• REVIEWS 91 inspiration for starting similar exercises on their own. The chapters called First steps with a video camera (chapter 8) and A note on video hardware (chapter 10) are, on the other hand, too elementary. Some further information could have been provided and the existence of the videodisc and the linking of video and microcomputers could have been mentioned. Arne Zettersten University of Copenhagen English Department Njalsgade 84-98 DK-2300 Copenhagen Denmark Cunningsworth, Alan, Evaluating and Selecting EFL Teaching Materials. London: Heinemann, 1984, 104 pp., f5.25. (Heinemann Educational Books). In deciding about matters of language pedagogy it is becoming increasingly customary to draw from four disciplines: general linguistics, psychology, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics.

Evaluating And Selecting Efl Teaching Materials book. Read reviews from world's largest community for readers. Cmud pro 3 34 keygens and serial numbers. The Checklist for Evaluating Learning Materials is comprised of the following five sections: 1. Quality of Content 3. Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching-Learning Tool 4. Ease of Use (for Practitioners and Learners) 5. Comments The blank checklist at the back of this document shows the five sections.

There is also a growing tendency for foreign language (FL) teaching to become learner-centred. In terms of the four disciplines feeding into second language pedagogy this means: concentration on the learner as learner and on the learner as communicator. For the learner as learner syllabus and coursebook writers should look to psychology and psycholinguistics, for the learner as communicator they should be guided by general linguistics and sociolinguistics. The former two disciplines decide the how and the latter two decide the what of the learning process. In drawing up criteria for the evaluation and selection of EFL teaching materials it would be wise to be guided by what the four disciplines have to offer.

Cunningsworth in his book, indeed, bases himself on these four, though not on each of them to the same extent. Moreover, the nature of this book seems to dictate a rigorous teacher-centredness. It focuses more on how languages are taught than on how they get learnt. There is little attention for the fact that ultimately, of course, it is the learner who does the learning (Holec, 1979). It is a pity therefore that the role played by psycholinguistics in the building up of criteria for materials selection is so small. It is true that this discipline, (which, perhaps significantly, is lacking in the glossary of EFL terms at the back of the book) is called in for the description of the influence on EFL materials of theories of learning (such as behaviourism and cognitive code). However, what is known by now about how learners process language data and how, in negotiating meaning, they individually compensate for sociolinguistic) inadequacies in their language command, is not taken into account.

Yet the stimulation of communication strategies is beginning to play a role in materials writing (Elaine Tarone, 1984) and should play a role in evaluating them. Perhaps it is unfair, however, to expect in this book evaluation criteria for materials that are not yet widely available. Besides, Cunningsworth seems to be aware of how highly individual a process • 98 REVIEWS language learning is as may appear from the following quote: They (the learners) must be able to use creatively the rules that they have learned so as to meet their own needs and satisfy their own purposes (33). The role of sociolinguistics in determining the use of language forms increases in this book as it progresses and finds its culmination point in chapter 9: Adaptation and Innovation which is about making language teaching really communicative. It is oddly disturbing in this context, however, to read how Cunningsworth sometimes gives the impression that spoken discourse consists of sentences instead of utterances with all the instability this term suggests (pages 17, 29, 43 and 48), and how he leaves one with the impression that correctness, after all, is slightly more important than appropriateness. Because this book was written to help the teacher spot both the strength and weaknesses of coursebooks and to identify areas of language teaching which require the use of supplementary materials (18), and as most coursebooks on the market are still structure- bound, the first part of the book, dealing with the what of language teaching and its presentation is strongly based on grammar. The functional syllabus, quite rightly, is put in its proper place: no one..