Deconstruction of the textbook “Project 5” by Tom Hutchinson from the bibliographic

theory "The analysis of language teaching materials: inside the Trojan horse" by Littlejohn
in order to understand how the textbook works:

Level 1: What is there? Objective description

The Title of the book is "Project 5 student's book", its author is Tom Hutchinson and it was
published by Oxford in 2014. This book fits into the category of “course book” and its
intended audience is between 13 and 16 years old secondary school students with an
intermediate level of English.

Each unit consists of 12 pages, within the subsections there are all kinds of activities that
work with the topic vocavulary, Reading and listening comprehension and writing skills.
Although the format is maintained in all units, the types of activities that appear in the
subsections are not repetitive, but they do work for the development of the different skills
that the student has in terms of language. It is also important to note that at the end of
each unit, students are expected to carry out a project based on the particular theme of
each unit.

Level 2: What is required of users? Subjective analysis

For a better analysis I will use table 8.5 of the theory to analyze the first tasks of unit 1

 Task 1: “Read and listen to the story”: Turn-take is not required, this task focus on
meaning and implies decode semantic information by the student alone, the input
to learners is an extended discourse in both written and aural form, and the source
is the material which nature is fiction. There is no expected output from learners.
 Task 2: “Why is Jake in trouble?” Turn-take is initiated by students, this task
focuses on meaning, it implies decode semantic information and research in the
material by the student alone, the input to learners is the question and the source
is the material. The output expected from students is in the oral/written form,
based on their understanding.
 Task 3: “Put the events in the correct order”. Turn-take is a scripted response by
students, it focuses on meaning and implies research in the source and repeat
identically what they have found. The input is presented in the written form in the
source and the output expected from students is written/aural ordering from the
material source.

Concerning the process, the learner is expected to take different discourse roles
throughout the tasks, for example: in unit 1 task 1 “read and listen to the story” the
students’ role is passive listening and reading (students are not required to take any direct
interactive role at all) and then, in task 2 “Why is Jake in trouble?” the student is expected
to develop a personal conclusion about the story from the prior knowledge of language
that students has in relation to the topic, which implies students’ understanding of the
story. Although task 3 requires a scripted response from the students, based on the
resource of the material, it also suggests that the student can identify the common thread
of the story, which implies reading and listening comprehension.

Level 3: What is implied? Subjective inference

By analyzing "Project 5" I was able to deduce that the main aims of the course book are to
develop learner's linguistic competence in all four skills, that the students are able to
identify the importance of the topics in relation to culture, also promoting development
activities in relation to English through the curriculum, intertwining subjects such as
geography and history with English.

Regarding the principles of sequencing, the type of tasks in this course book imply the
reproduction of the language learned in relation to a specific topic, I emphasize that each
unit deals with a specific topic and there is a close relationship between the tasks that
appear within the same work unit.

Classroom roles of teacher and learners: the teacher raises the activities from a guide role,
allowing the students to develop their potential autonomously to carry out the tasks. The
teacher is expected to be able to present and explain the tasks to the students so that
they are able to carry them out on their own. The role of the material as a whole is to
structure teaching-learning process of English and to provide resources of motivating
contents related to students’ daily lives such as bulling, music, tattoos, ambitions and so
on.

Conclusions

Taking into account that our teaching practices in the course of this year will be carried
out in secondary school, this course-book turns out to be a viable resource to use with
adolescents in secondary schools in Argentina, since the topics that the book deals with
may be of interest to students, as they adapt to the circumstances of adolescents. The
intermediate level of English used in the course book also seems very appropriate to
access the learning of the target language in a contextualized way by developing all four
skills (writing, reading, listening and speaking). I find the outcome of each unit in work
projects very useful for teaching specific topics, along with their vocabulary and
grammatical forms; so that each work unit has a closure and gives a better format to the
students about the achievements that they reach throughout the year of learning English.