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Overview
The sections in this unit are:
14.1 How necessary is a coursebook? Alternatives to the coursebook, advantages
and disadvantages.
14.2 Coursebook evaluation and selection. Discussion of criteria for evaluating and
choosing a coursebook for your class.
14.3 Adapting course materials. Some ideas on how to add to, shorten or change
course materials to make them more appropriate for a particular class.
14.4 Supplementary materials (1): paper. A summary of various types of paper
materials available to supplement the main coursebook.
14.5 Supplementary materials (2): digital. Some computer-based software and
hardware that can be used to facilitate teaching and learning.

14.1 How necessary is a coursebook?

The word coursebook here refers to the material which is used as the basis for a
course, whether it is an actual book or an online course.

Task
Before reading this unit: what would your own answer be to the question in the
heading of this section?

In some places it is taken for granted that coursebooks are used as the basis for
courses. In others they may not be used at all, and the teacher bases his or her
teaching on a syllabus, or his or her own programme, using personally selected
teaching materials when necessary. A third situation is a compromise, where a
coursebook is used selectively, not necessarily in sequence, and is extensively
supplemented by other materials.

In most situations today, the coursebook is in fact a conventional paper book

but online or digital course materials are on the increase. The following list of
advantages and disadvantages apply to either paper or digital coursebooks.

Task
Read through the arguments below, ticking those you agree with, adding a cross
to ones you don’t. Write any criticisms or comments in the margin. Add any other
arguments that you think of, based on your own experience as a student or teacher.

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Advantages of a coursebook
• Framework. A coursebook provides a clear framework. Teachers and students
know where they are going and what is coming next, so there is a sense of
structure and progress.
• Syllabus. In many places the coursebook is used as a syllabus. If it is followed
systematically, a planned selection of language will be covered.
• Ready-made texts and tasks. The coursebook provides texts and learning
tasks which are likely to be of an appropriate level for most of the class.
This saves time for the teacher who would otherwise have to prepare his or
her own.
• Guidance. For teachers who are inexperienced or unsure of their
knowledge of the language or teaching skills, the coursebook can provide
useful guidance and support.
• Autonomy. The student can use the coursebook to learn new material, and
review and monitor his or her own progress autonomously. A student without
a coursebook is more teacher-dependent.

Disadvantages of a coursebook
• Inadequacy. Every individual class has their own learning needs. No single
coursebook can possibly meet these satisfactorily.
• Irrelevance, lack of interest. The topics in the coursebook may not be relevant
or interesting for your class. And they may ‘date’ rapidly, whereas materials you
choose yourself can be more up to date.
• Cultural inappropriateness. The content of a coursebook may be culturally
inappropriate, which not only may make it irrelevant or uninteresting, but can
also cause discomfort or even offence.
• Limited range of level. Coursebooks target a particular student population
and rarely cater for the variety of levels of ability or proficiency that exist in
most classes.
• Possible negative effect on teaching. Teachers may follow the coursebook
uncritically and are discouraged from using their own initiative: they may
find themselves functioning merely as mediators of its content instead of as
teachers in their own right.

Task
Were any of the arguments new to you? If they were, and you agree with them,
would you now change your answer to the question at the beginning of this unit? Or
is your previous opinion unchanged?

The final decision as to whether or not to use a coursebook has to depend on your
own teaching style, the resources available and the accepted policy in your school.

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In my own situation – teaching English in a state school in a non-English-speaking

country – I preferred to use a coursebook. I found that a set framework helped
me to regulate and time my programme. Perhaps surprisingly, it also provided a
firm basis for my own supplementary teaching ideas. I could do my own thing
occasionally, knowing that I had a structured programme to return to.

It is my experience that students also prefer to have one. The classes which I
have tried to teach using a selection of materials from different sources have
complained of a sense of lack of purpose. And, interestingly, that they feel that
their studies – and, by implication, they – are not taken seriously. It seems that
having a coursebook may carry a certain prestige.

14.2 Coursebook evaluation and selection

Whether or not you choose to base your course on a coursebook, it is worth
thinking about how you recognize a good one, and why you might reject or
criticize it: in other words, what are your main criteria for evaluation. These
criteria may be general (suitable for any language-teaching materials) or specific
(looking at the appropriateness of a set of materials for a certain course or group
of learners). An example of a general criterion might be: ‘clear layout and font’, or
‘provides regular review or test sections’. A specific criterion for a class of younger
learners might be: ‘attractive and colourful illustrations’, or for a class of medical
students: ‘vocabulary and texts relevant to medicine’.

The general criteria suggested below are my own, but they rely on ideas suggested
in a number of books and articles on the subject (see some useful sources in
Further reading at the end of this unit).

Task
Read the list of criteria for evaluating language-learning coursebooks below. In the
left-hand column, use the following symbols to note how important you think each
criterion is:
✓✓ for ‘essential’ (without this I wouldn’t use the coursebook)
✓ for ‘quite important’
? for ‘not sure’
✗ for ‘not important’
✗✗ for ‘totally unimportant’ (it wouldn’t make any difference to me if it was there
or not)
Then, optionally, add further criteria you feel are significant in the spaces left
at the end, and mark in their importance. Ignore the Applied column for the
moment.
If you are working in a group, compare your ideas with those of colleagues. Then
read on.

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Checklist for coursebook evaluation

Importance Criterion Applied
1. The objectives are clearly explained in the introduction,
and implemented in the material.
2. The approach is educationally and culturally acceptable
to the target students.
3. The layout is clear (both the book as a whole and single
pages) and the print is easy to read. If digital, then it is
easy to ‘navigate’ from page to page.
4. The material is attractive.
5. The texts and tasks are interesting.
6. The texts and tasks are varied, appropriate for different
learner levels, learning styles, interests, etc.
7. Instructions are clear.
8. There is an explicit syllabus, which is covered
systematically.
9. Content is clearly organized and graded.
10. There are regular review and test sections.
11. There are pronunciation explanations and practice.
12. There are vocabulary explanations and practice.
13. There are grammar explanations and practice.
14. There are tasks that activate the students in listening,
speaking, reading and writing.
15. The material encourages learners to develop their own
learning strategies and to become independent in their
learning.
16. There is adequate guidance for the teacher (teacher’s
guide, or teacher’s notes).
17. There are audio recordings available.
18. There are visual materials available: posters, video,
flash cards, etc.
19. There is a coursebook website, with guidance and
supplementary materials available.
20. The material is easily available and not too expensive.
21.
22.

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1. Objectives. This is important, but check that the objectives expressed in the
introduction to the coursebook are in fact implemented. Often they are not!
2. Approach. How important this is depends on your approach and the student
population. Some communities are more sensitive than others.
3. Layout. This is vitally important. The material has to be clear and ‘navigable’:
both you and your students need to be able to find your way around it easily
and smoothly. You need to be able to read the texts easily (so it is not a
good idea to have artistic fonts, or pictures behind text which make reading
difficult). You also need to be able to move around it easily if it is a digital
course composed of a lot of webpages and links.
4. Appearance. This is particularly important for younger classes, but may be
less so for older ones. Children and adolescents are used to colourful and eye-
catching books, television and websites and may be demotivated by black and
white or uninteresting design.
5. Interest. I would rank this as quite important. On the one hand, skilful
and imaginative teaching can make even the most boring texts and tasks
interesting (and bad teaching can ‘kill’ the most interesting ones!). On the
other hand, it helps a lot if the book provides interesting material that you
can use, adapting as necessary for your classes.
6. Variation. This quality is one that is often missing in coursebooks. There
should be some texts which are easier or more difficult. Tasks should be
designed to allow for performance at different levels. Texts and tasks should
vary also in the topic, the kind of language style, the type of participation
or learning strategies they require, etc. The lack of variation is not a reason
to reject the book, but if it exists it is a positive feature. So I would rank it as
quite important (see Unit 19: Learner differences (2): teaching heterogeneous
(mixed) classes).
7. Instructions. Essential. For a monolingual class of beginners, this may mean
providing instructions and explanations in the L1.
8. Syllabus. Essential. Check what kind of a syllabus the coursebook has. This
should be clear from the table of contents at the beginning (see Unit 13: The
syllabus). Does it provide coverage of all the items you think are essential?
And are these items in fact covered in the material itself? You may need to
check that the coursebook follows syllabuses which are relevant to your
teaching situation, such as the CEFR, a national syllabus, or the syllabus of an
exam such as ESOL.
9. Organization. Systematic progress in difficulty is very important for courses
in primary and secondary schools. However, it may not be as important for
courses in academic English or other more advanced programmes.
10. Review and test. The inclusion of these features may or may not be
important to you. Review exercises and tests are sometimes provided on the
course website, rather than in the main materials themselves. Often, however,
you will prefer to create your own. What you actually teach is never exactly

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what the coursebook provides: you may skip some bits and add others, in
which case the coursebook reviews and tests might not be suitable. So this
component is probably less essential than some of the others.
11. Pronunciation. How much emphasis is put on pronunciation teaching
depends on the approach in your teaching situation, so the evaluation here
would also vary. Pronunciation problems can often be dealt with as they
come up, so you do not necessarily need a systematic programme in the
coursebook.
12. Vocabulary. This is an essential component. The materials should provide
plenty of vocabulary expansion and review activities.
13. Grammar. Like pronunciation, how much emphasis is put on grammar
depends on the local teaching situation. In many contexts substantial
grammar coverage is required, but in others it is not. So the evaluation is
likely to range from ‘essential’ to ‘not sure’.
14. Listening, speaking, reading and writing. Tasks activating the four skills
are the main basis for communicative practice. And they are essential. The
coursebook should provide texts and tasks that promote fluency and accuracy
in the four skills in communicative situations, as well as activities that provide
opportunities for students to do ‘mixed-skills’ activities.
15. Learner independence. Whether the materials encourage learner
independence and autonomy is quite important, but it is a very difficult
aspect to evaluate. Some things to look for are computer-based tasks which
enable self-checking, and research tasks that students do on their own, such
as ‘webquests’.
16. Teacher’s guides. Teacher’s guides are quite important, particularly – but not
only – for novice teachers. The teacher’s materials provide not only answers
to exercises, saving time and effort, but also useful tips on ways of dealing
with texts and tasks.
17. Audio recordings. This is an essential component for listening comprehension.
Without them, you would have to look for material on the Internet or on CDs.
It is very difficult to find suitable material for your class from either source, so
you really need ready-made ones that accompany the course. If the recordings
are on video, so much the better.
18. Visual materials. Visual materials such as posters and flash cards, whether on
paper or displayed digitally, are essential for classes of younger learners. They
provide an enjoyable break from the coursebook, focus attention and are
likely to improve learning. However, they may be unnecessary for older and
more academic classes.
19. Website. The course website is a fairly standard component these days.
Often the audio recordings and teacher’s guide can be found there, as well as
supplementary exercises, tests and texts, and links to other useful websites.
It is not absolutely necessary, but it may be quite an important added
resource.

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20. Availability. This is perhaps obvious, but essential. The most desirable
coursebook in the world is no good if it is too expensive for your institution
or students to afford, or if it is not easily available in your country.

Action task
Now take a coursebook and examine it, applying the criteria you have in your list.
Write your ratings in the Applied column of the table. You could use a similar code
to the one used above in the first task in this section (✓✓ or ✓ indicates a high or
very high score, ✗ or ✗✗ a low or very low score, and ? indicates that you are not
sure, or that the criterion applies partially).
Again, you can compare notes with colleagues who have looked at the same
materials, and see how far you can agree on the different items.

14.3 Adapting course materials

This section applies both to standard coursebooks, as discussed in Sections 14.1
and 14.2 above, and to materials such as published grammar exercises, reading
comprehension texts, worksheets – all of which may, of course, be presented
either on paper or on a computer.

All teaching materials should be related to critically by the teacher. We need to be

aware of their strengths and weaknesses in order to make the most of the former
and compensate for or neutralize the latter. If there are gaps in the material (for
example, if the coursebook does not provide enough reading texts or grammar
practice), the problem can be solved by a quick ‘surf’ through the Internet, or
by adding supplementary grammar or reading books. But problems with specific
components within teaching units can only be solved by the teacher in the
classroom. You may find it necessary to make substantial changes, deletions and
additions.

Here is a sample of problems that teachers in particular situations might

encounter, where the solutions might involve such changes to the text or task.
Note that no criticism is intended of the extracts in themselves: they are all
interesting and well written. It’s just that they may not, for various reasons,
address the needs of a particular group of students.

Task
Look at the teachers’ criticisms, and think about how you might go about solving
the problems. Then read on to the What we can do section below, and annotate with
any further ideas you had yourself that I had not thought of.

Paolo (teaching in a primary school in Italy): It’s important to do lots of

grammar practice with my students, but exercises like this one are rather
boring, the students get fed up doing them. And they’re too short: don’t give
enough opportunities for practice.

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Complete the sentences:

1. Venice is ……………………… (beautiful) than London.
2. This school is …………………………… (big) than that one.
3. This was ……………………………. (bad) day of my life!
4. Which is ………………………………. (heavy): a pound or a kilo?
5. Which supermarket has the ………………………….. (cheap) vegetables?
6. She was ……………………………. (popular) singer in the festival.
7. For me, mathematics is ………………………. (difficult) than English.

Suad (teaching in a girls’ school in Egypt): The reading passage is culturally

inappropriate for my adolescent female students. In our culture it is not
acceptable for young people to have girlfriends and boyfriends or ‘go out’. So
I have a problem with the following reading passage, though the rest of the
book is excellent.

Where did New Yorkers ever get the reputation for being unfriendly? It’s so
completely the opposite that it is unbelievable that anyone could subscribe
to the idea for more than five minutes. The only reason the idea survives is
that New Yorkers themselves love to affirm it and that many people who visit
the city stay in a few midtown blocks of the business area and fear to walk
the neighborhoods, west and east. The truth is that New Yorkers are almost
embarrassingly friendly and helpful, so much so that it is bewildering to the
uninitiated, who think they are up to something.
Nearly all New Yorkers talk to one another all the time, and they love to give
advice. A woman at a bus stop dropped some books and muttered that
everything was terrible today. Another asked her what was wrong (while
everyone else listened carefully), and she said her boyfriend had broken
up with her. Nearly every person had consolation to offer, and then a very
elegantly dressed lady at the back of the group said, ‘You should meet my
brother Jimmy; he’s a great guy and he’s not attached. Look, here’s his phone
number; I’ll tell him to expect your call. You can have coffee – what could it
hurt?’

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If you are a stranger, all the stops are pulled out. Recently, on a full subway
car a man asked where to get off for Wall Street. Everyone jumped to instruct
him, but that was just the beginning. The passengers on the subway wanted
to know why he wanted to go to Wall Street, explained that Saturday was no
good since the Stock Exchange wasn’t open, demanded to know what he’d
already seen in New York, and arrived finally at an agreement about where he
should go that day – and three of them made sure he got off at the right stop
for it.
Why is such a huge city so sociable? My own theory is that it’s an island
mentality. They want to know everything about everybody on their little
island, or at least in their own neighborhood, and everyone who sets foot on
it.
(Slightly abridged from http://wps.prenhall.com/hss_wassman_
effective_3/55/14087/3606342.cw/content/index.html)

Emilia (teaching in a private school in Brazil): This reading passage is

interesting, and my students relate well to the topic, but it’s a bit too short
and easy for my class of 12-year-old students. They need more challenge.

Who was Robin Hood?

Nobody knows. In the film, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Robin was rich, but
this probably wasn’t true. We know that he was a popular hero in the 13th
century. It’s possible the real man was born before then.
Who were the Merry Men?
Little John and Will Scarlet were famous Merry Men. Robin Hood was the
leader of this group of men (and women).
Why were Robin Hood and his Merry Men famous?

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They were famous for robbing rich people. But Robin Hood and his Merry
Men weren’t robbers – the money was for poor people.
(Adapted from Active Grammar 1, F. Davis and W. Rimmer, Cambridge
University Press.)

Takumi (teaching in a boys’ school in Japan): This reading passage is too

long and difficult for my class: teaching it would mean translating a lot of the
words, and they would find it hard and perhaps boring.

A young emperor penguin took a wrong turn from the Antarctic and ended
up stranded on a New Zealand beach – the first time in 44 years the
aquatic bird has been sighted in the south Pacific country.
Local resident Christine Wilton was taking her miniature schnauzer dog
Millie for a walk on Peka Peka beach on the North Island’s western coast
when she discovered the bird.
‘It was out of this world to see it … like someone just dropped it from the
sky,’ Wilton said.
Conservation experts say the penguin is about 10 months old and stands
about 80cm (32 inches) high.
Emperor penguins are the tallest and largest species of penguin and can
grow up to 122cm high and weigh more than 34kg (75lbs).

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Colin Miskelly, a curator at Te Papa, the Museum of New Zealand, said the bird
was likely to have been born during the last Antarctic winter. He said emperor
penguins can spend months at a time in the ocean, but did not know what
might have caused this particular one to become disoriented. Miskelly said the
penguin appeared healthy and well fed, with plenty of body fat, and probably
came ashore for a rest.
However, Miskelly said the penguin would need to find its way back south soon
if it were to survive. Despite the onset of the New Zealand winter, the bird was
probably hot and thirsty, he said.
Peter Simpson, a programme manager for New Zealand’s department of
conservation, said officials are asking people to stand back about 10m from
the creature and to avoid letting dogs near it.
The last confirmed sighting of a wild emperor in New Zealand was in 1967 at
the southern Oreti beach, he said.
(Slightly abridged version of an article that appeared in The Guardian, on 21
June 2011. www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/21/emperor-penguins-
detour-new-zealand)

What we can do
Paolo: boring and too-short grammar exercises. Here are some ideas for
adaptation to add interest and length.
Having led the students through the exercise once conventionally, tell them to:
1. close their books and try to recall all seven of the completed sentences. They
can work in pairs. Then, in full class, check answers.
2. ignore the sentence endings, and invent their own: so sentence 5 might be
‘Which supermarket has the freshest fruit’?
3. ignore the adjective in brackets, and suggest any other comparative or
superlative adjectives that make sense with the rest of the sentence. For
example, the first sentence could be ‘Venice is warmer than London’ or ‘Venice
is smaller than London’.
4. change selected statements (it doesn’t work for questions) in whatever way
they like in order to make them true for them. So for sentence 7, for example,
they might say ‘For me, mathematics is more difficult than Italian’.
5. use only the comparative or superlative adjective in each case, ignoring all the
rest of the sentence given, and make true sentences of their own.
Note that in ideas 2, 3, 4 and 5, the students do not have to go through every item
in the exercise, and are certainly not confined to the order in which they appear
in the original. On the other hand, they may produce a number of different
answers to any single item.
Suad: cultural inappropriateness. There are various options here, and which you
choose depends on various factors: the opinions and personalities of the students,
their parents’ attitudes, your own cultural background and beliefs, and school policy.

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1. You can simply skip this reading passage, which may mean omitting an entire
unit. Or you could replace it with one you find yourself.
2. If you have a digital copy of the text, you could either delete the inappropriate
paragraph, or change the text so that the woman’s problem is something more
acceptable to your students’ culture.
3. You might use the text as it is, and simply acknowledge that this relates to a
foreign culture and would not be acceptable at home.
4. You might go further: take the opportunity to draw students’ attention to
the differences in cultural norms between the USA and the home culture and
discuss the issue of cultural differences in general.
Emilia: short, easy reading passage. This is indeed quite an easy text, though
you might need to teach your students words like leader, merry. Some things you
might do to make it more challenging are:
1. Give students five minutes to work on their own, inserting as many adjectives
and adverbs as they can in the passage. Then share the results.
2. Tell students to take pairs of simple sentences from the text, and combine them
into one sentence. They can change the wording as necessary. For example ‘In
the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Robin was rich, but this probably wasn’t
true.’ Might be changed to ‘Although in the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,
Robin was rich, this probably wasn’t true.’
3. Send students to the Internet to find out as much as they can about Robin
Hood, write notes, and share the information they have found in the following
lesson, either orally or in writing.
4. a) If you have an interactive whiteboard (IWB), show the text on the board
and invite students to add whole phrases or sentences of at least three
words, wherever they like and make sense. If they have done the internet
research, as suggested at 3. above, then the insertions should relate to what
they have found out.
b) If you don’t have an IWB, then ask students to say what their additions
would be, and where they would put them. Write up on the board only
the additions. Students copy them down, and then for homework try to
remember or work out where to insert them and write out the entire text.
5. Select specific words from the text (for example, hero, real, rich, popular, merry,
etc.), and tell students for homework to find out from dictionaries, thesauri or
by searching online as many other words of similar meaning as they can for
each.
Takumi: long, difficult passage. The problem with difficulty is essentially the
level of vocabulary. The aspect of length is dealt with later.
1. Vocabulary. There are two useful strategies here:
a) Pre-teach the key words necessary for understanding the main topic of the
passage. These might be emperor penguin, sight (v.), stranded. Don’t try to pre-
teach all previously unknown vocabulary before reading. That would just
overwhelm and discourage the students. They need to discover the rest of
the new items gradually, preferably in context. The main key words can also
provide the basis for a pre-reading discussion of the topic.

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b) Before presenting the passage, delete the difficult bits wherever you can
without altering the basic message, and present the text the first time
without them. For example:
A young emperor penguin took a wrong turn from the Antarctic and
ended up stranded on a New Zealand beach – the first time in 44 years
the aquatic bird has been sighted in the south Pacific country.
Local resident Christine Wilton was taking her dog Millie for a walk on
Peka Peka beach on the North Island’s western coast when she discovered
the bird.
“It was out of this world to see it … like someone just dropped it from
the sky,” Wilton said.
Conservation experts say the penguin is about 10 months old and stands
about 80cm (32 inches) high.
Tell students to cross out these items lightly, in pencil on their copy (or use
‘delete’ or ‘strikethrough’ if they have a digital version). Or, if you are able to
retype the passage, it can be presented to the students as:
A young emperor penguin took a wrong turn from the Antarctic and
ended up on a New Zealand beach – the first time in 44 years the bird
has been sighted in the south Pacific country. Christine Wilton was
taking her dog Millie for a walk when she discovered the bird. “It was ...
like someone just dropped it from the sky,” Wilton said. Experts say the
penguin is about 10 months old and stands about 80cm (32 inches)
high.
2. Length. The answer here is to do the text bit by bit, so that the students are not
faced with the entire text at one session.
a) In the first lesson, work only on the first few sentences, simplified as
suggested above, teaching new vocabulary as necessary.
b) Challenge students to predict what more information will be provided later
in this report; then continue reading, working on each paragraph on its own
before progressing to the next.
c) When you have finished working through the entire passage, read it aloud
to the students again, to familiarize further.
d) Only after the students know the basic content and sequence of argument
of the simplified passage, let them read the original with the deleted items
reinstated, and work on these as necessary.

Summary
The coursebook provides you with useful texts and tasks which you can use as the
basis for your teaching programme. But that is essentially what it is: a good basis.
The coursebook authors do not know your class: you do. You are the best person
to decide how much of the material to use, and how. Be selective and critical,
using your own professional judgement to decide where it needs to be changed
and where it does not. As the examples above show, coursebook materials can be
adapted (sometimes quite drastically) in order to create appropriate, learning-rich
and interesting activities for your class.

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14.4 Supplementary materials (1): paper

Most language-teaching coursebooks probably need some supplementing in order
to adapt them to the needs of a particular class or to offer extra texts, exercises or
visual materials. Below is a list of paper supplementary materials that you should
try to have access to, either in your staff room or at home.

Reference books
The main type of reference book is, of course, the dictionary. It is useful to have
a monolingual English dictionary available in the staff room (the Concise Oxford
English Dictionary, for example), as well as a good learner’s dictionary (like the
Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary). If you are teaching students who all
(or mostly) share a single L1, then you will need also a good bilingual dictionary.
Other useful reference books are the thesaurus (Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words
and Phrases) and a good teacher’s grammar (for example, Michael Swan’s Practical
English Usage).

Your students should also have paper or electronic dictionaries with them –
usually bilingual – unless they are always carrying mobile electronic hardware with
easily accessed dictionary sites.

Textbooks
You will find it useful to have a variety of English-teaching textbooks on your
shelves. These would include various coursebooks, but also books focusing on
particular aspects of language such as grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, style
and so on. You might want to use extracts to supplement your own coursebook
where you feel something is missing or inadequately covered.

Teacher handbooks
There is an enormous range of handbooks available to the English teacher,
covering almost any aspect of teaching you can think of. Some of them are too
theoretical, or focus on a specific student population which may not have much
in common with yours, or suggest activities that are not practicable in your
classes. Others are excellent and can enrich your teaching as well as make it more
enjoyable. Take every opportunity to browse through the teacher handbooks
at teachers’ conferences and bookshops; and ask experienced colleagues which
handbooks they have found useful.

Books for extensive reading

The importance of extensive reading has already been discussed in Unit 10:
Teaching reading, pp. 145–6. A library of suitable books is therefore a ‘must’ for
any school or insitution where English is taught. This should include plenty of
simplified readers at different levels as well as unsimplified books.

Getting a group of students to read such books regularly is easier said than done,
as many experienced teachers will testify. It requires ongoing monitoring of book
borrowing and returning, and constant investment in new books. However, it is
certainly worthwhile: the expense, compared to computer hardware, for example,
is relatively small, and the benefits for language learning are substantial.

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Worksheets, test papers, work cards

Teachers very often prepare worksheets for their students with extra reading or
language practice as well as tests. There is also an enormous number of worksheets
and tests available on the Internet, although finding what you want can take
hours – and even then you might not find exactly what you need.

Teacher-made worksheets or test papers are copied onto A4 paper and have room
to write in answers. As compared to work cards (described below), they have the
advantages that they can be written on, are less time-consuming to make, and are
in fact often provided in workbooks that come with course materials.

Having created and used the worksheets or tests, there are two important things
you need to do with them later. One is to share them with colleagues, some of
whom may be using similar materials with similar students and may find the extra
material useful. The second is to file them: see the last paragraph of this section.

Work cards are small pieces of coloured card (perhaps about one-quarter the size
of an A4 sheet of paper), which can be laminated. Each card displays one short
task, designed to be done in five minutes or less. Students do one, and then
exchange it for another, as described below. If you are focusing on reading, then
each card would show the same type of reading task, but obviously using different
actual content each time. If you are focusing on grammar, each might show one
item of a ten-item exercise, with instructions. The same can be done for writing,
vocabulary and various other topics.

Here is an example of a simple reading card for an elementary class of young

learners:

Draw in your notebooks

This is a big bus. It is red. There are people in the bus.

The other cards would consist of similar easy descriptions for students to draw.

Usually there are ten or so different cards in a set, but each would need to
be copied three or four times, depending on the size of your class. For a class of 20,
you would need about 30 cards to make sure you have a constant ‘reserve’. You
begin by giving each student a card. Leave the ‘reserve’ in a central location in the
classroom. As they finish, students come to exchange their card for a new one.

The main advantage of the use of work cards is that all students are engaging with
the task all the time, each working at his or her own speed. I have also found
them very motivating. This is is partly because the items are done quickly so there
is a sense of achievement: the student does not have to wait to the end of the
whole exercise to feel he or she has finished something. And it is partly because
of the actual movement – getting up to exchange cards and returning with a new
card – which provides a change from the generally static classroom.

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Pictures: posters, flash cards

Materials with pictures are invaluable, particularly for younger learners, and
teachers of children find that they constantly use them. The time is gone when
teachers used to spend hours leafing through glossy magazines and colour
supplements of newspapers to find suitable pictures: today you can find and
download all the pictures you need at the click of a mouse. These can then be
glued onto card, or laminated if you think you will use them repeatedly, and
filed (see below). It is, of course, possible to display visual material on IWBs, but
paper materials have the advantage that they can be easily handled, moved and
exchanged rather than stuck at the front of the class.

All supplementary materials based on separate sheets of paper or card need to be

carefully filed. It is very frustrating to invest a lot of time creating them and then
find that you cannot lay your hands on them when you want to use them again!
Label and classify files clearly, either in a folder on a computer or in a box file. It
is often a good idea to preserve paper versions even of material you have on your
computer in digital form, as a useful ready-to-copy back-up.

14.5 Supplementary materials (2): digital

A large amount of teaching and learning these days is done with the help of
technology. The term CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) is, however,
used less and less, as people become aware that the use of technology is not a
supplement (as implied in the word ‘assisted’), but a staple component in the
materials and facilities used for learning and teaching worldwide. Computers, in
their various forms, with a wide range of software and access to the Internet, are,
in many teaching contexts, taken for granted, in much the same way as the black-
or whiteboard is.

Below is a list of the digital tools that can be useful in teaching. For more
information on how to use them, see Unit 16: Classroom interaction, pp. 238–41.

The interactive whiteboard (IWBs) and data projectors

You can use both data projectors and IWBs to display texts, pictures, pages from
the textbook, presentations and video. IWBs can be controlled by the touch of a
finger or special ‘pen’, which means that a teacher can write and erase in the same
way as with a conventional board. But it is useful to take advantage of an IWB’s
other tools: hide and display text and pictures; play audio and video directly from
the textbook page; type in answers; insert your own files. The material can be
saved, to be displayed later, filed on the class website or emailed to students later.

Internet websites
The Internet provides teachers with an immense source of teaching materials and
ideas, some examples of which are listed below:
• reading texts, either from ‘authentic’ sources (i.e. not originally designed to be
used for teaching), or from English-teaching websites
• listening texts as YouTube videos, or audio podcasts

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• tests, workpages, exercises and so on, from the various English-teaching

websites, such as the British Council’s TeachingEnglish, accessible from www.
teachingenglish.org.uk
• self-access exercises and tests for students to use on their own. See, for example:
Learn English: http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/
Learn English Kids: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/
English Grammar Exercises: www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/exercises_list/alle_
grammar.htm
Guide to Grammar and Writing: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/
grammar/index.htm
ESLflow: www.eslflow.com/index.html

Interactive digital tools

Email, obviously, can be used for many purposes in communication between
teachers and students: submitting and correcting assignments, notifying of
absences or changes in schedule and so on. Mobile phones are often seen as
a nuisance in the classroom, but in fact they can be used to help learning: for
example, students can use them to practise informal communicative writing, or to
list new vocabulary which they can then review at odd moments.

Wikis and blogs

Wikis are a tool through which anyone can edit or comment on uploaded text: so
they are useful for interactive editing and discussion of student-generated texts.
They are increasingly used as a basis for class websites. Blogs are used as a way for
students to comment on texts or respond to tasks: they often develop into full
discussions, with ‘comments’ going back and forth.

Digital recording
Digital equipment, including most mobile phones, can be used to create both
video and audio recordings. Students can create their own video clips or sound
recordings; the teacher can record students’ performance to play back later. Or live
sound or video can be broadcast via the Internet (‘streaming’).

Production
Desktop publishing enables classes or individual students to create and design
pages or whole booklets for publishing, either within the school or beyond. This is
particularly useful for the presentation of research-based or creative projects done
by students.

e-books
These may be used for the provision of extensive reading material; however, at the
time of writing they are not systematically or widely used in English courses for
this purpose. They may, however, answer the needs of more advanced students
who can download novels for their own individual reading.

Digital tools are not a substitute for the face-to-face lesson or for direct interaction
between teacher and student; rather, where available and well-used, they are

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a means of enriching it and making it more efficient. The combination of

conventional and digital teaching/learning, known as blended learning, often using
programs known as LMSs (Learning Management Systems), will be discussed
further in Unit 16: Classroom interaction, p. 240.

Review
Answer as many as you can of the following questions, and then check answers by
referring back to the relevant passages in this unit.
If you are working in a group, note down your answers first alone, and then share
with the other members of the group. Finally, check the answers together.
How necessary is a coursebook?
1. Can you give at least three arguments in favour of using a coursebook in your
teaching?
2. Can you suggest at least three disadvantages of using a coursebook in your
teaching?

Coursebook evaluation and selection

3. Why is the layout of a coursebook so important?
4. Why are tests and reviews in a coursebook less important?
5. What other important criteria for textbook selection can you remember
(20 are suggested in this section)?

Adapting course materials

6. What sorts of things can be done to improve a grammar exercise that is
boring and does not provide enough practice?
7. What can be done to add more challenge to a too-easy text?
8. What might be done to make a difficult text easier for the class to cope with?

Supplementary materials (1): paper

9. What types of paper materials should be available to teachers for use in
classes?
10. How can you make sure that teacher-made paper materials are available for
later re-use?

Supplementary materials (2): digital

11. What is an IWB? How can it be used?
12. Can you suggest at least five other types of computer hardware or software
that are useful to teachers today?

Further reading
Cooper, R., Lavery, M. and Rinvolucri, M. (1991) Video, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
(Useful classroom activities for language learning using video)
Cunningworth, A. (1995) Choosing Your Coursebook, Oxford: Macmillan Heinemann.
(Useful guidelines and checklists to help select coursebooks)

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Dudeney, G. and Hockly, N. (2007) How to Teach English with Technology, London:
Pearson Education.
(A practical guide to the use of computers and web2 tools in the
classroom, with plenty of actual activities clearly explained)
Erben, T. and Sarieva, I. (2007) CALLing All Foreign Language Teachers: Computer-
Assisted Language Learning in the Classroom, Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.
(A comprehensive guide to the use of technology in language teaching:
some chapters available online: http://sites.google.com/site/terben9397/
callingallforeignlanguageteachers)
Tomlinson, B. (ed.) (1998) Materials Development for Language Teaching,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
(A collection of articles about the design and composition of teaching
materials, including materials targeting specific skills, purposes and
populations)
Wright, A. and Haleem, S. (1991) Visuals for the Language Classroom, London:
Longman.
(A thorough discussion of the topic, exploring classroom procedures
associated with the various types of materials)

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