My course book review

    The course book is one of the most essential elements if you are someone who would like to improve his or her foreign language skills, or even learn a completely new one. When people talk about course books, I usually wonder if they really know how to choose the right one.

    In my opinion, too many things depend on course books. In other words, this decision isn’t easy to make. So it is very important to know how to choose the most suitable course book. As we know, there are usually three main books: a student’s book, a workbook and a teacher’s resource book. We could also find cassettes or CDs that we can use at home and in the classroom. These cassettes and CDs help students to improve such skills as listening, which is wonderful for students of all levels. Sometimes a forth course book is used. This would normally be a test book, where the teacher is able to measure the progress of each student. If you are learning the foreign language by yourself, then this test book can highlight your strong and weak points. With grammar for example, it could help you in the future because you will correctly understand what you should improve. Sometimes in the student’s book you can read some useful recommendations from the authors of these course books. Usually such recommendations are about improving your language skills or preparing for an exam. This kind of information will help you with your future learning plans.

    There are four main skills that could be improved with the help of a course book, which are writing, listening, reading and speaking. All of these skills are very important if students want to have a balanced knowledge of the language.

   There are a few important points to take into consideration when selecting a suitable course book.

    Firstly, there are many publishers all over the world. Even if we only speak about English course books, there are still many different publishing houses such as Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Macmillan Publishers, Pearson Education and so on and so forth.

    Secondly, each of these publishing houses prints a variety of course books. They have different levels for A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2, where A1 is for beginners and C2 for experienced learners who want to work on their proficiency. These books can also be for different age groups.

    Thirdly, people should decide for what purpose they want to buy particular course books, because there are plenty of course books designed for group lessons, and just as many for one-to-one lessons. In most bookshops, we also can find many books devoted to self-study. In addition, I would also like to mention that all course books chosen by teachers, students or language schools should respond to the needs of the students.

    In the modern world, when people have the opportunity to take exams such as IELTS and TOEFL, they usually prefer to learn their chosen language using internationally recognized books. In many countries, some of these books are adapted, whilst others are not, so that should also be taken into account. With the help of these course books, people could not only improve the four language skills, but also take an exam after learning. Teachers, students or/and language schools should also think  about whether the course book will be the main manual of the learning process, or whether it will be an additional part of the study curriculum.

    Finally, once you have found the appropriate course book, the motivation for learning is also very important, so don’t forget about motivation either.    
 

 

Read more: www.stacyshystovska.blogspot.com