Evaluation of a Textbook

Title                 :  Academic English Skills. Reading, Writing,

                           and  Study Skills 

Level                :  1. Student’s Book

Year                  : 2010

Pages                : 72

Edition              : New 

Author              : Richard Harrison

Series Editors    : Liz and John Soars

Publisher           : Oxford University Press (New York)

Evaluating and selecting a suitable textbook for certain courses is quite daunting for teachers (Hemmings & Battersby, 2006) in that it requires teachers’ creativity and other skills (Richards, 2001, p. 260). By applying the criteria proposed by Little John (1998), I found this textbook useful for an English for Academic Purposes (EAP), especially for higher education participants at the beginning level.

There are three main skills this textbook focuses on, namely, reading, writing and study skills. Not only allowing the students to develop their reading skills and strategies through scanning, skimming, and or predicting contents, it also, enables students to conduct research on the usefulness and the reliance of resources. Furthermore, it provides a variety of hand writing skills practices, i.e. making note, summarizing and reorganizing ideas.

With regard to writing skills development, the textbook provides chances for students to learn and practice writing topic sentences, supporting arguments, linking ideas, and using punctuation properly. It also allows students to write a range of texts, like description, formal letters and emails, and comparison as well as to summarize and to edit their own writing, i.e. grammatical mistakes. These would enable students to have a strong foundation in writing.

The author seems to have selected the topic by considering their relevance to higher students’ thinking framework. For instance, the topics of education, daily routines, technology and the rest, are common place. Not only enriching the students' knowledge, the topics would also stimulate the students to relate the topics with their own contexts, i.e. culture.

Each chapter is well structured in that it is started with reading, writing, vocabulary development, pronunciation and, lastly, review. It is easy to follow, even, by beginning teachers as it can be a guidance for teaching steps. The layout, i.e. fonts and combination of appropriate photos and pictures make this textbook eyes-friendly. More importantly, the book seems to be affordable. However, there is a copyright issue in multiplying any of the textbook parts.

Having considered those, this textbook would suit EAP classes.  However, adopting or adapting the textbook “by supplementing and replacing materials or personalizing drills to make them more personalized to students” (Baker, 2013) can be done if necessary.

References.

Baker, A. (2013). Lecture Notes. Selecting and Evaluating Materials. August 12, 2013. School of Education. UOW.

Hemmings, B. & Battersby, D. (1989). Textbooks Selection: Evaluative Criteria, Higher Education. Research & Development, 8:1, 69-78, DOI: 10.1080/0729436890080107. Routledge.

Littlejohn, A. (1998). The analysis of language teaching materials. In Tomlinson, B. (Ed.), Materials development in language teaching. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 149-190

Richards, J. (2001). Curriculum Development in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 251-285. (Chapter 8: The role and design of instructional materials)