An in-depth evaluation of interchange seires (3rd edition)

Abstract

In today’s classrooms, textbooks play a very crucial role in the realm of language teaching and learning. And after teachers, they are considered to be the next important factor in the second/foreign language classroom. Therefore, selecting a proper textbook for a class has been one of the most important tasks for teachers. Whether the teacher should have the freedom to select the materials for evaluation and adaptation or not still remains controversial. One thing is clear, however, and that is evaluation is usually done and no one denies its necessity. Along the lines of arguments presented so far, the main thrust of the present research is to carry out an evaluation on a series of ELT materials namely, Interchange 3rd edition. For this purpose Littlejohn’s detailed framework (1998) is employed in this attempt. The scheme attempts to evaluate the selected textbook regardless of how it is used in the classroom, what he calls analyzing the material ‘as it is’. Interchange is not completely along with the objectives intended for it. It doesn’t use learners or even the teachers as a source for its content. Supra sentential level as well is ignored for both the expected output and input of the learners. More importantly these are not the learners who initiate the tasks. Interchange series; on the other, hand focus mainly on pair works and meaning. They also encourage students to use the language and more importantly they more often require them to express themselves than to be a listener.

En las aulas de hoy, los manuales juegan un papel muy crucial en el “reino” de enseñanza de los idiomas. Después de los profesores, los libros de texto son el factor más importante en el aula de idioma extranjero. Por eso, la selección de manuales apropiados para la clase ha sido una de las tareas más importantes del profesorado. Hasta qué punto el profesor debería tener la libertad de seleccionar los materiales para la evaluación y la adaptación sigue siendo algo polémico. Una cosa parece clara, la evaluación por lo general es un hecho y nadie niega su necesidad. A lo largo de las líneas argumentales que presentamos aquí, realizamos una evaluación sobre una serie de materiales de ELT a saber, Interchange 3ª edición. Para ello, hemos empleado el modelo de Littlejohn (1998). El estudio evalúa el manual seleccionado independientemente de cómo éste es usado en el aula, lo que él llama el análisis del material “tal y como es”.