Exam Focus 4: Current Themes in TEFL

In this exam I will to my best abilities try to answer the research question below. I will do this by using theorists’ (Pauline Gibbons and Lynne Cameron) point of view on what an “up to date” course book is. Afterwards I will give some alternative suggestions on what you can use if your school doesn’t have the resources to get new course books.

Research Question:

Why is it so important to have good course books that are up to date and what can an English teacher do, when having to work with outdated course books?

According to Gibbons a lot of pupils start learning reading with books that contain repetitive, small, simple words with no greater meaning and no story to tell.

Gibbons thinks that this can help us slow down children’s reading and make them loose interest in the activity. She calls these books mind-numbingly boring and says that we should ask ourselves what impression these kinds of texts give the readers. She also presents us with a list of criteria for choosing a quality story which will most likely raise the pupils’ interest in reading. The list contained amongst others: repetitive language, universal themes, content and words that is not immediately accessible to the reader.

Cameron defines a good book as one that the reader enjoys reading and the listener enjoys hearing. She says that children tend to like imaginative books that the reader can relate to, as in “monsters that live in families and tigers that drink tea in the kitchen”.

She also says that in order for the children to gain new language from the stories there has to be rehearsed vocabulary as well as vocabulary that is new to the pupils.

But the materials you choose to use depend a lot on what you as a teacher like to use.

If your school doesn’t have the resources to get new course books, the internet is a great resource for getting more updated materials. Libraries are also a great resource to borrow movies or texts for using in the classroom.

While being on exchange in a Montessori College in Ireland, I also experienced that the students got assignments that involved creating their own teaching materials. This would be a great idea to execute in regular teaching college as it is good training. It might be too much to create new materials for each lesson but it is good in addition to the other materials used in the classroom.

Resources:

Cameron, Lynne (2001): Teaching Languages to Young Learners  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)

Gibbons, Pauline (2002): Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning (Portsmouth: Heinemann)