Academic literature on the topic 'Coursebook evaluation, teaching pronunciation'

This paper will review the process of developing two units of a coursebook that aimed to promote socialization and social change. Teaching perspectives on the Communicative Approach and Critical Literacy are reviewed, advocating the possibility of linking both perspectives. The methods of dealing with the receptive and productive skills and three language systems – grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation – are synthesized and reasons for supporting the choice of the activities in the units are given throughout the article. The results of this study suggest that the coursebook syllabus can bring together both the possibility of socialization, fostered by the Communicative Approach, and social change, encouraged by the Critical Literacy. Thus, coursebooks are important factors to promote students’ active citizenship.

In case that many reforms in learning and teaching English in Vietnam were implemented, exploring the effectiveness of different coursebooks was raised to be a sufficient need. This research is more qualitative than quantitative in its nature, aiming to investigate EFL teachers’ evaluation of the coursebook Skillful – Reading & Writing 02 in a specific educational institution in the Mekong Delta. Thirteen teacher participants using the books were invited to participate in this study. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected by using two instruments, questionnaires and semi-interviews. The study provided a new checklist for evaluating materials in teaching and learning reading and writing. The findings showed that (1) the merits of the coursebook Skillful – Reading & Writing 02: e.g. colorful illustrations, numerous online learning resources accompanying online accounts, suggestive topics, updated contents, and impressive study skills component; and (2) demerits of the book in terms of writing section which does not match the general objectives of the program. Likewise, (3) the cons are regarding quite small font size and long listening activities of the coursebook. Additionally, some implications were suggested in this study to enhance the effectiveness of using sufficient materials for higher educational institutions.

This study discusses an evaluation of a teacher-made coursebook for teaching essay writing course. Forty students were asked to give their perception of the use of the coursebook in terms of goal, contents, organization and design, and methodology. The analysis of the students’ answers showed that their perception towards the coursebook was positive. The majority of the students said that the coursebook objective was relevant to their needs, the contents were complete, the topics were interesting and were relevant to their needs and interests as well as their sociocultural background, the explanation was easy to be understood, the tasks and activities were attracting and helped them expressed their knowledge, experiences, and interests in a variety of essay types. Similarly, the coursebook was well-arranged from unit to the subunit. Students also said that the methodology used by the coursebook helped them expressed their knowledge, experiences, and interests accurately and fluently.

Coursebook plays a substantial role in facilitating teaching and learning process, especially for EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). However, the widely available coursebooks do not always match with the designed program and the learners� as well as the institution� needs. To ensure that a coursebook can optimally support the goals of an ESP course, developing materials is suggested. This research aimed to develop an ESP coursebook using ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation) model. A Research and Development method was employed in this research in which the data were collected through questionnaire and interview. The questionnaire was distributed to 430 Business English 1 students at Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta. Meanwhile, the interview was conducted to 4 English teachers. Here, the data were obtained during the first and the last steps of ADDIE model (analysis and evaluation). The data obtained from the analysis phase were used for need analysis, while those obtained from the evaluation phase were used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the coursebook. The findings showed the coursebook�s elements which cover language, content, tasks, learners, and the learning are good, but the visual elements highly need improvement.

With the advancement of globalization, an increasing number of people are learning and using a common language as a tool for international communication. However, there are clear distinctions between the native language and target language, especially in pronunciation, and the domestic target language, the learning environment is far from ideal, with few competent teachers. In addition, such learning cannot achieve computer-assisted language learning (CALL) technology. The efficient combination of computer technology and language teaching and learning methods provides a new solution to this problem. The core of CALL is speech recognition (SR) technology and speech evaluation technology. The development of deep learning (DL) has greatly promoted the development of speech recognition. The pronunciation resource collected from the Chinese college students, whose majors are language education or who are planning to obtain better pronunciation, shall be the research object of this paper. The study applies deep learning to the standard but of target language pronunciation and builds a standard evaluation model of pronunciation teaching based on the deep belief network (DBN). On this basis, this work improves the traditional pronunciation quality evaluation method, comprehensively considers intonation, speaking speed, rhythm, intonation, and other multi-parameter indicators and their weights, and establishes a reasonable and efficient pronunciation model. The systematic research results show that this article has theoretical and practical value in the field of phonetics education.

A textbook plays an important factor in teaching and learning processes. Thus, this study attempted to analyze an English textbook entitled Bahasa Inggris Bahasa Inggris SMA/MA SMK/MAK Kelas X which is used by almost teachers in secondary level education. This study used qualitative study by using Biocchi’s (2000) coursebook evaluation and interview which was adopted open-ended questions from Biocchi’s (2000) coursebook evaluation. The analysis encircled the contents, grammar, levels of the material, kind of the materials, and the methodology used in the textbook. The results revealed that this textbook was well designed and encouraged students’ autonomy to learn and use the language. Besides, this textbook achieved Biocchi’s (2000) coursebook evaluation (contents, grammar focus, level, material, and methodology) well. Although this book is good enough, there is a weakness; it is not provided by CD for listening activity, so the teachers have to find and create their own audio.

As the means of transferring knowledge between teachers and students, coursebooks play a significant role in educational practices all over the world. Evaluation of coursebooks is also of great significance as it manages to a better understanding of the nature of a specific teaching/learning situation. The present study is an attempt to evaluate Total English coursebook from both Iranian EFL learners and teachers perspectives. Ninety three students and 20 teachers participated in this study. Fifty one of the students and 11 of the teachers were male and 42 of the students and nine of the teachers were female. The range of teachers' experience of teaching the coursebook was between 2-4 years and the range of students' experience of studying the coursebook was between 1-3 years. The data collection took place in three language institutes of Gilan and Mazandaran provinces. The coursebook, evaluated based on modified version of Cunningsworth's (1995) checklist, was the intermediate level of Total English. It was evaluated by both students and teachers based on administering written questionnaires. In order to triangulate the gathered data, 25 percent of the teachers and 10 percent of the students attended an interview session. Data analysis indicated that strength of Total English from teachers' perspective was culture and from students' point of view were visuals as well as practice and testing. Moreover, from students' perspective, the primary shortcoming of the coursebook was phonology.

This paper is an attempt to develop a design-oriented approach to ELT coursebook evaluation, with a particular focus on the internal organization of coursebook units at both intra-unit and inter-unit levels. We believe that looking at coursebooks from the position of the materials designer sheds some additional light on ELT coursebook evaluation. The design-oriented approach to ELT coursebook assessment proposed in the paper goes well beyond the immediate, and often superficial, ‘check-list’ methods commonly used to help teachers select coursebooks. In other words, the design-oriented approach to ELT coursebook assessment enables teachers an insight into ‘the architecture’ of textbooks. On this ‘journey to the centre of ELT textbooks’, we try to highlight how language teaching materials have been resolving the conundrum of the dynamic combination of the What (content), and the How (pedagogy/methodology). In presenting a materials design process, we start off with the assumption that there has always been a broad basis of theoretical and pedagogical notions that can inform the content and organization of ELT coursebooks, and upon which coursebook writers can build when designing instructional materials. The article then discusses three stages of the design process, offering a more detailed analysis of the complex issue of unit structure at intra- and inter-unit levels. We explore different formats of unit structure, its components, ways of creating coherence throughout the unit, and its underlying methodology/pedagogy. The last point prompts the conclusion that today’s ELT materials are produced in response to a perceived market demand that is often at variance with the latest theoretical developments in ELT.

This study aims to create a college English coursebook corpus of coursebooks widely used in universities in China to form the basis of an analysis. The comparative study based on Cunningsworth [1] coursebook evaluation theory, in view of several checklist items and the adoption of quantitative and qualitative approach, involves: vocabulary size, the coverage of vocabulary and collocations and the readability of texts. The statistics of evaluation show that there is a gap between requirements and coursebooks. It is hoped that the indices examined in this study would be of some help for English teachers to take vocabulary and collocation size and text readability into account in teaching practice and possibly for administrators to adjust curriculum design and for editors or publishers to revise existing coursebooks.

<p>This study investigated L2 leaners’ preferences between native-speaking teachers (NST) and non-native-speaking teachers (NNST) as their English pronunciation teacher, and examined the participants’ accentedness and comprehensibility in L2-English pronunciation after being taught by a NST and a NNST. The participants were 30 undergraduates who were doing non-English majors at a university in China. They went through 4-month English pronunciation classes. In the first 2 months, they were taught by a NST. From the 3rd to the 4th month, they were taught by a NNST. Their accentedness and comprehensibility of spoken English were tested at the beginning of the programme (pre-test), at the end of the 2nd month (middle test), and at the end of the 4th month (post-test). Information on their evaluation of the NST and NNST as a pronunciation teacher was collected with questionnaires at the end of the experiment. According to the results, (1) compared with that in pre-test, the participants’ accentedness and comprehensibility both improved slightly in middle test; (2) compared with that in middle test, the participants received significant improvement both in comprehensibility and accentedness; (3) the majority of the participants prefer a NST to a NNST to be their English pronunciation teacher.</p>

ABSTRACT AN EVALUATION OF TIME FOR ENGLISH 4, THE 4TH GRADE ENGLISH COURSEBOOK FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS Ö
zdemir, Fatma Esra M.A., Department of English Language Teaching Supervisor : Prof. Dr. Hü
snü
Enginarlar September 2007, 119 pages The purpose of this study was to find out the how the fourth grade students in public schools and the fourth grade English teachers evaluated the English coursebook Time for English 4 in terms of purpose, approach, visual design, presentation of vocabulary and language, practice activities and exercises, supporting sources, and supporting materials. To fulfill this aim, a teacher questionnaire, a student questionnaire and a teacher interview was prepared by the researcher. The questionnaires were administered face to face to 102 randomly selected fourth grade students in Beypazari and 15 English teachers in the districts of Altindag, Beypazari, Keç
iö
ren, and Mamak. Six of the English teachers were also interviewed in order to obtain qualitative data. The interviews were recorded on a tape recorder and then transcribed. Quantitative data was analyzed by calculating the frequency counts, percentages, arithmetic means, and the standard deviations of the responses given to the questionnaires. Qualitative data obtained from the interviews was analyzed by using content analysis. According to the results of the study, both the teachers and the students were content with the coursebook. The level of satisfaction was higher among the students. Students identified two problems about the instructions and the songs in the coursebook. Teachers identified four more problems about the teacher&rsquo
s book, the number of vocabulary items, the number of units, and the presentation of the language items. Necessary suggestions were made for the solution of the problems to the relevant parties.

CoordenaÃÃo de AperfeÃoamento de Pessoal de NÃvel Superior
The purpose of this study was to evaluate how well educational software programs teach English as a Foreign Language and/or Second Language (EFL/ESL) pronunciation following the principles of the Communicative Approach (CELCE-MURCIA et al., 2010). In the first stage of the research, a software program evaluation instrument was developed and validated. Forty-six EFL/ESL teachers used it to analyze an online version of the software program Pronunciation Power 2. The responses of the participants were submitted for statistical analysis. An ICC of 0.983 (zero point nine hundred eighty-three) for the responses indicated a high degree of correlation in the evaluation of the instrument items used by the participants. The results of the One-Way ANOVA also indicated that there was no significant difference (p> 0.05) in the evaluation of the items. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient obtained was 0.918 (zero point nine hundred and eighteen), indicating a high degree of internal consistency. The results of the factor analysis suggested grouping the instrument items into 5 (five) components that were arranged in the following order: 1. Content Design; 2. Pedagogical Design; 3. Assessment/Flexibility Design; 4. Multimedia Design; and 5. Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) Design. In the second stage of the research, the instrument was used to analyze 5 (five) EFL/ESL pronunciation teaching software programs available on the market. Regarding the items of the component Content Design, the analysis showed that only one software program obtained less than 50% (fifty percent) of the maximum rating, two programs obtained between 50 and 70% (fifty and seventy percent) and two other programs reached more than 80% (eighty percent) of the maximum rating. In the items of Pedagogical Design, all programs scored above 50% (fifty percent); three programs obtained between 50 and 70% (fifty and seventy percent) and two other programs obtained above 70% (seventy percent). The evaluation of the ASR Design indicated that the items for this component had minimum ratings in all programs - four software programs scored zero and only one program obtained 33.33% (thirty-three point thirty-three percent) of the maximum rating for this component. The component Assessment/Flexibility Design obtained less than 50% (fifty percent) of the maximum rating of all the group items, while the items for Multimedia Design achieved higher ratings in most programs. Two software programs obtained between 50 and 70% (fifty and seventy percent) and three scored above 70% (seventy percent). To sum up, the overall results indicate that only one software program obtained more than 75% (seventyfive percent) of the maximum rating on the instrument. The other four programs presented less than three-quarters of the necessary characteristics to potentially develop English pronunciation. Although these programs, by themselves, may not be able to develop EFL/ESL pronunciation satisfactorily, they can be used to enrich the teaching of EFL/ESL pronunciation.
Esta pesquisa teve como objetivo avaliar de que maneira softwares educativos ensinam a pronÃncia do inglÃs como LÃngua Estrangeira e/ou Segunda LÃngua (LE/L2), seguindo os princÃpios da Abordagem Comunicativa (CELCE-MURCIA et al., 2010). Na primeira etapa da pesquisa, elaboramos um instrumento de avaliaÃÃo de softwares e o submetemos a processos de validaÃÃo. Quarenta e seis professores de inglÃs como LE/L2 o utilizaram para avaliar uma versÃo online do software âPronunciation Power 2â. As respostas dos participantes foram submetidas a tratamentos estatÃsticos. O ICC encontrado, 0,983 (zero vÃrgula novecentos e oitenta e trÃs), mostrou um alto grau de correlaÃÃo na avaliaÃÃo dos itens do instrumento pelos participantes. Os resultados da ANOVA simples tambÃm apontaram que nÃo havia diferenÃa significativa (p > 0,05) na avaliaÃÃo dos itens. O Coeficiente Alpha de Cronbach obtido de 0,918 (zero vÃrgula novecentos e dezoito) indicou um elevado grau de consistÃncia interna. JÃ os resultados da AnÃlise Fatorial sugeriram o agrupamento dos itens do instrumento em 5 (cinco) componentes que foram organizados na seguinte ordem: 1. Design de ConteÃdo; 2. Design PedagÃgico; 3. Design de AvaliaÃÃo/Flexibilidade; 4. Design de MultimÃdia; e 5. Design do Mecanismo de Reconhecimento AutomÃtico de Fala (MRAF). Na segunda etapa da pesquisa, utilizamos o instrumento para analisarmos 5 (cinco) softwares para o ensino da pronÃncia do inglÃs como LE/L2 disponÃveis no mercado. Em relaÃÃo aos itens do componente Design de ConteÃdo, a anÃlise evidenciou que apenas um software obteve menos de 50% (cinquenta por cento) da pontuaÃÃo total, dois softwares obtiveram entre 50 e 70% (cinquenta e setenta por cento) e outros dois atingiram mais de 80% (oitenta por cento) da pontuaÃÃo total. Nos itens de Design PedagÃgico, todos os softwares pontuaram acima de 50% (cinquenta por cento); trÃs softwares obtiveram entre 50 e 70% (cinquenta e setenta por cento) e dois outros acima de 70% (setenta por cento). JÃ a avaliaÃÃo de Design de MRAF apontou que os itens desse componente foram os que obtiveram menor pontuaÃÃo em todos os programas â quatro softwares pontuaram zero e um Ãnico software obteve 33,33% (trinta e trÃs vÃrgula trinta e trÃs por cento) do total de pontos do componente. O componente Design de AvaliaÃÃo/Flexibilidade obteve, na maioria dos programas, menos de 50% (cinquenta por cento) da avaliaÃÃo mÃxima de todos os itens do grupo, enquanto os itens de Design de MultimÃdia atingiram maior pontuaÃÃo na maioria dos programas. Dois softwares obtiveram entre 50 e 70% (cinquenta e setenta por cento) e trÃs pontuaram acima de 70% (setenta por cento). No somatÃrio geral, apenas um dos softwares obteve mais de 75% (setenta e cinco por cento) da pontuaÃÃo total do instrumento. Os outros quatro softwares apresentaram menos de trÃs quartos do total das caracterÃsticas necessÃrias para potencialmente desenvolverem a pronÃncia da lÃngua inglesa. Embora esses programas, por si prÃprios, nÃo sejam capazes de desenvolver a pronÃncia da lÃngua inglesa como LE/L2, eles podem ser usados para enriquecer o ensino da pronÃncia do inglÃs como LE/L2.

This exploratory, mixed-design study investigates whether intelligibility is "enough," that is, a suitable goal and an adequate assessment criterion, for evaluating proficiency in the pronunciation of non-native English speaking graduate students in the academic domain. The study also seeks to identify those pronunciation features which are most crucial for intelligible speech.
Speech samples of 19 non-native English speaking graduate students in the Faculty of Education at McGill University were elicited using the Test of Spoken English (TSE), a standardized test of spoken proficiency which is often used by institutions of higher learning to screen international teaching assistants (ITAs). Results of a fined-grained phonological analysis of the speech samples coupled with intelligibility ratings of 18 undergraduate science students suggest that intelligibility, though an adequate assessment criterion, is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for graduate students to instruct undergraduate courses as teaching assistants, and that there is a threshold level (i.e., minimum acceptable level) of intelligibility that needs to be identified more precisely. While insights about the features of pronunciation that are most critical for intelligibility are inconclusive, it is clear that intelligibility can be compromised for different reasons and is often the result of a combination of "problem areas" that interact together.
The study has some important implications for ITA training and assessment, for the design of graduate student pronunciation courses, and for future intelligibility research. It also presents a first step in validating theoretical intelligibility models which lack empirical backing (e.g., Morley, 1994).

Student's verbal participation in science classrooms is an essential element in building the skills necessary for proficiency in scientific literacy and discourse. The myriad of new, multisyllabic vocabulary terms introduced in one year of secondary school biology instruction can overwhelm students and further impede the self-efficacy needed for concise constructions of scientific explanations and arguments. Factors inhibiting students' inclination to answer questions, share ideas and respond to peers in biology classrooms include confidence and self-perceived competence in appropriately speaking the language of science. Providing students with explicit, engaging instruction in methods to develop vocabulary for use in expressing conclusions is critical for expanding comprehension of science concepts. This study fused the recommended strategies for engaging vocabulary instruction with linguistic practices for teaching pronunciation to examine the relationship between a student's ability to pronounce challenging bio-terminology and their propensity to speak in teacher-led, guided classroom discussions. Interviews, surveys, and measurements quantifying and qualifying students' participation in class discussions before and after explicit instruction in pronunciation were used to evaluate the potential of this strategy as an appropriate tool for increasing students' self-efficacy and willingness to engage in biology classroom conversations. The findings of this study showed a significant increase in student verbal participation in classroom discussions after explicit instruction in pronunciation combined with vocabulary literacy strategies. This research also showed an increase in the use of vocabulary words in student comments after the intervention.

This research aims to study the use of VR games to entertain players while teaching and improving the knowledge of Quran Tajweed for teenagers. Tajweed is an Islamic science that studies the correct recitation of the letters and words in the Qur'an. Teenagers between the ages of thirteen to eighteen were chosen for this research because it has been proven that learning at an early age ensures long-lasting knowledge, and in addition, teenagers are more capable of controlling and modifying their pronunciation. As teenagers nowadays are exposed to a variety of game technologies and their expectations and satisfaction levels are particularly high, a 3D VR game was introduced as an attractive modern solution. Viewed on HTC Vive, a 3D VR game prototype consisting of two levels was developed and evaluated by 20 teenage participants. The evaluation session resulted in a positive outcome with a few suggestions for future modifications.