1.

Textbooks are great and no one can deny how helpful they are especially to
teachers during their first years of teaching. Textbook authors spend lots of time
on developing each course. Comment on the implications of this.

We agree with this idea because normally, novel teachers don’t have enough experience
and resources to develop a class. Textbooks are important but they need to be used
wisely because a teacher has to be able to create his or her own materials, not just
focusing on the textbook.

2. Do you think that most (or a vast majority of) current EFL textbooks for
children are, on the whole, engaging? Why/Why not? Give actual examples from
your experience during your last Practicum.

It depends on the textbooks and how teachers adapt them. Textbooks are constantly
updating so they look for useful activities, dynamics… Textbooks can be a guide but
teachers should create their own materials to provide a variety of activities.

3. From what you have seen and lived during your last Practicum, would you agree
that many/most EFL Primary teachers work hard in improving what textbooks
provide before implementing them? Have you ever seen any EFL Primary teacher
tightly confined to the textbook? Explain the experience.

Not in general but there are some teachers who are very focus on their work in an
innovating teaching.

Yes, and they don’t know how to act if something changes in their planning.

4. What happens when our EFL classroom practice as teachers is defined too
closely by external parameters such as textbook units, when the class is directed to
the textbook?

There are no opportunities to learn different thing apart from the book. Books are
standardised, so if a teacher doesn’t adapt the book and uses it as the Bible, children
won’t have a significative learning, it won’t be a student-centered teaching.

5. How would you address the case in which, say, you (as an in-service EFL teacher)
find problems when implementing your textbook in areas such as: the sequencing of
language items, the language selection or the scope of language items?
You should not adopt the textbook, the teacher will try to adapt the textbook in order to
make things easier to learners.

The language that we find in a textbook is not seen in a communicative way.

Authenticity has to be consider in terms of complexity, if we don’t adapt, it will be very
difficult to teach.

Authentic is something that we can find in real life and in the textbook. We can hardly
find authenticity in textbooks, it’s everything artificial.

6. It must be absolutely frustrating when upon opening your textbook you feel you don’t
know what to do. How would you react if a textbook does not fit your beliefs as an EFL
Primary teacher and parents have already bought that textbook for their children?

7. “Textbooks have been variously regarded by teachers as the Bible, a guide, a

crutch, a necessary evil or a burden” (Gabrielatos, 2004, p.28). According to what
you have seen during your last Practicum, what is the textbooks’ true dimension?

Textbooks aren’t use in a correct way, because it has to be a tool for the teacher. The
problem is that many teachers aren’t able to have a class if they don’t have a textbook,
they can’t create materials, and obviously they don’t adapt the textbook, in spite of
knowing that the textbooks are standardised resources and each student is different, so
adaptation is needed.

8. What kinds of constraints may textbooks put on the learning experience in the
classroom? If at all, could they be overcome somehow?