If however the teacher is less experienced in the field of the English language, the efficiency of the textbook is relatively limited.
Also, the system of reduced theoretical input could work if the teacher has a complementary textbook, specially designed for the professor. This book would have to contain all theoretical information relevant to a respective unit, with examples and exceptions to the rules presented. Another alternative would be for the teacher and student to use the same textbook, with both practical and theoretical information. This would however pose the risk of being difficult to understand by the pupils. Ultimately then, the second solution seems to be the most viable one.
Another specification to be made in concluding the analytical findings is that the drawings presented in the textbook are highly useful for teaching children the English language. The best representative of this statement is the unit on countable and uncountable nouns. However this has some limitations, it has the advantage of presenting the children with a picture of the given noun. This makes it easier for them to correlate the new word with a picture of what it represents and ergo better remember the new learnt foreign word.
It must also be said that each unit ends with a revision part, most often organized into an exercise requiring the pupils to implement the knowledge they had gathered so far in the respective unit. This also has the benefit of repeating the learnt skills and supporting a more efficient learning process.
The units in the textbook are generally consistent in using the same vocabulary....
By offering the same words as examples and within exercises, the pupils will not only learn the grammatical rules, but will also enrich their vocabulary. Repetition of the same words, be them nouns, verbs or other morphological categories, will ensure the sedimentation in the minds of the pupils and will increase the efficiency of the English learning process.
The exercises in the textbook are useful not only in a grammatical sense, but also in a logical one. The My Favorite Things unit presents the pupils with a problem and makes them find a solution to the issue. This is also the unit which introduces the pupils to the phonetics of pronouncing the English words.
What makes the textbook efficient is the easiness of using it. However it has been stated that it lacks in theoretical background, the six-year pupils are unlikely to directly feel this lack, as long as the teacher is able to fill in the gaps. Therefore, the textbook is effective even more so when it presents drawings and other elements which make the process more fun and easier for the children. A relevant example in this sense is the usage of little wings to draw the aliments in the My Favourite Things unit. In the same line of thoughts, the riddle in the third analyzed unit also serves the purpose of making the learning process more fun and increasing its chances of
success.
In a nutshell, the
analysis of the textbook used to teach the pupils in
Hong Kong English as a second language does not offer a response relative to initially posed question. It does however offer some
insight into the matters which are emphasized throughout the course of teaching English in non-English speaking countries.
References
Lee, J., Grammar in Current Hog Kong ESL Textbooks: A Critical Appraisal, 2005, Paper presented at the 30th Linguistics Association of Australia Conference
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 3rd Edition, Pearson Education Limited
2008, Countable and Uncountable Nouns, the English Club, http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/nouns-un-countable.html. Ast accessed on December 15, 2008
Primary Longman Express
