EFL/ESL Book Analysis for Beginners, Essay Sample

When choosing the most appropriate EFL/ESL course book for beginners, certain things must be taken into consideration. Some of the factors to consider when selecting the books includes determining the relevance, the level and the flexibility of the book (Ansary, & Babaii, 2002). For instance, the latter requires that the author understands what he or she is talking about. The level of the book refers to the age group it is limited. Flexibility is the capability of the book to adapt to different situations (Clandfield, & Duncan, 2004). That said, the primary objective of this essay is to analyze any two EFL/ESL books for beginners while considering various aspects such as the skills that they attempt to develop, grammar highlights, the level it is applied, and format. Below is the evaluation of the books.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Kama Einhorn's "ESL Activities and Mini-Books for Every Classroom"

Contained in this textbook are fun activities and resources that enable students who speak English and those that have never spoken English before. One of the most notable features of this textbook is its not-so-mini collection of mini-books that comes with it (Einhorn, 2001). These mini-books accompany each chapter of the book essential in assisting students in their early stages of literacy development. Apart from that, these mini-books follow an arrangement and are therefore predictable. Also, the content of the book concurs with the themes in the respective chapters.

Besides, this book also contains a chapter advising the teacher on how to plan for the lessons during the first week of teaching. This part has guidelines on how to ensure that the children feel comfortable in their learning environment and helps to introduce them into the English language learning process.

Barbara Law's "Assessment and ESL: An Alternative Approach"

This textbook is essential in imparting the teacher with the knowledge of assessing his/her students' learning progress. It is most suitable for teaching ESL students as it imparts the teacher with the necessary skills of documenting and tracking the learning progress of beginners. Also, this textbook provides alternatives ways of assessing the development of those students learning English as their second language. In this book, Barbara Law highlights on four themes of learning the English language, that is, integrated and a whole language, a facilitating environment and a learning continuum (Law, & Eckes, 2007). The major setback of this book is that it very rigid hence not adaptable in some cases, for example, it is not suitable for EFL students.

Nouns Lesson Plan

Age Level: 18-25

Language Level: Level 2A

Aids:

Cards

Tape

Computer

YouTube

Objectives

By the end of this lesson, students should be able to:

Understand the meaning and definition of the word 'noun'

Identify nouns with both their names and their respective objects

Describe nouns using complete sentences

Apply literacy skills in understanding linguistics

The process

Review (15 minutes): In this language level, the teacher assumes that the students have some knowledge regarding the meaning of nouns. The students are then asked to give some examples of nouns or give sentences and ask them to identify the nouns. In the case of an ESL student, the teacher will require him/her to point at an item inside the classroom and make the teacher mindful of his or her problem in identifying the words.

Presentation of Original Materials (10 minutes): The instructor will congratulate the students for appropriately identifying the nouns. However, he or she will want the class to identify all the nouns inside the classroom. The teacher achieves this by asking one student to volunteer as the first to identify objects in the room. The teacher provides the student with a card containing a particular word. The student tries to pronounce the word. The teacher then will provide clues and ask other students also to do the same.

Pronunciation (10 minutes): In an attempt to assess the progress of pronouncing and recognizing nouns by the students, the teacher will point to one of the cards and ask the students to utter the words. The teacher and other students will participate actively in detecting the mispronounced words and provide the correct pronunciation. For example, the teacher will say the mispronounced word and asks the students to identify the problem with the pronunciation.

Grammar: The teacher will ask the students to select four nouns studied that day and asked the students to develop complex sentences with them.

Closing: The teacher gives the students a grammar exercise and ends the lesson.

My the Past Formal and Informal Language Experiences

My first formal language experience occurred when I was in the kindergarten. I attribute the whole experience to my teachers. I remember our kindergarten teacher assigning us tasks that were essential in nurturing our writing and reading skills. The first classroom task we were assigned to develop our literacy skills involved curing out words from magazines and newspapers. The words were to correspond to a specific letter chosen by the teacher. For example, if the letter of the day was C then everybody was supposed to bring cut words from the newspapers that began with the letter C. In our case, the words from the paper could be chocolate, chicken, Chicago, China, chew, cat, and crew and crew among others. Admittedly, to me, the whole experience was fun and educative at the same time. It is from this experience that I developed the hobby of cutting words from magazines and sticking them on my bedroom wall. I remember getting into trouble with my mum because of the act. Nonetheless, she got used to it and started assuming the matter. Soon, my bedroom wall was full of cut newspaper sections. My brother confessed that the idea was so artistic and that he loved it. I believe he was right. Therefore, apart from increasing the aesthetic appeal of my room, the hobby also enabled me to improve my language skills. In class, I was among the best readers and was chosen continuously by the teacher to read passages in front of the class.

That said, apart from cutting words from newspapers, another activity that helped to nurture my language experience was the reading lesson. Our teacher would make us read in turn until she was satisfied that everybody's reading was perfect. My favorite book was Peekaboo Bedtime. I remember reading the book several times until it began to bore me. By the time I was graduating from Kindergarten, I was able to read and write some common English words like cat, juice, mum, dad, and police among others. However, another activity that influenced my language experience was the reading lesson. I remember our teacher writing the 26 letters of the alphabets on the chalkboard. She would then instruct us to follow her steps the way she wrote each word. We would then follow her fingers, and soon we could write the words though sketchily. To me, the best moment of my language experience was when I wrote my first words correctly, that is, cat.

References

Ansary, H., & Babaii, E. (2002). Universal characteristics of EFL/ESL textbooks: A step towards systematic textbook evaluation. The Internet TESL Journal, 8(2), 1-9.

Clandfield, L., & Duncan, F. (2004). Teaching materials: using literature in the EFL/ESL classroom. The Internet TESL Journal, 10(12).

Einhorn, K. (2001). Easy & engaging ESL activities and mini-books for every classroom. Scholastic Professional Books.

Law, B., & Eckes, M. (2007). Assessment and ESL: An alternative approach. Portage & Main Press.