Evaluation of the book ‘talk a lot’

by matt purland
Context
Group of students:

• Arab migrants in Australia

• Both gender

• 20-30 years

• The book is designed for ESL/EFL elementary level or pre-intermediate level

students.

• Before the course start, they conduct an assessment with each student just to
check whether they are suitable to enroll onto that course or not.
.

• The aim of this book is to encourage students to talk in the class as much as possible
by providing them with formal and informal contexts to help them develop their
English language.
Are the materials, content and activities relevant to the student needs?

• The course includes twelve lessons three hours a week. Starts with ten
lessons each lesson have a different topic (see topics below).
• Every topic includes a variety of activities that cover most of the students
need.
One of the lessons that come under the
discussion words activity

This activity is focused on

English phonetics, as some
of them are not part of the
Arabic phonetics inventory
in specific, the /p/, /b/, /v/,
and /f/ consonants.
In addition, the book also provides some tips for the students to use
when they speak, formulate a simple sentence or question.
Are the materials and content relevant to the
students’ experiences, interests and background?
• The book promotes a 12 week spoken English course,
▫ Contains all materials, instructions and answers
▫ New and unique way of learning.
▫ Facilitates learning, recalling, questions and answers using eight
verb forms in common use
▫ Targets more than 400 essential vocabulary

• From my perspective as a teacher, although the book contains many

well structured and valuable materials; however, it needs to focus
more on students interests, experiences and background.
Do they engage learners in self-discovery,
involvement and problem solving? Are they
communicative?

1- Self-discovery: answering questions about one particular topic

2- Involvement: most of the activities help learners to involve effectively.
In an appropriate classroom environment, learners who get together with others,
and whose English is at the same or close level, will usually take part freely and
enthusiastically if the teacher provides them with topics and tasks that are
suitable for them(Harmer, 2015).
3-Problem-solving: An example of one of the problem-solving activities: Students
work in pairs or small group to choose a topic and think about as many words as
they can add words on the same topic, for example, shopping, after collecting the
words they need to make their own discussion words cards.

4-Are they communicative? I think yes they are communicative, as it has really
good sequenced activities as well as the above ones.
Do they promote autonomy and advice on
language learning strategies?
• Example of autonomous exercise-
• Autonomy is encouraged
by getting the students to
construct their own
sentence blocks, through
discussion and role play
in different scenarios.
• The book also advises on
vocabulary test and
lesson tests as learning
strategies.
What changes (if any) would you make to the
learner activities, materials of the textbook
that you are evaluating? Why?
• Talk a lot (Purland, 2008) is a useful book to solve the problems of
learning English faced by people with basic knowledge of English.
• The book focuses on speaking skills, but it could promote reading
and writing skills as well (probably in a limited capacity without
moving the focus away from promoting speaking). This is because
writing and reading are as important skills as speaking.

• What I would like to change is the duration of the lessons as it is to

much for the students and teacher.

• Also, If I could change, I would focus more on what students like

rather than preparing the activities and give it to them.
References
Harmer, J. (2015). The Practice Of English Language Teaching (5 ed.).

Purland, M. (2008). Talk a lot spoken English course elementary book 1.

English banana. Retrieved April 3, 2020