Hi everybody,
Hope you had a great weekend. Here is our third forum. We are going to talk about the use of some basic elements in class tomorrow. One of them is the textbook. Using a textbook has many different advantages but it might get some disadvantages as well. Look at the following chart presenting some common difficulties students and teachers might face when using books. Choose a problem and post a solution to overcome that difficulty. Thanks for sharing!"
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Weakness
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Teacher/Student Difficulty
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Ways of Overcoming Problem
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The textbook is designed as a the sole source of
information.
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Students only see one perspective on a concept or
issue.
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Textbook is old or outdated.
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Information shared with students is not current
or relevant.
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Textbook questions tend to be low level or
fact-based.
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Students assume that learning is simply a
collection of facts and figures.
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|
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Textbook doesn't take students' background
knowledge into account.
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Teacher does not tailor lessons to the specific
attributes and interests of students.
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Reading level of the textbook is too difficult.
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Students cannot read or understand important
concepts.
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The textbook has all the answer to all the
questions.
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Students tend to see learning as an accumulation
of correct answers.
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“ The most important aspect of coursebook use is for teachers to try engage students with the content they are going to be dealing with.”
ReplyDelete“It is important to remember that students need to be able to see a coherent pattern to what we are doing and understand our reason to change.”(Jeremy Harmer,The Practice of English Languaje Teaching. pag.182- 183)
With these two principles expressed by the author of our coursebook in mind, first, I want to emphasize the importance of choose the correct coursebook according with coherent syllabuses for each academic institution.
Then, the next discussion about using coursebooks as a tool, is focused in how to use them appropriately.
I consider that a vital part during introduction to a new course,is when the teacher clarifies to her/his students if a classbook will be used or not and if the option is the first one, what methodology will be used in order to take advantage of it justifying effort, time, money invested.All for the benefit of students.
I like your comment Viviana,
DeleteI agree with you that is so true and very important that the students need to see a coherent patttern to what we are doing and understand the reson to change, very good.
Hi Viviana,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your reply. I do agree with Mr. Harmer's words, and I am very happy to see you are reading and highlighting. I think that your comment fits right into the discussion we are going to have tomorrow in class about the use of books.
P.S. I still would like to know if you have a solution for one of the problems we stated.
DeleteHello teacher!
Of course! That was just an introduction to give my solution to overcome the difficulty No. 5: Students can not read or understand important concepts.
Why this happens?
For sure, al least one of the principles that I mentioned above was omitted, because one of the symtoms when students don’t understand important concepts in a textbook is because the election of the textbook wasn’t according with the current level of the students.
As a teacher, how to overcome this difficulty?
I suggest:
1. IDENTIFICATION: Identify what difficulties exactly the students have with the reading textbook( too dense, too long readings, vocabulary sophisticate or unknown..).One way to do it:Choosing one reading from the current coursebook, making questions to the students in orden to find out the grades of difficulties.
2. REVISION OF THE COURSEBOOK: With the results from the identification stage, my next step would be a general revision of the coursebook and write a letter to the director with my comments about the difficulties and the need to reconsider the usage of this particular coursebook and the proposal to change it for a new one according to the current level of the students. Another suggestion would be the option to replace it with other kind of reading activities from different sources. Thank you both for your replies.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Deletetextbook is old or outdated
ReplyDeleteI feel that a textbook is an excellent way to teach and learn,
thats the way thay taugt me as a child and as a teenager,and that i still use, but just like everything also is going to have their ups and downs. downs like they are old or they are tearing apart, or they dont have all the information requiered, or they are just boring.
the solution is to be updated as much you can as a person or as a teacher to avoid those things,because as we go technology keeps advancing so we could use this new tools in our class at the same time while we use our textbook to achieve more interest.
I agree with you Alberto, it depends on the teacher how he delivers his lesson every time. Tools are just there, but it all depends on us how to use them.
Deleteyes Alberto i do agree the books are a good way of learning, but now days everthing is moving with technology. theres no reason to be walking around with so many textbooks when you could easely find it on a web page.
DeleteFor sure Mr. Alberto that was the same way I learnt and I find it really useful using textbooks, having the feeling of the textbooks is amazing in regards to knowledge. obviously there are ups and downs of this materials as they tear off, gets damage, are expensive and when currying it reminds you of what they are; as technologies keeps evolving we can have hundreds of books in a singles device or not even that, having books accessible from anywhere in the word with just an internet connection.
DeleteMixed feeling right here. I know some people might think it is kind of old-fashioned to be reading a book instead of using an Ipad or a tablet but there is magic in books you can not find anywhere else. I think having the chance of really using a book, I mean writing on it, highlighting and using it any time you want and as many times you want is priceless.
DeleteYou can use a book even if it is not up-to-date and there you can use students background or technology as a complement.
Thanks for sharing
I believe its true, it depends on how the teacher delivers and that goes for any type of teacher. I also agree with willy that in books there is magic and not only in the highlighting process but just having it physically makes the difference, and using tablets your exposed to many distractions.
DeleteI too was brought up in school with good old fashion textbooks. The disadvantage to this is wear and tear thats why i think books are slowly being replaced with digital technology where u dont run into this problem
DeleteI think that textbooks are a very useful resource that we have because it is design by people who know a lot of methodology so we are able to understand the different aspects of a lesson or a certain methodology in practice, besides, when you observe three or four books you can see certain differences in methodology and that may lead you to think what are the implications in terms of learning of every organization. That is a very good thing to do. Nevertheless, there a teachers who stick so much to the textbook that they end up focusing on it rather than the student. That is why some people say "teach the learner, not the book" I reckon that the weaknesses mention above are totally true only depending on the teacher because for what I understand the teacher will be always able to, which is also he is supposed to do, revise the material and change it by extending it, shortening it, Changing the level of the tasks, etc.
ReplyDeleteHi Juan,
DeleteI agree with you when you emphasis the important role teachers take into taking the material and "tailor" it to fit our students' needs. There are many ways you can tantalize the use of the material in a book.
Weakness: Textbook doesn't take students' background knowledge into account. Teacher/Student Difficulty: Teacher does not tailor lessons to the specific attributes and interests of students. Ways of Overcoming Problem: For this specific difficulty, the teacher has to plan his/her lesson according to the students' knowledge and don't focus on the topics that the book has, not in the same order or activities that the book presents, as teachers, we have to take the control of the class, and that only will happen if we think in our students' needs and backgrounds.
ReplyDeleteThe textbook has all the answer to all questions:
ReplyDeleteMy best solution would be getting students motivated in correcting mistakes activities, questions that required a higher level of English involving different kinds of fun and interesting activities.
Well Monica some of them and in most cases the teacher’s guide only. So I guess students find it difficult or boring but as you said the best solution is to get students motivated in the use of them and implementing additional interesting activities and fun game will do for sure.
DeleteAs well as a background knowledge from the students in regards to the topic is crucial
DeleteWell Monica I think sometimes it's just the books have all answer because anyway your students always can complement the answer using their creactivity in activities of writting. I thinking this kind of problem is for grammar tasks, but remember grammar also could be fun as you said. Making fun and interesting activities.
DeleteWell in my opinion there are disadvantages and obviously advantages when working and teaching with textbooks. There are many more advantages to the use and benefit of a textbook as a detail sequence of teaching procedures, organized detailed units of work, balance and linear presentation of information which are very much useful and are excellent teaching aids.
ReplyDeleteThe way that a teacher uses a book is a key tool to the extracting of information as well as the way to be Implemented within the class and to students themselves. Textbook brings a lot of sequence and chronological information base on the topic or topics needed it throughout the student academic process, we teachers can benefit as these textbooks are well prepared and formed by one or more teachers with a high level of expertise, college professors and educational experts.
In addition to this there are and will be disadvantages throughout this process of learning while implementing the textbooks and guidance and working material, as some students tends to see and reject them by and because the amount of information or data on them, the time it takes and the effort that must be put on them to summarized it, used it, difficulties to understand the relevance and because they might be out of date or it isn’t quite accessible as other technologies resources that now days tends to change the physical use of textbooks.
The problem that I have chosen from the chart of common weaknesses of textbooks was:
ReplyDeleteWeakness: textbook doesn’t take students’ background knowledge into account.
Students Difficulty: teacher does not tailor lessons to the specific attributes and interest of students.
Ways of Overcoming Problem: first of all find out previous knowledge or information given about the topic and what the students know before the starting of the class. Having the information related to the topic from the students it is most beneficial and acceptable to students to have a guide through the topic, fundamentals and as a lesson plan have a review of the topic with examples and some basic exercises to follow what they know about the topic in order to have the basics and to reinforced it if need it.
Hi Mariano,
DeleteI feel you have focused on a very important part of the process of adapting contents of a book to our students' specific needs. The fact we get to know our students as individuals and keep in mind their backgrounds can really make a difference to make our lessons memorable and useful.
Thanks mate.
thanks mate to you too, I am finding this way of learning and teaching very useful
DeleteI couldn't agree more with the two of you! Finally, it's all about our students needs and motivation. If lessons find an effective / productive balance between the use of a course book and other creative and useful ways of information, teachers will indeed be making a big difference!
Deleteas everything in life if you love what you doing and is entertained, you can spend hours doing it without feeling the time and you get the things easily, because you are really focus on it.
DeleteTo know the context is very important for teachers and specially when they introduce new concepts. And Mariano explained in a very succesful way.
DeleteI agree with you guys, when textbooks don’t take students’ background knowledge into account getting to know it before you introduce a new topic is the best way to overcome this problem, plus it will help you focuse on the weaknesses now that you know them. That way class gets better and students notice that you want to work on those things they know they are having difficulties with.
DeleteWeakness: textbooks are old or outdated.
ReplyDeleteSolution: this is a simple solution. simply order new textbooks
X, what about if you can't order new textbooks? If is not your responsability? What can you do then?
DeleteI agree with Ana Milena. What can you do then?
DeleteWell, for instance, if it is not in your hands to change the current textbook, you can use supplementary material from other sources in order to reinforce the concepts that the book doesn’t explain in the way that you want to teach according with your lesson plan or syllabus.
DeleteThe strategy i would use when my students only see one perspective is simple use the textbook and use similar text so that they can see different points of view.
ReplyDeleteWeakness: textbook is designed as the sole source of information.
ReplyDeleteWell in this situation the teacher must remember that the textbook is an aid. The teacher has an obligation of gathering knowledge from other sources.
I agree with you, the book must be a tool, a guide but we need to get more information and teaching tool from different sources otherwise the students will get bored and unmotivated.
Deletebooks can be found every where, they dont need energy to be used and dont tire out your eyes as much as a piece of technology does, if the book is old i think that you can work with it, but there might be some problems with old dead vocabulary depending of how old is it. in life you need to be updated in every area you are working on, because as the world advances there is new thing coming every day, and as a teacher that has to be giving and sharing information, you should be updated as much as possible.
ReplyDeleteWeakness: Reading level of the textbook is too difficult.
ReplyDeleteTeacher/Student difficulty: Students cannot read or understand important concepts. In this case, teachers need to combine or adapt the use of the coursebook with some other readings from other reliable but still more friendly sources of information so students can better digest and process their learning experience. This will also help students contrast other ideas/ opinions and improve contributions to their own learning style. Interacting with a coursebook in a creative way can lead teachers to learn other approaches and tricks for writing their own materiales "customized" for their own students learning styles. If, for example, you don’t want to use the main reading in a unit, but you like the rest of it, find a text you do like and use the reading exercises in the coursebook as a model for your own lesson. If the book has multiple-choice comprehension questions, write your own in that style. Your students will enjoy the change!
I think you have some great ideas to overcome this situation, I would add to use skimming and scanning reading strategies, through the title or pictures ask learners what should be the text about and do a brainstorm, check previous knowledge, introduce new vocabulary before getting into the reading, work in groups and divide the text in paragraph and then let students share information.
DeleteWeakness: textbook is old and outdated.
ReplyDeleteTextbooks are a great source of teaching. It helps both teacher and student to kind of get an idea about the topics which they are seeing in class. But one of the problems about using textbooks is that in a couple of years they will be old and outdated. The only real solution to this problem is to place an order for new, updated textbooks.
I agreed with you specially because i do think that text books are really necessary
Deleteweakness: Reading level of the textbook is too difficult.
ReplyDeleteA challenge is always great but in many cases the challenge becomes a bit too difficult. When the reading level of the textbook is too difficult for the students maybe try to change the textbook to a lower reading and comprehension level.
Problem: Textbook doesn't take students' background knowledge into account.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a very important thing to take into consideration, sometimes we as teacher can really get into teaching the topics of the book and we forget that every person that decides to learn english has a different reason for wanting to learn the language and, I believe that the books can misguide us in that sense if we don't pay attention to the learners needs. One way of fixing that is getting to know the students, ask for their personal interests and therefore find activities and teaching lessons where we use what the books tells us but focusing on their needs.
Weakness: Reading level of the textbook is too difficult. Teacher/Student Difficulty: Students cannot read or understand important concepts. Ways of Overcoming Problem: Translate the important concepts to the students´ level. Give to my students some links of website where they can find easy readings which they can understand, and use the textbook for demanding task.
ReplyDeleteReading level of the textbook is too difficult. / Students cannot read or understand important concepts.
ReplyDeleteIt's important for teachers to be there and guide their students through the right way and provide support, If the reading level of the text book is too difficult students are not going to feel comfortable with it and they will have many questions, if you can change the book that would be great but if it isn't the case you should figure out a way to make things easier for your students, It is a challenge like camila said but get your students motivated to accept that challenge and show them that even when the textbook is hard to follow it can be done if they work as a group and support each other of course with the help of the teacher.
Using books in the class can be an excellent resource to teachers support their teaching process, nowadays, books have different extra material which can help to design an interesting class for students and improve their English level, such as, web sites, platforms, posters, flashcards, videos, audios and so on. However, the problem comes when the book is not what we expected or we have to use a book we didn’t select or we don’t agree with, that can be a nightmare for us and we can get in trouble because we need to update the book to our context and learners.
ReplyDeleteOn my own experience using an English book has allowed me to work together with my colleagues, before, we use to follow the same curriculum but on practice, activities, vocabulary, etc., were very different and we always got in troubles when students had to present the final test of each school term.
One of the situations we can find is that the Textbook is old or outdated. Information shared with students is not current or relevant. On this case, students could get bored and the book would not be interested for them, so, teachers can look for updated information and after working on the information the book has, teacher can present new information and ask student make a comparative chart or teacher could ask students to search about the topic to see what’s new. Teacher can also work just on some parts of the book and not to follow it completely in order to get the best of it or complement the book with other tools such as videos, audios or visiting web sites with students about the topic they are working on.
I chose the weakness of textbook questions tend to be low level or fact-based and the teacher/student difficulty was students assume that learning is simply a collection of facts and figures.
ReplyDeleteI think this weakness of the textbook questions could be overcoming if we focus in our goal that is to guide our learners to the real life applications of the knowledge. We always have to keep in mind the usefulness of the scope and the sequence of the books, if any book doesn't have good questions those do not show the real life application so we as teachers can formulate some enquiries those make our students change their way of thinking about the learning process, then students can get more advantages from the books than just acumulate a lot of concepts without linkages to real life, afterwards students will look how those facts and figures allow them to have some basic principles to handle with real life problems.
Even if the text books could be outdated, they are very usefull, necessary and good for students, but you have to be prepare with the technology because that is wath is in now.
ReplyDeleteI do agree the textbooks are a good way of learning, but they are old and nowadays everything is moving with technology.I don't see the reason to be walking around with so many books when you can easely find them in a web page.
ReplyDeleteI remember back on my days when i was in school every class had a big fat textbook and we had to answer the questions. I didn't even read the textbook i read the questions and look for key words and many of my class mates did this too. so i think students tend to see learning as acumulation of correct answers.
1) Textbook is old or outdated:
ReplyDeleteInformation shared with students is not current or relevant:
I’d say that we need to keep in mind that a textbook is just a guide for teachers and students regardless of the content of the book. Some books just focus on one specific skill or needs, for example (reading and writing or listening). We are the ones who can modify the content of the book, every teacher should be aware of all the technological advances, therefore a book would be just a way to know the content or grammar points that are going to be cover during a certain unit or module.
Teachers can deal with this difficulty by using it just with the important parts of it, we need to create strategies to show the books or text books in a fun and interactive way. We need to engage students, so they can get the most out of it.
The teacher is the one who can choose the topics (or grammar points) and then he/she can ask the students to bring related articles to compare them with the ones of the book.
If the book is just too old for students, then the teacher should ask for a new one that covers the four skills.