all of these in every unit based on a specific topic. The activities are
designed to provide students with the language and skills they will need to
complete the tasks successfully. This approach helps students to see
language as a necessary tool, and gives the grammatical and lexical content
a clear purpose.

Faculty of Education
English Language Pedagogy
Didctica 2
Textbook Evaluation

3) The reading material of this textbook is one of the most significate aspects
of it. There are sufficient reading activities; the vocabulary of the activities is
suitable with the students level. In terms of motivation and interests the
reading material shows a lot of cultural diversity and also the language is
show in a contextualized way for the students.

4) The listening material is well recorded; some of the records are authentic, as
they include native speakers talking in real situations. There are questions,
vocabulary and activities for understanding the listening task. Most part of
the listening activities include the missing vocabulary in boxes.

Faculty of Education
English Language Pedagogy
Didctica 2
Textbook Evaluation

5) The oral practice and speaking activities are not that well designed, as the
context does not provide students with real situations that they will have in
their lives.

6) The writing activities are suitable as it is approached as a process, so it

makes students aware of the steps that need to be taken when writing, such
as making lists, drafting, and discriminating between main and secondary
ideas.

Topic

1) There is a lot of material to generate interest from part of the students, for
example in unit 3 (see example below) we can see a real context which is in
this case television and TV programs that are well known to everyone, but
it depends on the teacher to make this materials work and to get motivate
students motivate into the process of learning.

Faculty of Education
English Language Pedagogy
Didctica 2
Textbook Evaluation

2) There are 4 units in the textbook; each of one is related to topics, which are
the followings: Student life, Challenges, Arts and Entertainment and
How About Working. I think the variety is well distributed and it is sufficient
to cover the syllabus.

3) The topics are designed for create students awareness. However there is
not so much of it left into practice, as is just mentioned in the objectives of
the unit.

Faculty of Education
English Language Pedagogy
Didctica 2
Textbook Evaluation

4) The topics are sophisticated enough and sometimes a little bit above the
learners language level, which is not that bad as it helps to provide a
roughly tuned input.

5) It is hard to get students involved and related to the social or cultural context
presented in these textbooks, mainly because the interest they have in
learning a new language is not very much. They often are not motivated to
learn English as they do not think it is going to be relevant in their lives, and
Im referring in most part to public schools (municipal) because Ive seen
this at my teaching practice.

6) Yes. There is no discrimination found in this textbook whatsoever.

7) In terms of diversity the textbook has a wide variety as I mentioned above.

We can see this in the following unit.

Methodology

Faculty of Education
English Language Pedagogy
Didctica 2
Textbook Evaluation

1) Content-based instruction and task-based learning: as I said before this

coursebook helps students develop language learning skills to carry out
tasks related to the content.

2) It can be expected a development of learner autonomy which totally match

to the expectations and deals with different learning styles.

3) Vocabulary: The key vocabulary in each lesson is presented in the Key

Word Spot.

Grammar: As I mentioned above, students are presented with an inductive

task in a section called Language Spot, in which they have to figure out how
the structure works in English, discovering both the use and the form.
They are not as suitable as I would prefer teaching new language items with
a inductive approach, which refers to the process of discovering general
principles from facts.

4) The methodology adopted through the lessons is a three-phase approach

consisting of before, while and after listening and reading activities.

Faculty of Education
English Language Pedagogy
Didctica 2
Textbook Evaluation

5) Communicative skills are supposed to be integrated with the other skills to

encourage communication.

6) Yes, the material includes developing students awareness of how they

learn and how they develop their learning strategies, to become more
effective and independent learners. But is the teachers task to encourage
students to analyze their learning process, making them think about the
problems they have faced and how they could improve their performance.
This is supported in this textbook in a section called Reflection Spot.

Faculty of Education
English Language Pedagogy
Didctica 2
Textbook Evaluation

Final Score: 13 points.

V.

RECOMMENDATION

The evaluation and analysis of the Teens Club textbook, which is the official
English textbook of the Mineduc, lead me to the conclusion to use it with the
students of second grade of high school, since it fulfils the requirements of the
syllabus and most part of the students needs taking into consideration that the
textbook will be used just as a guide for the teacher who has the task to
supplement it with other materials in order to perfect it.

Faculty of Education
English Language Pedagogy
Didctica 2
Textbook Evaluation

According to Cunningworth (1986), no coursebook will totally be suited to a

particular teaching situation. The teacher will have to find his own way of using it
and adapting it if necessary. So we should not be looking for the perfect course
book which meets all our requirements, but rather for the best possible fit what the
book offers and what we as teachers and students need.
In addition, the book meets the teaching objectives and its availability and free cost
allows all the students to own one.
Finally, as an important aspect to consider, this book shows more context to
Chilean students than a standard one from English speaking countries would do. It
also provides a wide variety of topics and promotes awareness of the target culture
and at the same time develops a richer perspective of the students own culture.

Faculty of Education
English Language Pedagogy
Didctica 2
Textbook Evaluation

REFERENCES

Blent, . N. A. L. Coursebook Selection Process and Some of the Most Important

Criteria to be Taken into Consideration in Foreign Language Teaching.