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Abutaleb Iranmehr Materials for beginners

Materials for specific groups

Some scholars like Jill Johnson criticize the course books because they all have the same thematic topics and their approach to language learning and teaching. Most course books are to large extent influenced by classroom management and class dynamics rather than language acquisition. In recent books, there is more emphasis on talking from the beginning. Carlos Islam has confronted overlapping topics, and even, units in different books aimed at young adult and adult beginner learners. Comparing three books (Headstart, New Interchange and Atlas), he concludes that the advantage regarding these coursebooks is that the vocabulary and functions mentioned in these coursebooks are useful to learners of all cultures. The problem with these books is that there is no choice between them. Therefore, students who return to the course after some absence or repeat the same course encounter the same materials and teachers have no choice but devising a new lesson or using supplementary materials. He believes that the potential for language acquisition occurs when language input is relevant, significant, engaging and interesting to the learner. Repeating the same topics may reduce the potential for acquisition. Unlike publishers who are in search of market needs, teachers and learners are more in search of materials which have the potentiality for imagination, creation and affective engagement. The need for coursebooks which are completely different topics seems necessary.

He complains of the repeating cycle of the units and listen and repeat exercises which reminds us of audio-lingual books. The claims made by authors as manageable communicative exercises didnt come true with the exercises designed to practice structure. He calls it asymmetrical relationship between teaching and learning. Why dont learners learn what teachers teach? Learning is not in a linear additive way. Learning occurs when the students are given opportunities to apply their own experiences and feeling to the learning process. The curriculum should show that the learning process is complex, organic and unstable. In the end, he concludes that all three books follow a behavioral approach, audio-lingual pedagogy and focus on form and accuracy rather than meaning and fluency. Reviewing the beginner materials, the second problem raised is that the materials developers expect the beginners to start speaking from the beginning. A beginner doesnt know much about the language and should mimic the teacher or the tape in order to build up the competence and later start talking. In this way, they are given a false illusion of being able to talk but in reality they dont have the fluency needed to talk in that period. The materials developers should be aware of the fact that beginners, following Krashen model, remain silent and unable to produce meaningful language. Forcing students to speak before they are ready for it may lead them to suffering from cognitive overloading. First the learning processes such as decoding, recall, identifying sounds etc. should be automatized and then the students are prepared to produce the language. Also, premature production may cause affective problems for the students. Confronting the real situation,

they are unable to manage and then experience a negative feeling about the language and learning which is harmful. It seems that the beginner textbooks take an analytic, step-by-step, linear method to learning instead of a global, experiential look to learning. Theres a large body of evidence that most learners are of the latter group. Also most of the learners prefer kinesthetic input over auditory or visual input. Most of the input in beginner coursebooks is auditory or visual while kinesthetic learners prefer to use their experience through physical actions and not memorizing the language. Even using multiple learning styles makes all learners involve in learning process. Another problem Islam mentions is that the objective of the current beginner coursebooks is their emphasis on immediate language production which seems to be unreasonable. To develop good learners, materials writers should help them develop competence through comprehension approach which is based on learning through understanding the language. Even the native speakers dont know explicitly the grammatical rules they use in their production. The interrelationships among the components of language should be considered. Because a particular grammatical point is not acquired until the learners learns about a large body of grammatical points. Comprehension approach to learning is nonlinear and provides a global experiential emphasis to learning. The focal skills approach started in mid-1980s and is based on the premise that learners are exposed to comprehensible input before exposing to productive skills like speaking. The language is presented through actions, pictures and films.

Total Physical Response Total Physical Response is a method based on comprehension approach. It is useful for the global students, since most of them are kinesthetic and enjoy experiential learning styles. Therefore it solves the problems such as cognitive overload and linear progression. But it does not look appropriate for students with analytical learning style. Tomlinson introduced TPR Plus in which the teacher doesnt give commands to learners to follow. It is an extension for the TPR phase in which the students get involved in the what the teacher wants them to do such as cooking a recipe, finishing an unfinished story or painting about the story they heard. In this way, it convinces the students with analytical experience without disturbing their global learning. Also, this phase compensates for the lack of pragmatic functions of language since the students have to respond according to the context in which they are told to act. The coursebooks should provide learners with activities that do not require production but activities that engage them creatively. Furthermore, they should provide comprehension and meaning and exposure to varied input. Materials for adult beginners Vivian Cook makes three important assumptions about adult beginners: 1. Adult students have adult minds and interests. It means they are no longer children and they play their real goals outside the classroom.

2. Second language users are people in their own right. They grow a new identity through the new language they learn and they are able to translate or code-switch from one language into another. 3. Language teaching has been held back by unquestioning acceptance of traditional nineteenth century principles. Many of these principles have been added to the coursebooks without being thinking such as the priority of speech and the avoidance of the first language. Coursebook writers should evaluate the new trends and ideas entering the language learning field and evaluate which are reasonable to be incorporated into the new books to be published. Writing adult beginner coursebooks, writers should be careful about their learners since they are children and have their own minds, interests, social relationships and intelligence. Coursebooks act better accepted when the language of the book is on informal terms, detaching the adult learners from their real personalities in the real world. But care should be taken to give appropriate titles to people according the age group and social status since calling people with their first name is humiliating in some cultures. Topics should be chosen in a way that they are both interesting to talk about in classroom context and are related to real world situation the learner is going to encounter. Subject matters should also be adult-like and somehow representative of what an adult is concerned about not showing an ideal world. The problem mentioned by Cook about the coursebooks she reviewed is that the subject matters are void of political and religious matters and there is no discussion about adult

topic of conversation like television, sport and films. Therefore it seems essential to use adult-like conversations in adult coursebooks. The roles chosen should also be similar to the people the adult learner is going to meet in the workplace and neighborhood in L2 environment. Since the common activities observed in books are mostly childish and somehow infantilizes adult learners, activities have to be chosen in a way to activate the adult level of formal operational thinking. The goal most teachers and students have in mind is the native speaker norm and how close they can get to it. This native speaker target is show in language teaching but this is not true. There are many abilities in L2 learner which is lacking in L1 learner. Therefore the goals should change towards gaining a positive second language success. Regarding the language forms and pronunciation, most coursebooks stick to native speakers but in reality the talk between two non-native speakers is quite different. Having a better look at L2 language users, the need for English as an International Language based on the speech of L2 users seems necessary. Coursebooks dont present a favorable view of L2 users. In most books, they are presented as powerless tourists rather than usual L2 users working and living in English environments. Even the situations used in the books are L1 situations in which two native speakers talk. Therefore writers should appropriate the language according to L2 students needs not native speakers. So knowing the characteristics of L2 users like L2 users grammar and vocabulary is important.

In all modern coursebooks the emphasis is on the target language and no mention of first language. That is they deny the valuable use of L2 in assisting learners to internalize L2. It seems the monolingual principle still dominates todays research findings that show the invaluable asset of L1 in learning L2. The emphasis on the spoken language is another heritage from nineteenth century theories about language learning emphasizing the impotence of speaking and listening over reading and writing. Most of the conversations and readings in books are audio-taped and all lessons start with listening to two people speaking in L1 while other skills are put aside to the end of the lessons. A rational decision taken by writers is that which skill is most needed to the child or adult learners. Also learners learn language through different skills and strategies. Therefore imposing a special skill to all learners impedes their learning process. Writing skill is at the service of teaching spoken language and not given equal importance.

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