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Evaluation of In-House and Global ESP Textbooks: A Genre-Based Approach
Get PDFIn the present article, five ESP textbooks on computer engineering, both in-house and global, have been evaluated using Swales’ (1990) ESP-based genre theory. The rationale behind such study was to investigate into features of the global textbooks that make them distinctive from their Iranian in-house counterparts. To achieve this goal, drawing on genre analysis as a theoretical framework, a systematic evaluation of the five textbooks based on an approach proposed by McDonough and Shaw (2003) with modifications in its suitability to the specific situation was conducted and the results tabulated through an assortment of grids for comparability purpose. The findings indicated that, despite a tendency to widen the scope of contemporary computer engineering environments as claimed by the Iranian authors, the dominance of traditional frameworks and textbooks persists and is not responsive to students’ needs and advances in genre theory in this field
Search-based composed refactorings
Get PDFRefactorings are commonly applied to source code to improve itsstructure and maintainability. Integrated development environments(IDEs) such as Eclipse or NetBeans offer refactoring support for variousprogramming languages. Usually, the developer makes a particularselection in the source code, and chooses to apply one of the refactorings,which is then executed (with suitable pre-condition checks) by the IDE.Here, we study how we can reuse two existing refactorings toimplement a more complex refactoring, and use heuristics to derivesuitable input arguments for the new refactoring. We show that ourcombination of the Extract Method and Move Method refactoring canautomatically improve the code quality on a large Java code base
Investigating possibilities to develop textbooks to implement global education in basic education instruction
Get PDFThis article focuses on investigating the possibilities of developing textbooks to help implementation of global education in Finnish basic education (first nine years of education). The argumentation is supported by textbook research conducted in the field. Based on research findings, the textbooks guide teaching more than the official national curriculum at the grass-root level in Finland. Moreover, national research conducted in the field reveal that despite the published guidelines and goals, global education teaching has remained modest and uncoordinated. At the same time, national researches have revealed that Finnish pupils’ negative attitudes towards minority groups and immigrants have increased and that regardless of their high level of citizenship knowledge and skills, pupils are not interested in participating in civic actions. Finnish textbooks evaluation studies, in turn, suggest that the above is mainly due to the pedagogical approach and the perspectives represented in the textbooks.According to the findings of my recent research on global education referred in this article, current textbooks in use are not seen as helpful tools in implementing global education. At the basic education level, the respondents consider the main hindrances to be the lack of knowledge and skills in the field and the unavailability of textbooks that are used as main resources in teaching and planning in the country.In conclusion, it is argued that textbooks have great potential to assist in the implementation of the global education programme and to act as real agents of change. As a summary, a list of criteria for textbook evaluation from a global education perspective is suggested
A Comparison of Two Global ELT Course books in Terms of Their Task Types
Get PDFIt is generally observed that the textbooks employed in the classroom play a crucial role in the process of teaching and learning. In the EFL context in Iran, where Iranian EFL learners rarely have access to native speakers, the teacher mediates between the learner and the text. Accordingly, a textbook plays more important roles in this context and textbook evaluation is critical. Nowadays, under the influence of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), most global materials try to involve learners in the process of learning by introducing several types of tasks and activities whose aim is to promote learners’ interaction. However, most teachers and instructors are using the global materials without being aware of the task types used in them and whether these task types really involve learners in the communication process or not. The purposes of this study was to evaluate and compare the two most popular global course books (Top Notch and Interchange) which are taught in Iranian ELT institutes, in terms of their task types according to Nunan’s (1999) classification of the tasks. The results suggested that generally, both course books used mostly linguistic tasks and less cognitive ones. However, in particular, the number of co-operative tasks in Interchange title is more frequent than other types of tasks, while in Top Notch title most of tasks are practice tasks. The results of this study could be helpful for curriculum developers and institute authorities, to assist them to become more aware of different task types used in each of these global materials and to better select the most suitable ones for their purposes. It can also help material developers in order to develop ELT materials with more communicative tasks
Are “reader-friendly” texts always better?
Get PDFThis study involved 60 participants. 50 % of the participants were identified as normal readers, i.e. they could decode text adequately well, and 50% were identified as poor readers. The participants were exposed to two types of expository texts (1) authentic texts and (2) easy-to-read (“reader-friendly”) texts. Text comprehension was investigated by means of questions relating to the text. There was a significant difference between poor and normal readers when they read the authentic texts. Somewhat surprisingly, the normal readers performed better when reading the authentic texts than the “reader-friendly texts and the poor readers´ comprehension did not increase significantly when reading the “reader-friendly” texts. One reason proposed by the researcher, is that the “reader-friendly” texts were too easy, resulting in the normal readers not finding them challenging enough and the poor readers possibly found them too “childish”
Academic Word List: Coverage Range in Local/Global Textbooks and Exploring Effective Ways of Teaching and Testing of AW
Get PDFCoxhead’s (2000) AcademicWord List (AWL), consists of 570 word ‘families’, each including a headword (stem noun or verb forms) and other family members. This paper highlights the pedagogical value of the AWL, specifically applied in setting vocabulary goals for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) or English for Specific Purposes (ESP). What led the researchers to conduct this study was an aim to profile the presence of the AWL items in local (General English for Science and Engineering Students, 2010) and global (Active 4, 2008) EAP textbooks taught in Iran. The textbook corpus of these two books was analyzed using the concordance program which is a vocabulary analysis program. The chi-square value of 200.42 (P = .000 < .05) made it clear that a significant difference exists between the two books. The local textbook has used more words (Residual = 493.9) while the global book covered less AWL (Residual = -493.9). Our next purpose was to consider an aspect of this work that has been little researched: exploring some effective ways of teaching and testing of AWL in EAP textbooks to facilitate the pedagogical purposes. In conclusion, we found that the local book did much better than the global book in EFL context and we could come up with some suggestions on teaching and testing of AWL in textbooks. In addition, the results of this study would have important implications for textbook developers, material designers, EFL teachers and even EFL students to have a more cautious look at local books prepared in the context of their own country
Down and up: Textbook research in Australia and Finland
Get PDFThe aim of the article is to compare textbook research conducted in Australia and Finland between 2000 and 2011. The article is based on information collected in a project initiated by the Norwegian government and realized by an international research group lead by Professor Susanne Knudsen at Vestfold University College in Norway. This research was published electronically at the Directorate for Education and Training (http://sok.udir.no/Sider/utdanningresults.aspx?k=L%C3%A6remidler). Research findings on textbooks and educational media were identified from four areas: (1) content, form and use; (2) implementation of basic skills; (3) educational media acting against drop out as well as (4) research analysing activities in classrooms also including the use of educational aids. As this fourth area encompassed very few findings it is left out here. Table 1 gives a quantitative overview of the research conducted in a sample of countries
Editorial
Get PDFWe are very pleased to present the latest issue (Volume 4, Number 2, December 2011) of the e-Journal of the International Association for Research on Textbooks and Educational Media. The next issue of the IARTEM e-Journal, Volume 5, Number 1, will be published in July, 2012
Judging the quality of educational materials – a research project on student voice
Get PDFThis article reports a research project investigating student voice in the judging of published educational materials. Students‘ opinions of the quality of educational materials that are used for teaching and learning purposes in classrooms do not feature in the research into educational materials. Multiple data sources were accessed, both qualitative and quantitative, including: focus group data, interviews, group judging processes, students‘ score sheets, and judges‘ short-listed and winning titles. This article concludes that there is significant alignment between the views of students and publishers as to what constitutes quality teaching and learning materials, and that students interpret the quality of materials by aligning materials to their own prior knowledge. Further, students developed agency in the use of the metalanguage of evaluation in relation to educational materials
Educational styles and contents of illustrations in Tunisian texts in geology: A critical textbook analysis from the didactic perspective
Get PDFThis paper presents a comparative analysis of two textbooks. The comparisons relate to three topics: earthquakes, biological crises and the formation of mountain ranges. This research falls within the theoretical framework of constructivist teaching and is based on the process of learning. The present approach is based on a methodology founded on indicators that help to identify the educational styles (informative, injunctive, persuasive and participative) of textbooks. Illustrations are also analysed, comparing the scientific message relating to geologic time. Our studies show that the informative style range, which promotes transmission of knowledge as cumulative results, could lead authors to dismiss the real objectives of scientific content. The absence of persuasive and injunctive styles limits scientific dogmatism and breaks with an authoritarian style education. The trend in the new geology curriculum towards using the participative pedagogies remains limited and may not help learners to develop their autonomy in constructing knowledge