An evaluation of junior high school English textbooks in Taiwan

English Language Learners (hereafter referred to as ELLs) currently comprise 10% of the total school population in the United States (National Center for Education Statistics, 2005). It is a population that is going to continue to increase in American public education and their specific needs for learning literacy are of great importance to teachers. Since schools and teachers are increasingly judged based upon the academic achievement of students, then the success of the growing population of ELLs is going to be increasingly important. In the present paper the role of the teacher and specific research-based literacy strategies for ELLs is investigated.

According to the prompt, “Students in high school English classes in the United States can read texts that vary widely from school to school” (Prompt). In today’s world, different countries and nations vary in ways. However, one variation between countries that has came to notice, would be the fact that most nations have a defined national school curriculum, while other countries, such as the United States, do not (Prompt). This also means that students in countries other than the United States may all read the same books in high school, while students in the U.S. could read different texts in wide range from school to school (Prompt). The United States’s choice to not have a set English class reading curriculum for high schools has both, its advantages and disadvantages. Some individuals feel that this is positive because it creates diversity from classroom to classroom across the United States, while others feel that it is negative because having the same reading curriculum would ensure that students are gaining the same education and are reading material that is appropriate. However, high school English classes should not all have the same reading curriculum because it will limit the amount of opportunity for students, as well as it would exclude non popular and more recent pieces of writing.

Hill, J.D., & Flynn, K.M. (2006). Classroom instruction that works with English language learner. Alexandria, Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

As this research is a case study, the participants of the study were chosen from the students of the Department of Foreign Language Education (FLE) at Middle East Technical University (METU).FLE students at METU are generally graduated from teacher training high schools. In high school, they are usually taught English very well. However, the English lessons in high schools are commonly based on grammar and reading skills. Listening and especially speaking are the least important skills because of the fact that the university entrance exam is prepared to measure students’ grammar and reading skills. Unlikely, Department of FLE at METU aims to make its students fully qualified language teachers. For that purpose, its curriculum includes listening and speaking courses, as well as reading, writing, grammar and English

As far as I know, many Chinese students have difficulty in studying English when they study abroad. Some of them choose to attend language program or ask for tutors’ help. Before I came to the United States, I could not speak English very well, so I made a schedule that I’ll learn vocabularies from 6 am to 10 am and then studied English grammar. I started reading English books. As a result, I made great progress on my English. When I read the article “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me”, I found myself and the author are a lot alike in learning by ourself.

The education in China is exam-oriented, but most of the tests emphasize testing students’ mastery of the reading and language forms while overlooking assessing students’ speaking abilities (Wei, 2012). And teachers tend to give students practices of the knowledge that are to be tested in the exams. Therefore, many English teachers in China tend to ignore English speaking and they give few opportunities for their students to practice their speaking abilities (Wang, 2014). In China, English language teaching still “focuses heavily on language knowledge, not language skills, with the former being defined in terms of grammar and vocabulary and being taught predominantly in the mother tongue and through textbook material and

Textbooks are the most effective tool of educational technologies and they will always play a role in our educational systems. However they are being used as instruments to rewrite and sugarcoat

If a survey was carried out among teachers of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and Teachers of English as a Second Language (TESOL), a finding would be that a major concern for teachers is the inability to find appropriate material or the perfect text for their lesson. This is the basis for the article by Swale. Swale in his investigation puts forward two different options to overcome this problem. At this stage the author notes that no matter what approach is taken, the teacher needs to double as an editor or in some cases a material developer/writer.

Teachers modify their lesson plans to help their students reach mastery. Overall, it appears that teachers are successful when they understand their students and are able to incorporate elements of specialized needs into the lesson and to think about potential student misunderstandings before they occur. All information for this analysis is taken from case number 0001 under the ENL category. The video takes place in a 7th grade English as a Second Language (ESL) class. It is evident that the teacher understands the needs of each of her students and incorporated this knowledge into the lesson to ensure differentiation. Specifically, the teacher adjusts instruction to help meet the needs of the students by asking each individual to read from a worksheet so she is able to facilitate learning within a social setting. The teacher engaged the usually quiet children by asking probing questions which in turn enriched their problem solving skills. In addition, she helped each student correct their pronunciation in such a way that they would not feel embarrassed or attacked because she was aware of their reservations about reading out loud. Unbeknownst to the class, the teacher took the children’s cultural needs into consideration as well. In the overview of the video the teacher noted

Achievement Standard English 91479: Develop an informed understanding of literature and/or language using critical texts.

In this project, I hope to focus on the difficulties in obtaining textbooks. Specifically, I want to discuss the ever rising and ridiculous prices. The personal experiences of my fellow students and of students around the country are the main driving resources of my research. I will examine their own experiences purchasing and obtaining textbooks and what sort of effect this process had on their college experiences. I hope to analyze book companies and book stores related to our own campus to discover the options laid out for students. I also hope to discover different statistics concerning the

Unlike the United States, some nations have a defined national school curriculum. Students in high school English classes in the United States have a wide variety of texts to read from, while students in other countries might be reading the same texts in high school. Providing the same texts to read for high school English texts gives them a lack of access to a variety of themes of literature and believes it makes the students less interested in not only the English curriculum, but reading in general. There should not be a mandatory reading list for all high school English classes because of the lack of variety of texts provided to them.

This paper identified lessons, grade level, and content area for students who are learning English as a Second Language (ESL). The lessons outlined were retrieved from the Arizona English Language Proficiency Standards (ELPS). There are three ELPS standards denoted in this lesson that is inclusive of the instruction style and different assessment approaches. Further, as the classroom teacher, I developed and implemented reading learning experiences to support English Language Learners’ (ELLs) fluency and comprehension of the language.

One of the most important factors of the textbook is teaching method. English 6 does not specify the teaching method in detail while the global textbooks are very clear about the methodology. In terms of teaching four language skills, the textbook applied PPP method which restricts students’ initiative and creativity. Therefore, a combination of different teaching methodologies will improve the textbook’s value. With regard to the encouragement of learner interaction and promotion of learners’ communicative abilities, the textbook should add many types of information gap activities which focus on fluency and open-ended questions, not focusing on repetition, substitution, listen and repeat activity very much. It means information-gap activities help to encourage learners to interact each other. They should have many opportunities to exchange information through pictures or given information in reading texts to fulfill the tasks. In addition to information-gap activities, creative activities and tasks should be added to encourage learners’ creative use and communicative abilities of the target language. In the parts called “Play with words”, learners repeat the sentences after listening to the cassette player or the teacher. Therefore, pronunciation and stress activities which help learners distinguish the difference between Vietnamese and

The Philippine educational setting is bilingual in nature, thus the level of performance of public high school students towards English proficiency in learning creates its possibility to be monolingual by using the considered foreign language as the standard language in teaching is impossible yet can be proven by theoretical studies to be conducted. Many accounts of constitutional laws, studies and facts regarding this issue of using the English language in teaching academic subjects such as science and technology can well explain its effective usage in the world of language education namely: the English language proficiency public students show, the legal basis it holds, the level of performance the public high school