APPLIED LINGUISTICS for BA Students in English
COURSE-BOOK EVALUATION
Specific criteria to evaluate the content of course-books
From the point of view of language content Cunningsworth (1995) enumerates several aspects to check in course materials such as language form and language use, grammar, vocabulary, phonology, discourse, style and appropriacy, varieties of English. As far as form and meaning are concerned, “it is essential to reduce the learning load in the foreign language to assimilable units”, which “entails focusing on different aspects of the language separately” (Cunningsworth 1995:31). Course-books focus “selectively on different aspects of language form and language use. Language is analyzed and broken down into small units for teaching purposes. An essential question for teachers and material writers is how far a language can be analyzed and fragmented in this way without losing its nature and identity” (Cunningsworth 1995:31).
In order to get a clear picture of how a course-book deals with the teaching of grammar, some of Cunningsworth’s criteria might be worth taking into consideration (1995):
• The grammar items included;
• The presentation of grammar in small enough units for easy learning;
• The extense of emphasizing language forms;
• The extense of emphasizing language use (meaning);
• The balanced of the treatment of form and use;
• The relation and contrast of newly introduced items and items already familiar to the learners; the presentation of grammatical forms with than one meaning.
The primary role of presenting and teaching vocabulary cannot be questioned. Learning new words during a foreign language course is as important as using bricks when building a house. This building process, however, has to be made up of very refined steps. Simply loading our students' heads with long lists of words or definitions taken from dictionaries might not prove to be effective. Cunningsworth (1995) implies that teaching words in isolation or outside of context may also lead to little success. He advises to ”look for exercises which sensitize learners to the structure of the lexicon of English and to the various relationships that exist within it” (1995:38).
Cunningsworth (1995) says that good vocabulary development activities exploit semantic relations, situational relationships, collocations and relationships of form. His checklist for vocabulary contains the following criteria:
• The vocabulary-learning material included in its own right:
– Evidence for its prominence;
– Its relation to the course: central or peripheral;
• The amount of vocabulary taught;
• The basis for the selection of vocabulary;
• The distinction between active and passive vocabulary, or classroom vocabulary;
• The ways of presenting vocabulary;
• The sensitization of learners to the structure of the lexicon through
vocabulary-learning exercises based on:
– semantic relationships;
– formal relationships;
– collocations;
– situation-based word groups;
• The capacity of the material to enable students to expand their own vocabularies independently by helping them to develop their own learning strategies;
Teaching phonology is another major issue in foreign language pedagogy. Cunningsworth (1995) remarks that there should be no excessive emphasis on absolute correctness but rather an awareness of areas where typical misunderstandings occur. Cunningsworth adds that specialized terminology should be used only if it helps students analyze English and understand how it works. ”This principle applies equally to the use of the phonemic alphabet and we should see whether the course-book uses it and includes it for reference.” (Cunningsworth 1995:41-42).
The checklist for phonology includes the following points (Cunningsworth 1995):
• The extense of thorough and systematic coverage of each of the following aspects of the phonological system covered:
– articulation of individual sounds;
– words in contact (e.g. assimilation);
– word stress;
– weak forms;
– sentence stress;
– intonation;
• The extense of emphasizing areas of pronunciation that are important to meet learners’ needs and help avoid misunderstandings;
• The relation of pronunciation work to other types of work, such as listening, dialogue practice etc.;
• The extense of using terminology;
• The comprehensibility of terminology used;
• The extense of using phonemic alphabet used;
• The extense and ways of training students in learning phonemic alphabet;
• The extense of using a diagrammatic system to show stress and intonation;
• Availability of cassettes for pronunciation practice;
• The provision of good models for learners of cassettes for pronunciation practice;
Teachers should provide their students with good models of real-life - that is authentic - English at all levels. It does not, of course, mean the aspects of phonology only but, for instance, the aspects of discourse as well. Motivation can be greatly influenced by students' recognizing whether the language they are learning has any connection to the outside world, so it is absolutely important to teach them the different aspects of discourse in all areas. Cunningsworth (1995) remarks that course-books generally concentrate on the area of writing, whereas learning the rules of turn-taking in spoken conversation could be equally important.
Cunningsworth’s checklist (1995) for discourse covers aspects such as conjunctives, other features of cohesion, paragraphing and organizing written discourse, structure and conventions of spoken discourse, besides, he also suggests to check whether the examples of spoken and written discourse in the material provide good models for the learners, and whether the treatment of discourse is sustained throughout the whole course.
As far as style and appropriacy are concerned, Cunningsworth enumerates the following points to consider during the course-book evaluation process (1995):
• The reference to appropriacy;
• The teaching of appropriacy with reference to:
– choice of grammar;
– choice of vocabulary;
– discourse structure;
– pronunciation;
• Matching language style to social situation;
• The identification of situations or areas of language use where learners should be particularly sensitive to using appropriate styles;
Raising students’ awareness of the rules of style and appropriacy should be an integrated part of every language program so that students could best use their knowledge of English under different circumstances. Our students may have well developed writing skills but it might not be enough if they do not know how to produce letters according to the different levels of formality, for example.
Cunningsworth (1995) draws our attention to the different geographical varieties of English, of which the two most important ones are British English and American English. He also refers to the so-called international English, which he defines as a ’lingua franca’ in the world of businessmen, scientists and many others of different mother tongues. It might be useful to check whether course-books of a certain variety contain clear references (including phonetic transcription as well) to other varieties. British English dictionaries, for example, often give the American equivalents of the meanings of a number of words.
Skills development is another basic issue during a course evaluation process, which means that we have to check to what extent the materials concentrate on the development of and the balance among all four skills. Cunningsworth (1995) implies that ideal course-books include skills work that progresses in terms of complexity and difficulty, in line with the grammatical and lexical progression of the course. He also deals with the question of authenticity and suggests to check whether the presentation and practice activities include the integration of skills in realistic contexts; whether we can find authentic materials in our course-book; whether the semi-authentic materials found in the course-book can be regarded as representative of authentic discourse.
”Course-books focus on listening in two different ways. Firstly, as part of general oral work, including dialogues and role play, where listening plays a secondary role compared with speaking. The second way in which course-books handle listening is in its own right, with recorded listening passages for comprehension, for extraction of information, as a lead-in to discussion, in conjunction with a reading text, etc.” (Cunningsworth 1995:67-68).
Students may find listening activities one of the most difficult parts in a language course so teachers (or course-book writers rather) have to make sure that the recorded materials are of perfect quality, the speed of speaking matches learners' level, and learners meet features such as elision, weak forms and assimilation, for instance.
Cunningsworth’s checklist for listening skills development contains the following points to take into consideration during the evaluation process:
• The type(s) and quality of listening material of the course;
• The extense of integrating the listening part in dialogue and conversation work;
• Types of activities based on specific listening passages;
• The extense and nature of the meaningful context the listening material is set in;
• Types of pre-listening tasks;
• The quality of the recorded material in terms of:
– sound quality;
– speed of delivery;
– accent;
– authenticity.
In connection with speaking Cunningsworth remarks that “few courses treat speaking as a separate skill in the same way as listening, reading and writing. Speaking practice takes place through the oral presentation and practice of new language items, in dialogue work and in role play” (Cunningsworth 1995:69). However, course-books can provide students with carefully selected topics for discussion or communication (information gap) activities, thus making students take part in more or less realistic interactions. one should also look for specific strategies that help students manage their conversation.
Reading texts, as Cunningsworth (1995) notices, can be used for different purposes, such as developing students' reading skills and strategies, presenting or recycling grammar items, extending students' vocabulary, providing models for writing, giving information of interest to students, stimulating oral work. When analyzing the reading content of a general course-book, one needs to consider:
• The quantity of reading material;
• The type of reading passages included;
• The provision of reading passages introduced in a beginners’ course;
• The extense and quality of help given to learners in developing good reading strategies;
• The nature and range of exercises and activities linked to the reading passages;
For this, one also has to check the lengths of the texts, their complexity concerning their grammatical and discourse structure, the range of vocabulary, their level of authenticity.
Cunningsworth adds a number of other points to reading text analysis. These are the following:
• The appropriacy of the subject matter;
• The types (genres) of text used and their appropriacy;
• The nature of texts in terms of their being complete or gapped;
• The ways the material helps comprehension by:
– setting the scene
– providing background information
– giving pre-reading questions?
• The types of comprehension questions;
• The extense of the involvement of learner’s knowledge system int he material.
As far as writing skill activities are concerned, Cunningsworth (1995) suggests that one should get a clear picture of:
• how the materials deal with controlled writing, guided writing, free or semi-free writing;
• the variety of writing tasks found in the course-book;
• the extent to which the materials teach punctuation and spelling;
• the emphasis on accuracy and different styles of written English;
• how learners are encouraged to review and edit their written work;
• a possible readership to whom students produce different sorts of texts.
Teaching the rules of communicative interactions should be considered as another important function of course materials. In order that students can best use their oral communicative skills, they have to be aware of basic points such as how other speakers can join a conversation, where a current speaker is most vulnerable to interruption, how to appoint someone to speak next, how to use and interpret the combination of linguistic, paralinguistic and kinesic cues (the use of eye contact, for example). “Course-books interested in equipping learners communicatively could provide models of and practice in turn-taking and interruption techniques” (Cunningsworth 1995:127-128).
Cunningsworth suggests a number of points to look at in connection with communicative interactions. The most important ones are the following:
• The elements of genuine communication present int he course material:
– unpredictability
– opportunities to express real information, feelings, opinions etc.
– opportunities for learners to structure their own discourse
– need to formulate and use communication strategies
– emphasis on co-operation between speakers in communicative interaction?
• At the appropriate level, does the course-book include material that reflects the nature of communicative interaction, in respect of:
– structure of discourse in interactions (including openers, confirmation checkers, pre-closers etc.)
– complexity of structure
– range of appropriate lexis
– features such as fillers and incomplete sentences
– roles of speakers in interactions;
• The extense the material helps learners in the skill of turn-taking in conversations;
• Examples of preferred sequences .” (Cunningsworth 1995:129).
From the point of view of content, as Cunningsworth (1995) advises, that one should clearly define the extent to which the content of our materials is selected according to structure, functions, situations or topics. It is also advisable to check whether the topics in the materials have relevance to reality and students' knowledge of the world; whether they are sophisticated enough in content; informative, humorous, amusing, controversial and challenging for learners. It might be interesting to find any reference to other subjects in our English language course materials, such as reference and connection to sports, mathematics, geography or history, for instance.
Cunningsworth (1995) states that course-books with any subject content directly or indirectly communicate sets of social and cultural values. They constitute the so-called hidden curriculum, which is part of all educational programs, but is never explicitly articulated.
Further criterion for materials evaluation could be the aspect and measure of authenticity present. It can be evaluated as the authenticity of texts and realia included in the particular teaching resource, or the realistic behavior of students when they are stimulated to act upon particular situations and the varieties of language. (Fenner – Newby 2000). All these aspects lead us to the question of cultural awareness raised and handled by course materials.
As far as the cultural considerations are concerned, one should pay attention to the following points:
• ”Are the social and cultural contexts in the course-book comprehensible to the learners?
• Can learners interpret the relationships, behavior, intentions etc. of the characters portrayed in the book?
• Are women given equal prominence to men in all aspects of the course-book?
• What physical and character attributes are women given?
• What professional and social positions are women shown as occupying?
• What do we learn about the inner lives of the characters?
• To what extent is the language of feeling depicted?
• Do the course-book characters exist in some kind of social setting, within a social network?
• Are social relationships portrayed realistically?” (Cunningsworth 1995:92).
Cunningsworth also (1995) encourages us to identify any possible unrepresentative negative stereotypes in our course materials, such as the social and/or mental ’inferiority’ of women. However, ”gender differences are not the only area of possible discrimination or unflattering portrayal” (Cunningsworth 1995:91). Other crucial areas might be that of ethnic origin, occupation, age, social class, disability or religious matters.
