Criteria for a successful ESL textbook

Develop a set of criteria for any ESL textbook. Locate three to five books, and then analyze each textbook based on either your ELD or SDAIE lesson plan or your own set of criteria. Provide the rationale and support for the textbook you choose to use.

ESL textbooks can vary widely as it relates to overall structure and content. Although the information is very similar within the text, the presentation can heavily influence the learning of the perspective student. The ability to align context with its application for example, allows students the ability to better assimilate the information in a manner best conducive to their learning. The magnitude of sample questions and how they are structured throughout the text is another important quality particularly for an ESL textbook. These elements are ESL texts rely heavily on understanding and practice. It is not enough to simply memorize material. Instead, the application of the material must be emphasized for students to properly communicate with others. These along with many other criteria, are needed for a successful ESL text.

To begin, a successful ESL text must first have very strong scope and sequence. Here, the textbook must possess a comprehensive scope that allows the student to clearly understand what is being taught and the outcomes that should be derived. In addition, the sequence related to lesson plans should also be user friendly. Here, the best textbooks are divided into very small pieces and lesson that allow the reader to learn at their own pace without inundating them with information. The most successful ESL textbooks emphasize modularity when providing lesson plans and lesson plan objectives to teach students

Second, successful ESL textbooks most posses content accuracy. Although, this is fairly obvious, textbooks should be continually updated to account for changing content. In these instances, ESL textbooks should have accurate content that does not have any factual errors. Most ESL textbooks do not contact factual errors as the language doesn’t change dramatically year to year like other fields such as technology or psychology. Successful textbooks however, do update their content regularly to make it more appealing to a changing user base. For example, some ESL texts provide online tutorials and instruction that can be used in a hybrid learning environment. Until recently, hybrid learning environments were very few with many students leveraging the more traditional approach to in-person classroom settings. Many of the best ESL texts are able to identify changing dynamics in the manner in which students will interact with their material and often update their content to reflect these changes. This ultimately helps the text to remain much more relevant in the marketplace while also avoid obsolescence. In addition, the content must be presented objectively without any biases or slant on the part of the author. As it relates to ESL texts, this could mean steering the student towards certain personal preferences as oppose to allowing the student to determine that for himself or herself. Most importantly, as it relates to this criterion, it is important to have the content peer reviewed by subject matter experts. Ideally, from what I have reviewed from the textbooks, it is best to have a double-blind peer review to ensure the most accurate content for the student to leverage in their studies (Crookes, 2003).

The third criteria for an ESL textbook is strong instructional design. As noted briefly in the introduction, it is important for a textbook to contain a variety of instruction material. Students are now much more diverse and have very distinct learning pattens and behaviors. Social media has exacerbated these trends as now many students prefer to use online channel and electronic mediums to engage with content. As a result, it is vital for an ESL textbook to leverage a variety of instructional materials including reflective questions, group activities, short response questions, multi-choice questions, and learning activities. Each activity should be designed to engage with each student in a different and unique manner. In addition, these activities should promote active leaning on the part of the ESL student. As mentioned earlier, learning a language often goes far beyond memorization. It requires a large degree of commitment to engage others through verbal practice and subsequent feedback. As a result, the ESL textbook should promote active learning in a manner that motivates the student to actively pursue opportunities to engage with others verbally. Here, the student should be able to clearly understand the link between textbook application and the learning outcomes for the particular module or lesson (Farrell, 2005).

The fourth criteria for an ESL textbook are related to text clarity, visual clarity and visual fidelity. This criterion is often overlooked as it a very minor criteria that has a very large impact on how students engage with the material. First, content should be written in a very accessible and consistent manner. The content should be written with the intended user, in this case an ESL student, in mind. This is vital as students are attempting to learn a language through reading a textbook. As a result, wording must be very accessible and easy to understand so that user engagement is increased. A different to understand textbook often placed too much pressure on the student, thus frustrating them. Through this frustration the overall learning experience is hampered, which ultimately discourages learning. ESL textbooks are not the only subject that suffers from this concept. Many math and science textbooks can be very discouraging due in part to their initial complexity. This often times, discourages the student from learning the subject altogether, pushing them into seemingly easier fields. This should not occur with an ESL textbook. As a result, this criterion along with the Criteria 1 of “Scope and Sequence” are very much related. Here the text clarity allows students to easily understand and comprehend the material. Likewise, the scope and sequence criteria allow the students to learn the information in small modular, bite-sized chunks to ensure the student is not overwhelmed. This ultimately help to improve engagement as the student is not frustrated with overly daunting and confusing text. In addition, the textbook must be structured in a logical and sound manner, with topics building on each other. This progression of topics combined with criteria 3 “instructional design” allows students to more easily pinpoint areas of strength and weakness. This is very important as language learning is built on the foundation of language progression. This progression can only occur if the foundation before it is strong. It is very difficult for an individual to learn a particularly language without having the foundational principles correct. Through a well-structured textbook, students can easily pinpoint the lesson that are challenging and redo them to ensure better understanding. Finally, the textbook should not have any distorted images or charts. The display features, particularly for online learning, should not distract or confuse the student. Now that must textbooks are utilizing online channels; this is becoming less of an issue as publishers are becoming much more familiar with the electronic medium (Johnson, 2009).