Three teachers participated in the interviews to show their perceptions of Textbook K. Two of them (i.e.,, UTK1 and UTK2) had been teaching in different urban schools in Kaohsiung City for five years. The other (i.e.,, RTK) had been teaching in a rural school in Changhua County for four years. UTK1 had accepted in-service training of English teaching in graduate school, and RTK had the training of gender education.
The interview data include five parts as well: 1) the evaluation of sufficiency in the quantity and difficulty levels; 2) satisfaction with the textbook; 3) comments on textbook writers’ philosophy and the use of the textbook; 4) students’ and teachers’
needs and preferences as well as teachers’ difficulties; 5) suggestions for future textbook compilation.
Sufficiency in quantity and difficulty levels
First, for the quantity, both of the urban teachers indicated the insufficiency of speaking practices even though speaking practice was offered in the Extension Section of each lesson. However, due to limited time and students’ diverse proficiency levels, it was difficult to instruct this section. Additionally, UTK1 suggested guidelines of assessing students’ speaking proficiency should be listed in textbooks so that students would have goals to achieve.
The rural teacher, RTK, indicated that texts were too short. Particularly, the dialogue in Volume One was not coherent (see Excerpt 4-29). Writing, reading, and listening practice were also insufficient, so she asked students to order another listening workbook every semester. In terms of difficulty levels, each of the three thought that the difficulty level of each part was suitable for ordinary students.
[Excerpt 4-29]
(Adapted from the dialogue on p. 35 of Volume One) Peter:
My name’s Susan Chen. I’m a TV reporter. Are you hand puppet fans?
Yes, we are. Those puppets are beautiful.
My brother is also a hand puppet fan. Su Huan-Jen is his favorite.
Hmm…Is your brother’s name Sam?
Yes, but how…?
Hi, Susan.
Hi, Sam, Oh, I see. You are classmates, right?
Bingo!
In Line Thee, Peter suddenly introduces himself. It looks strange. At least, he should tell why he comes here or ask Linda why she comes here. In addition, the ending is unlike an ending. The dialogue can be developed. (from RTK)
Satisfaction with the textbook
With regard to overall features, teachers had different appreciation and suggestions. UTK2 indicated the lack of contexts in grammar section and freshness in texts. Nevertheless, Lesson Five of Volume Six was appreciated because of its topic, graduation, which was related to students’ experiences and could broaden their experiences. RTK suggested the language of Warm-up section in Volumes One and Two should be authentic.
In vocabulary, phrases, and pronunciation, all of the three interviewees showed their discontent with the presentation of vocabularies. Few examples of new words were presented. Furthermore, words of similar spelling, meaning, and sounds should be compared to help students distinguish one from another, as revealed in Excerpt 4-30. Lexical knowledge was also suggested to be offered. In addition, the presentation of pronunciation was dissatisfying to all of the interviewees. Excerpt 4-31 presents that RTK’s doubt about the purposes of the pronunciation section. She also suggested strategies of memorizing words.
[Excerpt 4-30]
The teachers’ manual of Her-sheng version offers word usage, data from online corpus and collocations, but the students’ textbook doesn’t have these. However, neither teachers’ nor students’ of Textbook K do. I hope exercises of similar words will be added in the workbook to help students tell one from another, just like the design of JHS Chinese workbooks. (from UTK1)
[Excerpt 4-31]
I prefer the latest edition where vowel and consonants are put in the same volume because almost each word in a lesson is composed of vowels and consonants. This way, instruction of word spellings can be integrated with pronunciation. But no methods of instructing pronunciation are given. Besides, Say It (i.e., pronunciation practice) of each lesson has a tongue twister. This may be fun. But are such long sentences really helpful and meaningful for ordinary students? Maybe these tongue twisters can be changed into “fill-in” for students to fill in words so that they can
develop spelling, listening and writing abilities. … … As for strategies, they are not offered in the textbook, so I classify words by themes, prefixes or suffixes to aid students’ word memorization. For example, words about seasons, weather; words with –ful. But still some wards are isolated. (from RTK)
With regard to grammar and sentence patterns, the sequence of grammar within and across volumes won satisfaction from all of the three teachers. Nevertheless, it was suggested by both urban teachers that contexts of a tense or sentence pattern and comparison of similar grammar should be offered (see Excerpt 4-32). Furthermore, the rules of grammar should be explicitly listed.
[Excerpt 4-32]
Students’ textbooks and workbooks don’t present when to use the key grammar. But Textbook Her-sheng does this. It even corrects grammar in reference books. For example, the relative pronoun, that, must be used in this case when its antecedent has the only: The girl was the only one that passed the exam. But Her-sheng explains that in this case “which” can also be used as the relative pronoun by citing sentences from a corpus or foreign grammar books. Besides, the tense, past progressive can show continuity of an action, e.g., I was doing homework all day long. But this notion is not presented in textbook K. And this has appeared on the BCT. So I hope such important grammar which has appeared on the BCT will be presented in future textbooks. … … As for practice of similar grammar, this should be increased in workbooks to help students tell one from the other. (from UTK1)
Concerning texts, all of the teachers were satisfied. However, it was suggested by UTK2 that texts be incorporated with other subjects. Yet, this might be limited to students’ vocabulary bank. In addition, it was found by RTK that in Volumes One and Two, new words were presented with bold-face letters. But those in the other four volumes were not highlighted. This was helpful for students to guess the meaning of a new word through its context.
Regarding four skills, all of the teachers indicated the insufficiency of speaking practice. In Excerpt 4-33, RTK further suggested that practice types of listening be
diverse. As for communicative language approach (CLT), she thought that it was challenging for teachers to put this into practice due to the large class size (28 to 36 students).
[Excerpt 4-33]
Practice types of listening should be diverse. For example, theme words can be presented in a passage or a dialogue. This way, the recycling of words will be increased. This has been done in some lessons of Volumes Five and Six. … … Textbooks and workbooks always present the same practice types, just like those in tests. Vocabulary practices in workbooks can be presented in a passage instead of isolated sentences. … … Guided writing should be done every three lessons, like that in Chinese workbooks, but teachers will have to spend more time. (from RTK)
Regarding learning resources and methods, it was hoped by all of the teachers that diverse learning skills and interesting resources (e.g., websites, music, and magazines) would be offered and fully utilized by students, in particular, how to look up words in a dictionary. UTK1 further introduced online dictionaries, N-ciku and
Webster. Both of them also mentioned that students’ needs to know how to utilize the
whole textbook set. It was also found that the table on the first page of a workbook could be used to record a student’s learning process. However, teachers wondered whether it helped students’ learning. Concerning testing skills, teachers guessed that due to the reform on the admission of senior high school, attention on exams would be decreased, so such skills were not offered. Nevertheless, students were poor at cloze.Skills of answering cloze were suggested to be included.
With regard to teaching resources, it was suggested that teachers’ manuals present students’ common mistakes. RTK further indicated that the appendixes of past questions in the BCT were helpful. In terms of answering teachers’ questions, it was hoped to have a direct channel for teachers to ask a native speaker.
Comments on textbook writers’ philosophy and the use of the textbook
As for textbook writers’ philosophy revealed in the introduction of the textbook, all of the teachers perceived that culture was incorporated in texts, such as table manners (Lesson Six of Volume Three) and wedding customs (Lesson Six of Volume Six). In terms of cultivating learners’ learning interests, both of the urban teachers agreed with its importance but they thought that it was hard to achieve. It depended on the cooperation between teachers and students (UTK1). Concerning language content (i.e.,, vocabulary and grammar), these helped students to create sentences by themselves, but the effects were limited (UTK1 and UTK2). On the other hand, it was found by the rural teacher that vocabularies were insufficient for beginners because they needed to build up their vocabularies to advance their reading abilities. She further indicated that JHS English did not “extend” what students had learned in elementary school but “overlap” that, because some words and sentence patterns had been learned in elementary school. Nevertheless, she thought that such recycling was helpful for rural teachers and decreased their burden. She also agreed with the importance of four skills but writing practice was insufficient and limited to translation. Guided writing was suggested and JHS Chinese workbooks were recommended for future textbook compilation.
Concerning the sequence of several parts in a lesson, each of the interviewees started a lesson with vocabulary and grammar. They were followed by Warm-up, Dialogue, and Reading, etc. The reason for the sequence was to help students review new words and grammar in the texts as well as to save time. RTK reported that following this sequence was fluent and helped students to construct a whole understanding of a new lesson.
With respect to the use of the textbook, all of the teachers had deleted the instructions of speaking and Extension (i.e., an activity for students to utilize the key
sentence pattern in a context) due to insufficient time. RTK further admitted that the design of Extension did not suit her teaching style because she was not good at planning and hosting an activity.
Regarding whether and when to give students extra learning resources, all of the interviewees gave students lexical knowledge to enrich their vocabulary bank. For example, derivatives, roots, prefixes and suffixes of words, like beauty and beautiful (UTK1); similar phrases, such as show off versus show up (UTK1). They also designed handouts of grammar for the following reasons: 1) students’ poor note-taking skills (UTK1), 2) comparison of similar sentence patterns, such as present perfect vs. past perfect (UTK2), and 3) insufficient explanation in textbooks, such as relative clauses of Lessons Five and Six of Volume Five (RTK). They also designed handouts of extensional grammar because it was not presented in the textbook but appeared in students’ exams, for example, the extensional usage of comparatives, the
adj.-er, the adj.-er (UTK1). The other common resource was an extra workbook due
to insufficient practice in textbooks and workbooks. UTK1 also offered online resources, such as the online dictionary, N-ciku, songs related to the topic of a lesson as well as online English karaoke. For high-achievers with learning interests, magazines such as LiveABC and Let’s Talk in English were offered.As for functions of textbooks which the current textbooks have already had, based on Table A of Part Three in the questionnaire, all of them agreed that the current textbook helped students “learn how to use grammar correctly” because it was the core of the whole textbook set and presented with abundant practice. In addition, both of the urban teachers also agreed with the function of “helping students pass the basic level of GEPT.” On the other hand, some of the functions were differently perceived by the teachers. UTK2 appreciated the function of “learning English effectively”
because of the clear presentation of a tense, such as past perfect in Volume Six. A line
was drawn on p.18 of Volume Six to illustrate the meaning of the tense. She also prized the functions of “enhancing learning interests” because the topics corresponded with students’ life (e.g.,, graduation in Lesson Five of Volume Six) and their preference—culture (Lesson Six of Volume Six presents Amanda and Ted’s wedding ceremony). RTK also valued this function. She also appreciated the function of
“learning words and sentences in daily life,” but she wondered whether students could utilize them in their daily life.