APPLIED LINGUISTICS for BA Students in English
COURSE-BOOK EVALUATION
The basic principles of course-book evaluation
“Coursebook analysis and evaluation is useful in teacher development and helps teachers to gain good and useful insights into the nature of the material. Similarly, in teacher training, materials evaluation is a valuable component and serves the dual purpose of sensitizing student teachers to some of the more important features to look for in coursebooks and familiarizing them with a range of published materials” (Cunningsworth 1995:14).
There are two possible ways of making a judgement about a language coursebook; however, the one we might as well call “impressionistic overview” (Cunningsworth 1995:1) does not seem to be reliable as opposed to the professional evaluation based on a number of thoroughly worked out criteria.
Before arriving at the decision, whether the chosen course materials will fit our purposes, it is highly advisable to make a list of guidelines that help us with the analyses since the ”results of an evaluation will probably lead to a large investment of money in a published course” (Hutchinson – Waters 1987:96). Furthermore, from the moment ”such an investment is made, you will probably have to live with the consequences of it for some time, even if it later proves to have been a bad choice” (Hutchinson – Waters 1987:96).
Evaluating course materials carefully is not an easy job at all. The process of evaluation ”is basically a matching process: matching needs to available solutions” (Hutchinson – Waters 1987:97). Before going into a more detailed explanation and interpretation of what this matching means, one should come up with some kind of definition for the notion of needs.
Every foreign language course should be preceded and thus based upon a thoroughly carried out needs analysis. It involves the assessing of learners’ needs and aims concerning the language they are going to start. Cunningsworth (1995) enumerates several points to consider such as learners’ ages, levels, expectations and motivation, their previous language-learning experience, learning styles and interests. These points may, of course, seem obvious still, one cannot be sure whether they are constantly kept in mind during the whole course. Needs analysis therefore must not be regarded as a procedure that is useful only when grouping our learners but it also has to be given an important role until the course comes to an end. Learners, for example, who do not prove to be able to keep up with their classmates, will require special attention from the teacher. Every learner has individual personalities and changing attitudes towards the world and that has to be recognized, acknowledged and kept in mind by the teacher.
Hutchinson and Waters (1987) bring learners’ gender, nationalities and educational backgrounds as well into consideration, too. Cunningsworth (1995) pays special attention to teachers by focusing on various aspects of a learning teaching situation, such as the methodological approach they tend to prefer, the level of personal initiative they bring to their teaching, their freedom to diverge from the syllabus and whether they have the right to adapt or supplement the standard course-book.
The most important task before starting a course, or program as Cunningsworth (1995) refers to it, is to specify the aims of it as well as its specific objectives, such as language items, skills, functions to be covered.
It is also essential to describe the situation in which the learning and the teaching processes will take place in terms of the role and status of the target language in learners’ home country, intensity and length of the course, technical assistance and other resources available.
By bringing these factors together – that is the analyses of learners’ needs, teachers’ abilities and attitudes towards teaching, the aims and objectives of a given course, the learning-teaching situation – one can have a greater chance to get a clear picture of our ideal course materials and we will probably be able to match our needs to available solutions.
