This post takes a critical look at Text Based Teaching - perhaps the most common format for current coursebooks. It's from our Delta Module One Course, so in the presentation there are frequent references to information found in previous units of the course - but don't worry, they're all then discussed in detail in terms of their relationship to TBT.
You can access the information in two ways - either by looking at the article You don't need to understand everything - or do you? or by watching the presentation below.
Preliminary task
Think about the textbooks you use on your courses at the moment. What do you/don't you like about them? How many texts (reading and listening) does the average unit contain? What lesson format is used to deal with them? How is language focus built in? How do your learners react to them? What percentage of the text do they fully understand by the end of the lesson? Are you/they happy with this?
Click on the link below (not the photo) to watch the
presentation (approx. 18 mins) which considers these questions:
Further Reading
- NB: The article said in the presentation to be no longer available on the web has now been reposted and can be found here: Thornbury, S. Z is for Zero Uncertainty.
- Clandfield, L Text in Language Classrooms : TALO, TAVI and TASP
- Swift, S Ten Uses for Written Texts in the Classroom
- See also the Articles Index in the Notebook and the various articles under the headings of Listening and Reading
