Teaching Using Textbooks and Authentic Materials

Resources available to teachers are vast and diverse, and this applies to the ESL environment as well.  Teachers I’ve spoken with often say the problem is sorting through it all to find good material that is applicable to your context.  Besides all the material that is available online there are also textbooks and workbooks to consider.  And at the other end of the spectrum are authentic materials that we find in our everyday lives.  Both are valuable resources for teachers, but require careful thought and integration in the classroom. 

Using textbooks has several advantages and disadvantages (Harmer 2007).   They provide a structured source of material designed by professionals, and many teachers and students like this predictability. Many have teacher guides to help the teacher with lesson plans. Some teachers and students can find the textbook or workbook confining with lack of engagement. Some teachers prefer to find their own material and create their own activities, but this can be very time consuming.  Course books can also be very expensive, and budget must be considered.

If you decide that a textbook would be useful for your classroom or teaching context, a detailed analysis process is required to ensure that you are making the right investment. Shave (2010) has designed a multi-step evaluation process to use for evaluating and selecting ESL course books.  The first step is to analyze the context of your teaching, this is, decide who will be using the course book and how.  There are numerous questions that he has selected to describe the learning situation, such as ‘what are the aims of the program’, What are the objectives of the course’, ‘what age are the learners’, ‘what are the motivations of the learners’, ‘what is the size and frequency of the class’. All of these and more will help decide the appropriate material.  The second step for analysis is the methodology and syllabus.  Does it fit with your teaching style, and does the syllabus follow a useable sequencing of the material for your context?  The next step takes a detailed look at the individual units and their content and activities, and comparisons can be done for different course books. Next, specific evaluation criteria are used (aims and approaches, language content, skills, topics, methodology) to determine which is the best fit.  Often a trial in the classroom with students may be helpful before the final selection. 

Once you have chosen your course book there are many ways that they can be used. Harmer (2007).  He suggests that ‘adding, adapting and replacing’ are all valid uses, but care must be taken that we do not compromise the use of the course book. Using your creativity, Harmer suggests many alternative activities that can replace or complement those in the text. Course books are may not be appropriate for all teaching contexts, but they can be valuable resources for some classrooms. 

Authentic materials add a much needed extra dimension to the classroom. They stimulate learners to interact with the content both cognitively and affectively (Rogers 1988).  They strengthen the confidence of students and allow the use of ‘real’ language that is what they would hear or see in their community (Chou n.d.).  Authentic materials also help to immerse the student in their new culture. 

There is a huge array of authentic materials that can be easily accessed. We just have to look around us, and think about what we use and do in our everyday life. Some examples are menus, flyers, forms, TV shows, Youtube, music, radio, classified ads or Kijiji, websites, online shopping sites, resumes, magazines and many more. Many of these can be incorporated into fun games and activities in the classroom (Pesce n.d.). Often there may be some adaptation required because the material is unsuitable in the original form. Lynch (2009) offers many suggestions for adaptation such as adjusting the length or simplifying the language. 

Both course books and authentic materials can be valuable tools for the ESL teacher. But each brings unique challenges in their use and incorporation into the classroom, and careful consideration must be given to provide a useful, engaging and enriching experience for your learners.  

References:

Chou, E.  4 Creative Ways to Use Authentic Materials for Teaching English. Retrieved from https://www.fluentu.com/blog/educator-english/authentic-materials-for-teaching-english/

Lynch, L. (2009). Throw Away the Course Book and Adapt Authentic Materials.   Retrieved from https://www.eslbase.com/teaching/adapt-authentic-materials

Pesce, C. Keepin’ It Real: 8 Best Authentic Sources of Reading Material. Retrieved      fromhttps://busyteacher.org/16195-reading-material-8-best-authentic-sources.html. 

Rogers, C., & Medley, F., Jr. (1988). Language with a purpose: using authentic materials in the foreign language classroom. Foreign Language Annals, 21, 467–478.

Shave, J. (2010). A Teacher friendly process for evaluating and selecting ESL/EFL  Coursebooks. Retrieved from http://iteslj.org/Articles/Shave-CourseBookEvaluation.html

Fair Dealing

I am old enough to know when email was a very novel way of communicating, and I not so fondly remember spending hours in the library photocopying vast amounts of material from bound journals and reference books for my thesis.  And then the world drastically changed in September of 1998 when Google was born.  Being able to search the world from the comfort of our computer dramatically changed the way information is shared.  This has had tremendous impact on our way of life, for the good and the bad. 

One of the good things is the ability to find an abundance of material for teaching. Sometimes sorting through all the material is overwhelming.  But as educators when we do find what we need it is very important to treat all the material that we use with ‘fair dealing’.    So what does this mean?  

Fair dealing is an exception in copyright law in Canada, which allows the use of material that is copyrighted without permission or payment of copyright royalties. This includes all types of material from books to music to videos, newspapers, etc.  This greatly eases the use of vast amounts of material for educational or other purposes. But when using material under fair dealing there are several considerations that must be followed to fall within allowable fair dealing.  

The first and foremost is that you must mention the source and author of the material. Give credit where credit is due. We all want to recognize others for their contributions, just as we like to be recognized for our own work.  And then we must ask a series of questions to determine if our use falls under fair dealing.

What is the purpose of the dealing?  Is it for commercial purposes or educational use?    Educational use in the classroom is considered fair dealing. Also use for things like research, criticism, news reports, and parody are accepted under fair dealing. 

What is the character of the dealing?   This considers how the work is used.  Are we going to post it to a very popular website? Will we put it into a document that is distributed to a large number of people? These may not be considered fair dealing.   Or will it be used for our own use in our classroom only?  Posting short excerpts from material on restricted learning management systems is also acceptable.

What is the amount of the dealing?   Fair dealing allows up to 10% of a work to be copied.  So if using a novel or story in a class, up to 10% of it would be used. But if material is marked for one time use, copying of this material is not acceptable.   

Are their alternatives to using the material?  In many cases there probably are alternative materials, but if fair justification of the use can be made, it would probably be acceptable. 

What is the nature of the work?   If the work has not been published you may use it under fair dealing, but if your use would contribute to a much wider distribution of the work, it may not be fair dealing. 

Would your use affect or compete with the marketing or salability of the original work? Would it diminish the author’s income from the work?   If so, this is not fair dealing. 

If you need help deciding if your use of the material constitutes fair dealing, try using a tool such as the ‘Fair Dealing Decision Tool’ which can be found at http://www.fairdealingdecisiontool.ca/DecisionTool/.   It will guide you through questions to determine if you fall under fair dealing.  Also beware that ‘fair dealing’ can vary from country to country, and ‘fair use’ in the United States does differ from fair dealing in Canada.  If you decide that you cannot fulfill the fair dealing requirements, then you must receive permission from the author/owner and possibly pay fees to use the copyright material. 

Creative Commons licensing is another way to allow others to use material that you have created or lets you know how you can use other people’s material.  There are various Creative Commons licensing levels which can allow use, but with some restrictions, such as for only non-commercial purposes.  You can find out more information, and learn how to register your license at  https://creativecommons.org.   

Public domain allows unrestricted use of material, and applies to material that you or others allow to become public domain and also material that is older than 70 years past the death of the author.  You do not need to obtain permission to use public domain works, not do you need to attribute them to anyone.

Using materials that others have created makes it much easier for ESL teachers,  and it allows us to access the creativity  of many other people, but we must be mindful that we are using these materials in the proper way and within the laws of Canada. 

References: 

How to give attribution. Creative Commons. Retrieved from https://creativecommons.org/use-remix/get-permission/

Noel, W., & Snel, J. (2016). Copyright Matters!: Some Key Issues Questions & Answers for Teachers.

The Copyright Decision Tool. The Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC). Retrieved from http://copyrightdecisiontool.ca/DecisionTool/

What is fair dealing and how does it relate to copyright? Simon Fraser University. Retrieved from http://www.lib.sfu.ca/help/academic- integrity/copyright/fair-dealing