182 K RISZTINA P ECSORA
2.2 Oksana Karpiuk (2009), English 5 (Pupil’s book)
The textbook has hard cover, and its colour is pink, it has an ordinary size 24.3:
16: 1.9 centimetres. The weight of the book is 350 grams. It is a methodological recommendation in Ukraine that the weight of the coursebooks in the Forms 5 and 6cannot be above 450 grams (The approval of the state health standards, 2007). At fi rst sight the book seems to be really attractive and interesting. The contents list is on the third page, this also helps the learners in the orientation. The introduction section is followed by the units and the appendix which contains the reader’s bag, grammar reference, vocabulary and list of irregular verbs.
Table 1.
Oksana Karpiuk (2009), English 5 textbook’s content
Units The title of the chapters Pages
Introduction 4-11
Unit 1 Summer is over 12-25
Unit 2 Meet my friends 26-39
Unit 3 I’ve got an idea 40-55
Unit 4 Plenty of things to do 56-71
Unit 5 What’s the news 72-87
Unit 6 Parties and holidays 88-101
Unit 7 Hobbies and pastimes 102-115
Unit 8 Everyday activities 116-129
Unit 9 Health and body care 130-143
Unit 10 We are Ukrainians 144-157
Appendix
Reader’s bag 158-165
Grammar reference 167-172
Vocabulary 173-190
Irregular verbs 191
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The pages of the book are very colourful and they are full of pictures. The titles of the topics are at the top of the page, they are written in colourful let-ters and 16 font size bold capitals. Every topic has its own colour. The instruc-tions are written in 14 font size bold typed letters, while the tasks are written in normal letters (14 font sizes). The examples have the same size, and they are italicized. The structure of the units is the following:
Unit (number): Title
Each topic builds upon lessons. An average topic involves 12 lessons, ex-cept the introduction, which includes only 3 lessons (See Table 2). The units contain the same types of lessons, so pupils and teachers can predict the struc-ture and the types of the exercises in the following units. The introductory sections in each unit are composed by the fi rst and second lessons. We can fi nd 5 or 6 exercises here. The remaining lessons include 4, sometimes 3 ex-ercises. The fi rst task in the introductory section is a dialogue with a picture pupils have to listen to from the audio tape and at the same time they can see the whole text/dialogue, then they have to answer the questions. We may fi nd everyday situations in these dialogues, so these tasks are more natural than artifi cial. The dialogues help to present the topic of the particular unit.
Table 2.
The content of the coursebook with the number of lessons
The title of the units Number of lessons
Introduction 3
Unit 1 Summer is over 10
Unit 2 Meet my friends 10
Unit 3 I’ve got an idea 12
Unit 4 Plenty of things to do 12
Unit 5 What’s the news 13
Unit 6 Parties and holidays 11
Unit 7 Hobbies and pastimes 10
Unit 8 Everyday activities 11
Unit 9 Health and body care 9
Unit 10 We are Ukrainians 11
The second lesson focuses on grammar. There are three tasks here, like fi ll in the blanks, open the brackets and put the verb into the correct form. The third and fourth lessons contain texts for developing pupils’ reading skills.
The text for reading is usually a tale/story or a letter. Various tasks follow the text at different diffi culty levels. The fi rst one is the simplest; pupils have KRISZTINA PECSORA
to say what the text is about. We may fi nd statements in the second task, and learners have to say whether these sentences are true or false. There are also questions related to the text, but in most cases these questions can be answered automatically without understanding the meaning. Using concept questions is always better than display questions, because the previous ones focus on meaning and understanding. Finally, pupils have to talk about themselves with the help of the text. They also have to use the new vocabulary, which is signed at the corner of the page.
The sixth, the seventh and the eighth lessons include exercises for de-veloping pupils’ listening comprehension. Pupils have to listen and read the proper text, and then they have to either answer the questions related to the text, or there are statements and they have to choose whether sentences are true or false. Another type of listening task is the dialogue or in some cases we may fi nd simple questions where pupils have to listen to a short text carefully from the audiotape then answer comprehension questions.
Lessons 9 and 10 usually summarize the whole unit. We may also fi nd a project here, which is really interesting and connected to the actual topic. In the Introduction pupils have to make a poster about themselves. They also have to get more information about their classmates (Unit 1), make up a leafl et how they can improve their English (Unit 2), write a report who can make an English newspaper in their class (Unit 4), write a recipe how to learn English communication (Unit 4), make up the brochure Holidays in Ukraine (Unit 6).
In Unit 7 pupils have to collect information on their classmates’ opinion about hobbies and sports. They also have to design their ideal timetable (Unit 8), make a health poster (Unit 9) and fi nally, design a new stamp for our country.
Every lesson ends with a homework task indicated at the bottom of the page in a small square. It can be found in pupils’ workbook. The number of exercises and the pages are also given in the small square.
The Reader’s Bag contains a wide variety of tales (e.g. ‘The Wizard of Oz’, ‘The crow and the fox’, ‘The three little pigs’, ‘The fox and the crane’,
‘The country mouse and the city mouse’, ‘Toby’, ‘An old tale’, ‘The brave hunter’). There are six topics in the grammar reference which gives short de-scriptions of the main topics to be learned throughout the year. They are the following: the noun, the adjective, the numeral, the pronoun, the verb (fi ve tenses are mentioned here: present continuous, simple present, past continu-ous, simple past, simple future tenses.), and the adverb. The Vocabulary con-tains the words to be studied, which are closely connected to the topics. There are 1468 words here. They are written in alphabetic order. The structure of the vocabulary is the following: the words in English, transcription and the mean-ing in Ukrainian. There are not any explanations here. The last page is the ta-ble of irregular verbs, where we can fi nd the infi nitive, past simple, Ukrainian
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translation and phonetic transcription, but the past participle form of the verbs is missing. For example:
get [get] got [gjt] отримувати
‘The basis of foreign language methodology in Ukraine is the communi-cative language teaching approach, for example that entire learning is devel-oped to individual or group activities of every learner. Language materials are presented in situations which stimulate informal communication adjusted to a certain age group.’ (Kovalenko et al. 2010, pp. 22-23) Through the structure of the units we could see that the tasks, the dialogues are natural, what may help to improve pupils’ communicative skills. The activities and the exercises are meaningful and involve real communication. Different skills such as speak-ing, readspeak-ing, and listening are linked together, since they usually occur as in the real world.
Communicative language teaching often forgets about the fact that lan-guage teaching is a long process in its nature. Lanlan-guage becomes a tool in the learner’s hand after signifi cant quantitative and qualitative changes. When language learners, for instance, have to ask questions, they know very well what their task is, but the problem is that the language learners do not know how to do this, because they cannot ask (Bárdos, 2005). Another problem is that authors misinterpreted the aim of communicative language teaching, which never said that language learning is developed to individual activities of every learner.
The units begin with real-life situations; in most cases they start with dialogues, where the characters of the book try to solve something. Some-times children have to use their previous knowledge to do the grammar tasks.
Little attention is paid to the studying of new words. Moreover, they are not highlighted in the introductory texts. Only few exercises focus on expanding pupils’ vocabulary. Such exercises make up 2.24% of all the tasks. Concern-ing teachConcern-ing grammar, the book contains the most important information. For example, how the proper tense is formed, when it is used, and what the most common adverbial modifi ers are. New grammar is taught mostly deductively.
Those tasks that focus on practising grammar make up 15.75% all of the ex-ercises.
Each unit tries to develop the four major language skills, but they are not equally improved (see Figure 1).
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Figure 1.
Exercises that help to develop pupils’ skills (in percentage, %)
13,14 19,55
23,07 28,52
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Listening
Reading
Writing
Speaking
The fi gure shows that the book makes a great emphasis on improving learn-ers’ speaking skills (28.52%), while only a few tasks are focusing on develop-ing pupils’ listendevelop-ing comprehension (13.14%). An audio aid also accompanies the book which contains audio materials performed by Ukrainian pupils. 19.55% of the tasks help to increase pupils’ reading skills, and 23.07% of the exercises im-prove grammar skills. Poems and songs make up 15.72 %.
For developing listening skills pupils have to listen to those texts which are found in the textbook. There are 41 listening tasks which are divided into three main categories: listen and read (21.95%), listen and answer (26.83%), look, lis-ten and play/read/tell (51.22%) (see Figure 2).
Figure 2.
Types of listening tasks (in percentage, %)
51,22%
21,95%
26,83%
listen and read listen and answer look, listen and play/read/tell
We can fi nd the instruction ‘listen and read’ used with longer texts, or tales, while the instruction ‘listen and answer’ appears mainly with shorter texts. ‘Look, listen and play/read/tell’ is applied when working with dialogues.
The new words are not highlighted in the texts. They are written in a small square where only the phonetic transcription is given, but there is no translation or explanation here, e.g. compositor [kəm’pjzitə]; to deliver [dk’lkvə]. In the
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Reader’s bag the new words are numbered. At the bottom of the page the tran-scription and the meaning in Ukrainian are given, e.g. ‘Then she made a tiny3 cake and put it into the oven…’ 3[’taknk] крихітний
The topics and the exercises follow each other cyclically, gradually becoming more diffi cult (from the simplest to the most complicated). Every topic contains the same types of exercises, so pupils can predict what would happen. They are built in the same way. New words and expressions are not highlighted, and only a small number of exercises give the possibility to use them. Exercises which help to learn new vocabulary constitute 2.24% of the tasks. If the teacher wants to reach success he/she has to think about additional tasks for practising vocabulary.
Every unit includes a revision at the end of the topics.
Illustrations make the book more motivating for the pupils. They can make the new material easier and clearer for the language learners if they provide proper and meaningful context. The book is colourful and full of images. Some of them are real photos. The quality of the photos is good. This may help pupils to learn the new material, but those pictures which have methodological relation are only the 5.4% of all pictures.
Although there are permanent characters in the book the stories are not con-nected rigidly with each other, so it does not bind the teacher to teach pupils from lesson to lesson. Stories are all interesting, sometimes brief, or sometimes long containing new words and expressions, but they are not highlighted in the text.
The instructions which are given to the exercises are clear and brief.
The book is a part of a series and an educational set and includes the follow-ing components: pupil’s book, workbook, teacher’s book, audio aid. It is based on the new curriculum which was issued by the Ministry of Education and Science.
The book was designed for Form 5 pupils who had been studying English for four years. This book was tested before the real publication. There is an acknowl-edgement at the beginning of the book for the pupils who tried and used it in city Ternopil at School Number 3. The book, published in 2005 was available around Ukraine. Its sale was prohibited, while those books which were published in 2009 are not free of charge. Pupils have to buy them. Its price is changing.