Language Textbook Selection: Using

Materials Analysis from the Perspective of

SLA Principles

Marie J. Guilloteaux

The Asia-Pacific Education

Researcher

ISSN 0119-5646

Asia-Pacific Edu Res

DOI 10.1007/s40299-012-0015-3

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 Author's personal copy
Asia-Pacific Edu Res
DOI 10.1007/s40299-012-0015-3
Language Textbook Selection: Using Materials Analysis
from the Perspective of SLA Principles
Marie J. Guilloteaux
 De La Salle University 2012
Abstract This paper outlines a procedure for language
textbook analysis from the perspective of second language
acquisition (SLA) principles as a preliminary procedure to
evaluation for selection. The aim is to provide a tool that
allows comparison of the potential of textbooks for sup-
porting students’ language learning. To this end, ten gen-
eral principles representing a spectrum of SLA theories
were drawn from the literature. Then five EFL textbooks
produced in South Korea were analyzed using a minimally
modified version of Littlejohn’s (Materials development in
language tea, 1998, 2011) task analysis schedule. The low-
to-medium inference instrument enabled the analysis of all
the activities contained in the sampled units, yielding fre-
quency tallies. Final rankings indicated that the procedure
did discriminate between the sampled textbooks, revealing
a clear cluster of three books that reflected SLA principles
more closely. Although only in-use evaluation can deter-
mine the extent to which these textbooks actually support
language acquisition, the evidence suggests that they are
potentially more supportive than the lower scoring books.
The procedure outlined in this paper could be of use to
language educators, those involved in language materials
publishing, and government officials involved in the
approval of language materials.
Keywords Language materials  Textbook evaluation 
Second language acquisition  Korea
M. J. Guilloteaux (&)
Department of English Education, College of Education,
Gyeongsang National University, 501 Jinju-daero,
Jinju 660-701, South Korea
e-mail: marie@gnu.ac.kr
Introduction
Textbooks continue to be a central feature of language
classrooms worldwide; their quality can, therefore, affect the
learning experiences of many students. Nonetheless, the
textbook selection process—which typically relies on pre-
dictive evaluation (Ellis 1997a)—is not always efficient.
According to Tomlinson (2003), it is not unknown for pub-
lishers, teachers, and ministries to choose textbooks that only
create ‘‘an illusion of language learning’’ (Tomlinson 2008,
p. 8). A potential avenue for increasing the efficiency of pre-
dictive evaluation is to use insights from the second language
acquisition (SLA) research since it can reveal some strengths
and weaknesses in the construction of language learning
materials (Cook 2008). Indeed, several publications in the
materials development literature have suggested SLA-based
principles for materials design (e.g., Cook 1998; Richards
2006; Tomlinson 1998, 2010, 2011). However, the use of
instructed SLA research output is still an underexplored area
in materials evaluation (for an exception, see Aski 2003).
The present study seeks to offer a more efficient procedure
for the selection of textbooks (used here interchangeably with
learning/teaching materials) by introducing a preliminary
materials analysis phase into materials evaluation. It uses a
recognized task analysis schedule (Littlejohn 1998, 2011) as
an operational framework to evaluate whether textbooks
reflect universal principles representing a spectrum of com-
peting SLA theories. The aim is to provide a tool that allows
comparison of the potential of textbooks for supporting the
students’ second language (L2) learning. Note that the term
second in SLA usually refers to either or both the second and/
or foreign language because the processes involved in both
are fundamentally similar although they occur in different
situations (Ellis 1997b; Ortega 2009). A caveat is in order,
however. In order to make a complete predictive evaluation,
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the kind of analysis proposed here needs to be complemented
by a further step using criteria related to the local context,
teacher and learner factors (including age and level), available
resources, and curriculum (including teaching time and con-
tents) (Tomlinson 2003). This second evaluative phase is not
the focus of this paper.
Materials Selection
A quality textbook should be a model of good teaching
(Newton and Newton 2009) and should facilitate students’
language learning (Cook 1998; Tomlinson 2008, 2011;
Waters 2009). However, language practitioners often
choose a textbook based on cursory impressionistic evalu-
ations (Ellis 1997a; Tomlinson 2011) and practical factors
unrelated to pedagogy. Even if practitioners use one of the
numerous checklists and questionnaires developed since the
1970s to make their predictive evaluation more systematic
(for recent comprehensive reviews, see Mukundan and
Ahour 2010; Tomlinson 2012), the selected materials may
still not provide optimal conditions for language learning.
This is because those instruments often rely on many vague,
locally specific, and sometimes dogmatic criteria. Criteria
include learners’ needs, goals, learning styles, and profi-
ciency levels; classroom contexts and processes; the
potential of the materials for generating motivation, variety,
and interest; and language teaching methods (Rubdy 2003).
Additionally, the judgments elicited by such criteria tend to
be subjective and difficult to quantify, hence unreliable
(Littlejohn 1992; Tomlinson 2012).
One way of making textbook selection more objective is
to build a materials analysis phase into predictive evalua-
tion. According to Tomlinson (2003), who distinguishes
between materials evaluation and materials analysis, the
objective of predictive materials evaluations is to make
judgments about the effects that the materials may have on
their intended users; thus it is essentially subjective. In
contrast, materials analysis attempts to describe materials
as they are against set criteria; it is, therefore, more
objective. Viewed this way, materials analysis can be
considered as a preliminary step to materials evaluation
(Littlejohn 1998). Regrettably, many checklists mix eval-
uation-type items (i.e., unipolar or bipolar items) and
analysis items (i.e., yes/no questions, frequency counts).
One exception is Littlejohn’s (1998, 2011) framework for
materials analysis (Tomlinson 2003).
Littlejohn’s (1998, 2011) framework consists of three
levels of analysis requiring progressively more inference.
Level 1 assesses the physical aspects of the materials and
the main instructional steps within a typical unit. Level 2
analyzes each textbook activity in detail. Level 3 requires
deduction of what is implied regarding the syllabus and the
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teachers’ and learners’ roles. Of particular interest here is
the second level because of its focus on activities as units of
analysis. It enables analysts to describe every teaching/
learning activity contained in a textbook and is composed of
three parts: What is the learner expected to do? (deals with
learners’ role, activity focus, and broad cognitive processes
involved); Who with? (deals with participation structure/
interaction); With what contents? (deals with input/output
types). These three areas can be informed by SLA research
and can, therefore, serve to assess the extent to which
materials may support students’ language learning.
Materials Analysis and SLA
The field of SLA has reached a stage of maturity where
materials design and evaluation can benefit from input from
its research (Cook 1998). This does not mean, however, that
there is consensus among SLA researchers about how
instruction can best benefit from SLA input. In fact, SLA
researchers have urged caution in applying SLA-derived
principles to pedagogy (see Ellis 2005). But while the use of
principles as narrow prescriptions is commonly discour-
aged, it has been suggested that SLA-based principles can
be employed as predictions to inform pedagogical decisions
made in or for the classroom (e.g., Ellis 1997b; Waters
2009). Consequently, SLA principles could serve to explain
and critique materials design features by identifying the
extent to which materials are ‘‘in harmony with how
learners learn’’ (Ellis 1997c, p. 78). A few lists that include
SLA-based principles can be found in relation to materials
design (see Cook 1998; Richards 2006; Tomlinson 2003,
2010), each representing the authors’ personal selections.
However, these selections do not attempt to represent the
spectrum of major competing theories in SLA—an
approach close to what Swan (2006) would call subtractive
(i.e., emphasizing some particular theories or findings at the
expense of others), as opposed to additive (i.e., embracing
all possible theories unless there is considerable evidence
against them). Moreover, the lists tend to also include
pedagogical principles more context-relevant in nature.
What follows (Table 1) represents the author’s attempt to
select universal SLA-based principles (i.e., relevant to any
learner in any context: Tomlinson 2003). These principles can
be used to interpret the results of materials analyses carried
out with Littlejohn’s (1998, 2011) scheme for analysis of
textbook activities. The approach used for selecting the
SLA principles listed in Table 1 was additive (Swan 2006).
That is, the selection aimed to embody the core elements
presently known as representing potentially favorable (and
unfavorable) conditions for instructed L2 learning from a
psycholinguistic viewpoint. A psycholinguistic perspective
was favored here because it views ‘‘the learner as operating
 Author's personal copy
Language Textbook Selection
and developing a relatively autonomous L2 system, and
see[s] interaction as a way of feeding that system with more or
less fine-tuned input data’’ (Mitchell and Myles 2001, p. 22).
In contrast, a sociolinguistic SLA views language learning
essentially as a process in which ‘‘both the identity of the
learner, and their language knowledge, are collaboratively
constructed and reconstructed in the course of interaction’’
(Mitchell and Myles 2001, p. 22). The latter process refers to
interaction between learners who are scaffolded into using
new L2 forms and also socialized into a range of discourse
practices by expert speakers. Consequently, a sociolinguistic
perspective is considered in this paper to be more relevant to
the second language learning contexts (e.g., ESL) than to
foreign language classrooms (e.g., EFL contexts) where
learners often share the same first language and interact with
other learners of similar levels in the L2, and where the teacher
may not even be an expert L2 user. Finally, the selection of
principles presented in Table 1 also represents a synthesis of
the main SLA principles proposed by Cook (1998), Ellis
(2005), Richards (2006), Tomlinson (2010), and Tomlinson
and Masuhara (2010).
The sections that follow illustrate how Littlejohn’s
(1998, 2011) task analysis schedule could be used as an
operational framework to answer the following question:
To what extent do sampled L2 textbooks reflect universal
SLA principles?
Method
Sample
The materials included five (out of eight) Middle School
English I (Student Book) textbooks published in 2009 and
approved by the South Korean Ministry of Education,
Science, and Technology. The books were selected ran-
domly because all of them had to follow similar basic
ministry-regulated formats, had passed the same stringent
ministry-approval review process, and were thus assumed
to be of similar quality in terms of supporting students’
learning. Following Littlejohn (1998), one unit represent-
ing about 10 % of each book was selected for analysis from
the midsection of the books (see descriptions in Table 2).
Materials Analysis Instrument
The materials in this study were analyzed using a mini-
mally modified version of the second level of Littlejohn’s
(1998, 2011) materials analysis framework, which con-
cerns what learners are expected to do during tasks (see
Tables 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). Simplifications were made such as
dropping items that made reference to retrieval from short-
Table 1 Universal materials analysis criteria derived from SLA
principles
What supports language acquisition
• A predominant focus on meaning: mostly pragmatic meaning
(i.e., what language forms convey in communication); but also
semantic meaning (i.e., what language conveys, irrespective of
context, when language is treated as an object of study) (Ellis
2005)
• Meaningful practice of unanalyzed formulaic expressions (as in
a notional-functional approach), especially in the early stages:
The rote-memorized patterns will be available for analysis later
when the learners are developmentally ready, thereby
contributing to the ability to use language fluently and accurately
(Cook 1998; DeKeyser 2010; Ellis; Richards 2006)
• Participation in communicative activity (Tomlinson and
Masuhara 2010) to boost learners’ implicit knowledge of the L2
(Ellis)
• Focus on form (e.g., corrective feedback) and intensive focus on
pre-selected linguistic forms, by an inductive and/or deductive
approach (Ellis)
• Exposure to extensive language in use (Ellis 2005; Tomlinson
2010)
• Opportunities for free production of output of a clause or more,
but not the type produced during controlled practice exercises
(Ellis; Tomlinson 2010)
• Pair and group activities that promote interaction in the L2
(Lantolf 2000; Long 1996), but excessive use of the L1 in
monolingual contexts may actually hinder it (Ellis)
• Engaging learners cognitively in a variety of a learning
activities (Ellis), and through high instructional clarity,
achievable challenges, awareness of different learning styles, and
strategy training, including experiential and learner training
activities (Ellis; Richards 2006; Tomlinson and Masuhara 2010)
• Engaging learners affectively by providing relevant and
interesting contents, and giving opportunities to express own
meanings and choose own topics (Richards 2006; Tomlinson and
Masuhara 2010)
What seems to be of limited use in language acquisition
• Mechanical drills requiring exclusive attention to form divorced
from meaning (De Keyser 2010); mechanical drills may even be
of no use at all (Wong and Van Patten 2003)
term and intermediate-term memory, constructs that are
seldom used nowadays in contemporary memory research
(Ortega 2009).
Activities were delineated according to Littlejohn’s
(1992) definition of a task as any activity that facilitates
learning and includes all of the following three elements:
‘‘(1) a process through which the learners are expected to
go; (2) a mode of classroom participation concerning with
whom (if anyone) the learners are to work; (3) content
upon which learners are to engage’’ (p. 37). A change in
any of the three elements (e.g., in the mode of participa-
tion) generates a new task only when it has a clear peda-
gogical purpose. For instance, in this study (where task is
always defined as in Littlejohn), simply reading aloud with
a partner the contents of a dialog that had first required
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Table 2 Sampled materials and

Book Publishers of sampled Popularity Sampled Core textbook Tasks
number of tasks identified in
code Middle School English 1 rankingsa unit (%) identified
sampled lessons
(Student Book)

A Chunjae 5 6 10 29
B Doosan 1 6 8.33 26
a
The popularity rankings are C Joheunchaek-Sinsago 7 6 9.09 37
based on the sales figures (2011) D Jihaksa 6 6 8.33 26
for the third level in the series, E Biyuwasangjin 8 6 8.33 24
Middle School English 3

Table 3 Percentage of tasks

I. What is the learner expected Books Mean
having features from Section I
to do? (%)
A (TURN-TAKE) and textbook A% B% C% D% E%
scores (points) (points) (points) (points) (points)

A. TURN-TAKE
(?) Initiate language 24 (5) 15 (4) 5 (2) 4 (1) 13 (3) 12
• E.g., make a list; produce a
text based on a sample or
basic rhetorical frame
(?) Respond 76 (2) 81 (3) 92 (5) 92 (5) 75 (1) 83
• In narrowly defined
language/non-verbal
response (e.g., identify
picture; true/false; gap-
filler; sequence sentences)
(-) No action required 0 (-0) 4 (-3) (-2) 4 (-3) 13 (-5) 5
• E.g., read/listen—no other
activity

Subsection score 7 4 5 3 -1

some basic individual manipulation was considered to be
one pair-work task. Ambiguous tasks were delineated
according to their main purpose, which was inferred from
their contents.
Data Processing
The author conducted the analysis of the materials inde-
pendently with two assistants who were trained by the
author in a two-hour seminar on Littlejohn’s (1998, 2011)
framework for materials analysis and in a separate session
during which sample materials were analyzed indepen-
dently. Results were then compared in plenary; the criteria
were finalized and illustrated with typical examples,
resulting in the framework finally used in this study
(Tables 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 show the instrument and give some
definitions or examples).
First, the author and one assistant independently divided
the materials from the selected units into tasks (as defined
by Littlejohn 1992). Inter-rater agreement reached 97 %
(number of agreements divided by the sum of agreements
and disagreements). Second, the materials were analyzed
independently by the author and two assistants to obtain a
frequency analysis of their features. The author coded
100 % of the data once (i.e., 6672 judgments) and entered
the tallies into an SPSS file. The coding was repeated some
time later on 100 % of the data. The two assistants each
coded 50 % of the data. Intra- and inter-rater reliability was
estimated with Cohen’s Kappa (a measure of reliability of
agreement between two raters which is corrected for chance
occurrence). The results for intra-rater reliability were
Kappa = .91, and for inter-rater reliability Kappa = .61
and .62 for Assistant 1 and 2, respectively. Landis and Koch
(1977, p. 165) suggest that a Kappa coefficient of .81–1.00
represents ‘‘almost perfect’’ agreement, and a coefficient of
.61 to .80 represents ‘‘substantial’’ agreement. Finally,
because each unit in each textbook contained a different
number of tasks (see Table 2), the raw frequency totals for
each textbook were divided by the number of tasks found in
their respective units and multiplied by 100 to obtain
comparable proportionate rates.
For the purpose of assessing the books so they could be
quickly compared, the books were awarded plus points (?)
when features were in line with SLA principles, or minus
points (-) when they were not. The points for each feature
were calculated according to the ranking of the materials

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Table 4 Percentage of tasks

I. What is the learner expected to do? Books Mean (%)
having features from Section I B
(FOCUS) and textbook scores A (%) B (%) C (%) D (%) E (%)
(points) (points) (points) (points) (points)

B. FOCUS
(?) Language system 7 (1) 12 (2) 22 (4) 31 (5) 17 (3) 17
• E.g., practice forms/patterns;
apply rules
(?) Meaning 59 (5) 58 (3) 59 (5) 54 (2) 54 (2) 57
• E.g., comprehension exercises,
no extended L2 output
(?) Meaning/Form relationship 34 (5) 31 (4) 19 (2) 15 (1) 29 (3) 26
• E.g., consciousness-raising
activity; prepare a report for
presentation to the class

Subsection score 11 9 11 8 8

on the given feature (from 1 to 5, five being the number of
books evaluated). When percentages were identical, rank-
ing points were awarded according to how close they were
to the mean: usually 3 points for close to the mean, 2 points
for much below the mean, and 4 points for well above the
mean. The next section illustrates the method for calcu-
lating points and scores.
Findings and Discussion
What is the Learner Expected to do?
Table 3 shows the learners’ expected role during tasks. In
order to facilitate instructed language learning, students need
to interact in and with the L2; this is indicated by a plus sign
(?). In contrast, activities requiring no production of output
or no overt behavioral demonstration of engagement with
input should be avoided, as shown by the minus sign (-); this
is because students may simply let the L2 wash over them as
noise and not learn from it. In Book A, learners were always
required to be active in some way (‘‘No action required’’:
0 %), and thus no point was deducted (-0). Book E, with a
score of 13 % had the highest proportion of materials not
requiring any action, thus incurring a score of -5.
The striking imbalance between the numbers of Initiate
and Respond tasks reflects a preference for controlled
practice activities (at least three quarters of the tasks place
learners in a Respond position, compared with less than a
quarter of them requiring learners to initiate language).
These results echo those found regarding foreign ELT
materials by Littlejohn (1992) and more recently by
Sahragard, Rahimi, and Zaremoayeddi (2009), showing
that not so much has changed in the field of materials over
the past two decades.
In terms of opportunities to initiate language, textbook
A seems to offer twice as many opportunities to initiate
language than other textbooks. However, given that all its
task instructions and many prompts to initiate language in
Book A (as well as Books D and E) are in Korean and that
students in Korea operate in a monolingual context, it is
possible that Korean rather than English will be initiated.
Consequently, those three books fail to maximize L2 input.
In contrast, 84 % of the task instructions in Book C are in
English. Although Book C contains hardly any initiate-type
activities, its consistent use of English in task instructions
is probably more conducive to using English for commu-
nication within the classroom. This finding stresses the
need to evaluate materials in use as well as before use
(Ellis 1997a).
Table 4 indicates the learners’ main focus of attention
during tasks. The three areas listed merit plus points (?)
because SLA principles stipulate that language learning
benefits from focusing primarily on meaning while not
neglecting form-focused work in general. In regards to
where learners need to focus their attention during tasks, the
results indicate that all books direct learners’ attention
predominantly toward meaning as stipulated in SLA prin-
ciples. However, focusing on form(s) seems to have been
considered of little importance by Books A and B (7 and
12 %, respectively). One question now begs to be asked:
How can middle school students who use materials con-
taining a fairly high proportion of Initiate-type activities
(e.g., Books A and B) initiate language when their texts
focus so little on form(s)? What provision is there for
helping them abstract linguistic forms from texts so they
can use them to express their own meanings? One answer is
that learners will be able to produce English because form is
dealt with in additional materials (i.e., in ‘‘Activities
Books,’’ CD-Rom, and worksheets provided by publishers

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Table 5 Percentage of tasks from Section I C: operation and textbook scores

What is the learner expected to do? Books Mean
(%)
A% B% C% D% E%
(points) (points) (points) (points) (points)

C. OPERATION
(?) Repeat/reproduce identically 0 (?0) 8 (?5) 5 (?3) 8 (?5) 0 (?0) 4
(-) Repeat/reproduce with substitution 7 (-4) 0 (-0) 0 (-0) (-0) 8 (-5) 3
• Mechanical drills
(?) Repeat/reproduce selectively 14 (?3) 12 (?1) 19 (?4) 27 (?5) 13 (?2) 17
• Meaningful drills
(?) Repeat/reproduce with transformation 0 (?0) 4 (?3) 11 (?5) 4 (?3) 4 (?3) 5
• E.g., sequence words to form a sentence
(?) Repeat/reproduce with expansion 21 (?5) 15 (?3) 19 (?4) 8 (?1) 8 (?1) 14
• E.g., use a sample dialog but change the setting
(?) Build text with recalled items 31 (?5) 31 (?5) 14 (?2) 8 (?1) 17 (?3) 20
• E.g., produce a list of words/an answer to a question from memory
(?) Apply general knowledge 14 (?2) 27 (?5) 19 (?3) 12 (?1) 21 (?4) 18
• E.g., use information learned in another subject
(?) Decode meaning 62 (?3) 54 (?1) 86 (?5) 62 (?3) 54 (?1) 64
• Match phrases with meanings in L1
(?) Extract gist, information, details 45 (?3) 46 (?4) 54 (?5) 31 (?1) 33 (?2) 42
(?) Categorize selected information 3 (?3) 0 (?0) 3 (?3) 4 (?5) 0 (?0) 2
(?) Hypothesize, infer meaning 7 (?2) 8 (?3) 14 (?4) 15 (?5) 4 (?1) 10
(?) Compare samples of language on the basis of contents (meaning) 3 (?1) 4 (?2) 11 (?4) (?5) 8 (?3) 9
or form
• E.g., true/false; select the correct version; whose story was the
most interesting?
(?) Analyze language form 0 (?0) 0 (?0) 0 (?0) 0 (?0) (?0) 0
• Examine the component parts of a text/word (e.g., find the
stressed syllable in a word)
(?) Formulate a language rule 0 (?0) 0 (?0) 0 (?0) 0 (?0) (?0) 0
• E.g., examine sentences and write partially formulated rule
(?) Apply a language rule 3 (?2) 8 (?5) 5 (?3) 8 (?5) 0 (?0) 5
(?) Negotiate to achieve something 3 (?3) 8 (?5) 0 (?0) 4 (?4) 0 (?0) 3
(?) Review own/peers’ L2 output 0 (?0) 12 (?5) 11 (?4) 4 (?3) 0 (?0) 5
(?) Attend to explanation/example 3 (?1) 8 (?2) 16 (?3) 23 (?5) 17 (?4) 13
• Students are required to be alert, perhaps notice something.

Subsection score 29 49 52 52 19

in the case of current materials in South Korean schools).
The disadvantage of such practice is that it may lead to
excessive decontextualization of forms presented and
practiced in isolated sentences.
In the ‘‘What learners are expected to do during tasks’’
section, the third area (C: Operation) concerns mental
processes. The results are presented in Table 5. All the
listed processes are helpful for language acquisition except
for repeating/reproducing with substitution (i.e., mechani-
cal drills). Hence the minus point sign (-) for that process.
The features attracting the highest percentages in this
section involve those related to comprehension. Theories of
comprehension stress the importance of helping students
understand spoken or written texts by having them relate
their schematic knowledge to new information contained in
a text, or by expanding that knowledge if necessary. Only
12–27 % of all the sampled tasks required learners to apply
general knowledge (M = 18 %). Although these results
could be a function of the topics sampled, it seems that
textbooks could include more activities requiring students
to make use of general knowledge. This would make
materials less trivial.

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Table 6 Percentage of tasks

II. Who with? Books Mean
having features from: ‘‘who
(%)
with?’’ and textbook scores A% B% C% D% E%
(points) (points) (points) (points) (points)

(?) Teacher $ Students 14 (?5) 4 (?3) – 4 (?3) 8 (?4) 6

• E.g., teacher-fronted question and answer
sessions
(?) Individual/Pair/Group $ Whole class – 4 (?5) – – – 1
• E.g., after presenting, a group answers
questions
(?) Choral work – 4 (?4) 5 (?5) 4 (?4) – 3
(?) Individual work 59 (?2) 46 (?1) 81 (?4) 73 (?3) 83 (?5) 68
(?) Presentation (e.g., act out a dialog, present a 7 (?4) 4 (?3) 3 (?2) 8 (?5) – 4
poster—individually, in pairs, or in groups)
• E.g., act out a dialog; present a poster
(?) Pair/group work, simultaneously 21 (?4) 38 (?5) 11 (?2) 12 (?3) 8 (?1) 18

Subsection score 15 21 13 18 10

Table 7 Percentage of tasks having features from: ‘‘with what contents?’’ and textbook scores
III. With what contents? Books Mean
(%)
A% B% C% D% E%
(points) (points) (points) (points) (points)

A. FORM
(a) Input to learners
(?) Non-verbal (e.g., pictures to sequence) 21 (?1) 58 (?5) 46 (?4) 46 (?4) 29 (?2) 40
(?) Written: words/phrases/short texts \50 words 52 (?1) 69 (?3) 78 (?4) 88 (?5) 67 (?2) 71
(?) Aural: words/phrases/short texts \50 words 21 (?1) 23 (?3) 22 (?2) 46 (?5) 29 (?4) 28
(?) Written: Coherent text [50 words with supra-sentential features 24 (?4) 23 (?3) 32 (?5) 12 (?2) 8 (?1) 20
(?) Aural: Coherent text [50 words with supra-sentential features 10 (?4) 4 (?3) 11 (?5) 4 (?3) 4 (?3) 7
(b) Expected learner outputa
(?) Non-verbal: e.g., match items, check correct picture, draw 21 (?1) 23 (?2) 49 (?5) 27 (?3) 29 (?4) 30
(?) Written words/phrases/single sentence: e.g., fill in the blanks 41 (?4) 31 (?2) 30 (?1) 46 (?5) 38 (?3) 37
(?) Oral words/phrases/single sentence: e.g., respond to a drill 31 (?4) 38 (?5) 16 (?3) 15 (?2) 13 (?1) 23
(?) Written: Coherent text with connected sentences [30 words 3 (?2) 4 (?5) 3 (?2) 4 (?5) 4 (?5) 4
(?) Oral: Coherent text with connected sentences [30 words 3 (?2) 4 (?4) – 8 (?5) 4 (?4) 4
B. SOURCE
(?) Materials (dialog/text). 72 (?2) 77 (?3) 100 (?5 81 (?4) 71 (?1) 80
(?) Teacher – – – – – –
(?) Learners (e.g., present results of own research) 28 (?4) 23 (?3) – 19 (?2) 29 (?5) 20
C. NATURE
(?) Metalinguistic information (e.g., a grammatical rule with example sentences; 24 (?2) 8 (?1) 27 (?3) 31 (?5) 29 (?4) 24
explanations about the use of certain expressions)
(?) Non-fiction 10 (?2) 15 (?5) 11 (?3) 8 (?1) 13 (?4) 11
(?) Fiction 45 (?2) 54 (?4) 59 (?5) 46 (?3) 25 (?1) 46
(?) Learners’ personal information/opinion 21 (?3) 23 (?4) 3 (?1) 15 (?2) 33 (?5) 19

Subsection total 39 55 48 56 49
a
Some totals are \100 % because some books contain tasks that do not require any output

Overall, Books B, C, and D appear to engage learners tasks, engaging learners in deeper and more meaningful
cognitively in more varied ways than the others. Moreover, processing of texts. Nonetheless, the most popular tasks
Books C and D contain more inference and comparison across the sample, representing about one-third to a half of

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M. J. Guilloteaux

the tasks (M = 43 %), required learners to respond using Table 8 Final results and ranking of textbooks
some form of repetition (e.g., meaningful drills and repe- Summary of results Books
tition-type tasks followed by expansion). Such practice is
desirable from the perspective of skill acquisition theory, A B C D E
but conditions are attached. Controlled practice will only I. What is the learner expected to do?
support language learning as long as it is meaningful and A. TURN-TAKE 7 4 5 3 –1
follows the provision of relevant declarative knowledge B. FOCUS 11 9 11 8 8
such as explanations (see e.g., Ortega 2009). C. OPERATION 29 49 52 52 19
SLA research points toward the utility of producing II. Who with? 15 21 13 18 10
sustained output and negotiation for promoting language III. With what contents? 39 55 48 56 49
acquisition, but all the books are low in tasks that require Total points 101 138 129 137 85
negotiating; and Books C, D, and E vary in their require- Final Ranking 4 1 3 2 5
ments for learners to build texts out of items recalled from
memory. More opportunities for interaction and freer
production of extended output are needed. Regrettably, turns and extended written output. Finally, the findings
open-ended activities tend to be less popular in Korea reported in sections B and C indicate that, although the use
where teachers often do not feel confident about their of fiction may go some way toward engaging students on
proficiency in English, and single correct answer test-tak- an affective basis, textbooks should include more activities
ing practice activities are still currently preferred by stu- requiring personal input from learners to increase their
dents and parents. Feedback for closed activities is also motivation.
easier to prepare and give in large classes composed of
students of widely different levels. Even university stu- Final Results of Analysis
dents prefer English teachers to lecture about English
because they believe it is more time-efficient than a task- Table 8 presents the final ranking of the sampled text-
based approach (see e.g., Yim 2009). books, which was obtained by computing the points gained
on each subsection. The results indicate that the procedure
Who With? was efficient in discriminating between the sampled text-
books, revealing a clear cluster composed of three higher
Table 6 presents the results concerning the participation scoring books (Books B, D, and C), and two outliers with
structure that is recommended or inferred from tasks much lower scores (Books A and E). There is evidence to
instructions. Individual work predominates in Books C, D, suggest that Books B, D, and C reflect SLA principles more
and E, echoing closely than Books A and E, and may, therefore, poten-
Jeon’s (2005) findings that 80 % of activities in high tially offer more support for language learning than Books
school textbooks involved individual work, 15 % pair A and E. However, the extent to which textbooks actually
work, and 5 % group work. Book A, with fewer activities do support language acquisition can only be determined
requiring individual completion and 21 % requiring pair/ through in-use evaluation.
group work, seems to offer more opportunities for inter-
action and meaning negotiation in the L2. However, since
the learner groups are monolingual, students may interact Conclusion
in Korean.
The present study has illustrated how a minimally modified
With What Contents? version of Littlejohn’s (1998, 2011) task analysis schedule
could be used as an operational framework to evaluate
Table 7 shows the results regarding the contents of the whether textbooks reflect universal SLA criteria, which
tasks that are assigned to the learners. A staple of language were mainly derived from Ellis’ (2005) list of ten general
acquisition-rich classrooms is extensive input of language principles for instructed SLA and SLA-based principles for
in use, but in terms of input, all five books consist pre- materials design from Cook (1998), Richards (2006),
dominantly of written words, phrases, sentences, or brief Tomlinson (2010), and Tomlinson and Masuhara (2010).
texts. Similar results emerged for output. The most com- The procedure did discriminate between the sampled
mon type of required output found in the sample was of the textbooks, even though all five had been specially written
restricted, controlled kind. In order to support language according to ministry guidelines and had passed ministry-
acquisition, more extensive input of language in use is approval evaluation. The evidence suggests that three out
required in textbooks, as well as activities eliciting long of the five textbooks reflect SLA principles more closely

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Language Textbook Selection
than the other books and are, therefore, potentially more
helpful in terms of supporting students’ language learning
in the classroom. However, the findings do not permit to
conclude that the three textbooks that belonged to the
higher scoring group in the analysis are more effective in
supporting language acquisition—this could only be
determined by in-use evaluation. Finally, to complete an
evaluation-for-selection process, the higher scoring books
in a preliminary materials analysis phase of the type
described here should be subjected to a materials evalua-
tion phase for context relevance. Given the crucial role
played by materials in students’ language development and
the expensive nature of materials development, the pre-
liminary materials analysis procedure delineated in this
study could prove useful to anyone involved in materials
selection and materials design/publication, and to govern-
ment officials responsible for textbook authorization.
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