CHOOSING A TEXTBOOK AND OTHER PRINTED MATERIALS

By Professor: Misiel Watson.

Choosing a textbook is one of the most important tasks for the foreign language teacher at any level. When we are choosing a textbook we should take into account the goals, communication, culture, subject content and thinking skills, bias, flexibility, physical characteristics, support materials and budget.

The goals of the program must be clearly stated. The materials should provide opportunities for meaningful purposeful language use. In regards to culture, it must be not focused only on a single country, region, or ethnic group, but it should be presented from a global perspective. Something very important that we must  take into account is that the illustrations and text are free from racial, gender, and cultural bias.

Students have different learning styles and the materials must provide options for a variety of them. If there are taped materials available, teachers must make sure they feature native-speaker voices speaking naturally and are clearly understood.

In summary, I would say that texbooks are an essential part of the class, so teacher should always make sure they are choosing the right one. 

PRIORITIES FOR EVALUATING INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS

By Professor: Misiel Watson


Instructional materials must  include features such as positive expectations, feedback and appearance in order to maintain learners motivation.  There are also factors that contribute to a learning climate such as: friendly, attentive, and encouraging communication; informative feedback on student progress and so forth.



Whenever students are learning we should not give them tasks that seem too easy or too difficult, because easy tasks are not challenging enough and hard tasks will overload the students memory , frustrate them so that they give up their effort to learn.


Besides, there are strategies that help students make personal connections to the course content and improve their  learning such as: using examples from student life, asking them to share personal experiences, examples and insights, and so on.


Moreover, we should take into account that students learn more when they generate their own questions about topics after receiving guidance about how to do so , when they relate, organize and represent knowledge in a new way and when they review feedback from test results.


Finally, I would say that instructional materials must include guidance and support to help students safely and successfully become more independent learners and thinkers.

Textbooks: Evaluation for Selection and Analysis for Implementation

By Professor: Misiel Watson



Textbooks are an essential part of a lesson and if teachers do not make the correct decisions in selecting them, they can face many difficulties. Teachers should have different encounters with textbooks as they make decisions about how to implement and suplement materials to make classe more effcetive and as possible for their students and for themselves.

According to the writer textbooks are for students. To meet their needs, the textbook must have not only the English language or communication skill content demanded by the curriculum, but it must also fit needs of students as learners of English. I agree strongly on this statement, because many times teachers use a textbook just to cover a topic or just to have the students doing something related with what they have already taught without taking into consideration if it provides enough things for the teacher to give his or her studentst to work with or if it really fulfill the students needs. 

In conclusion, I would say that prior to implementing a textbook, a teacher needs to read the whole book from start to finish in order to discover some useful features of the textbook. And teachers must always have in mind that they can only implement materials if they know they are there.

PRINCIPLES OF EFFECTIVE MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT

By Professor  Misiel Watson


I consider that for a class to be enjoyable, for students to be motivated and enthusiastic in the english class ,teachers should have all the necessary materials to develop the lesson. Those materials should be  authentic and interesting for the students. 

According to writer Brian Tomlinson, author of principles of effective materials development, the materials need to be written in such a way that the teacher can make use of them as a resource and not have to follow them as a script. He also believes that the teaching should be designed to help learners to achieve language development and not just language acquisition.  This means that students must learn how to use the language in real contexts, be able to use the language outside the classroom to communicate with others and not just learn the rules of the language.

To conclude I would say that, we as teachers can make of the english language something pleasant and enjoyable, all we need to do is develop materials that will encourage  and motivate students to learn.