Analysis of the course-book “Access 3”

“Access 3 – pre-intermediate”is designed to be covered in 80 hours. It contains 11 modules. Each module focuses on a particular theme, and all the texts and activities within a unit are related to that particular theme. For example, module one is organised around lifestyles, module three around travel,

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module four around the media, and so on. Each module contains six units, and is divided into six main components: grammar; vocabulary; reading and listening; speaking and functions; writing; and culture/curricular. A detailed overview of all the course components can be found in the introductory table of contents (see Appendix 4). All units contain mainly short activities that fit well into the 45-

minute lesson timetable – as one of the participants in this study, Miss Ada, claimed.

The first two units of each module contain mainly reading and writing activities that serve the purposes of informing learners about the use and the meaning of the target language, as well as introducing new lexical items. For example, as shown in Appendix 5, there are three reading passages in the units 3a and 3b (i.e. Jules’ undersea lodge, Edinburgh’s ghost walks, and Cool sports) which illustrate the use of the present perfect in context. These passages do not give any useful information students can use outside of the classroom (as could give, for example, a What’s on this weekend in the

city passage, a text on how to use Windows 8.1, and so on); they seem to be used for the mere purpose

of focusing students on language use, rather than to “close the language gap between classroom knowledge and real life” (Guariento and Morley, 2001: 347). The textbook contains less than ten passages that might help students develop their skills for the real world by giving them useful information. For example, there is one short article on the abbreviations commonly used in emails (module 5), a bulletin on how to make a purchase on the internet (module 7), and so on.

As regards the listening materials, an attempt is made to represent speech in different accents at a normal speaking rate (i.e. “the rate at which a speaker reads aloud a continuous prose text” (Preiss and Gayle, 2006:316), but the scripted recordings lack some key features of everyday speech, such as repetitions, hesitations, and unplanned interruptions. Both listening and reading sections follow a topic-based approach.

The listening and reading passages are often followed either by traditional comprehension checking questions, i.e. true or false statements, wh-questions, and fill-in-the-blank sentences, or by tasks that promote both understanding of the text and communication, like the one shown below:

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Comprehension exercises (see Appendix 5, unit 3b, exercise 2 for an example) often accompany reading and listening passages. In addition, there are “word power” headings, “vocabulary” sections, and vocabulary-development exercises dispersed all through the textbook. “Word power” headings are rubrics reserved for the interpretation of multiple words and phrases (e.g. unit 1 introduces three different uses of the verb “feel”, unit 4 introduces four uses of the verb “make”, and so on). Vocabulary sections build upon familiar topics for students, and concentrate on learning new words in lexical sets. For example, unit 1 introduces synonyms, or words with a similar meaning/use related to the category “job”, unit 2 to “feelings”, unit 6 to “teenage problems”, and so on. Many of the vocabulary- development exercises focus on aspects of word knowledge. For example, exercise 7 (unit 1b) and exercise 5 (unit 2b) focus on the rules of word formation, and exercise 3 (unit 1a) and exercise 3 (unit 3c) focus on collocations. Students are usually asked to guess the meaning of new words from their context before they consult their dictionaries. The choice of the specific words that confirm the vocabulary input of the book seems to be appropriate for pre-intermediate students, as it explicitly addressed mainly vocabulary which is useful for learners at this level (i.e. “high-frequency vocabulary - traditionally operationalized as around the first 2,000 most frequent word families” Schmitt and Schmitt, 2012:2). Nevertheless, some passages include a number of low-frequency words (i.e. words beyond the 2,000 word families). For example, the words “bluebells”, “puffins”, “golden eagles” (see Figure 3.1 above). “Access 3” also contains numerous pronunciation activities designed to improve students’ pronunciation of individual sounds, word and sentence stress, as well as rhythm and intonation.

The course book features a strong morphological emphasis (such as using determiners, prepositions, singular and plural markings, and so on), and proceeds from apparently simple structures to more complicated ones (such as present simple, present continuous, past simple, present perfect, and so on). New grammatical structures or rules are presented inductively to the students in context by illustrating grammar structures in reading/listening passages that cover a wide range of topics that might be interesting for teenagers, such as celebrities, vampires, cool sports, travel, school, and so on. For example, exercise 1, unit 1 (see Appendix 6) first asks students to read the grammar rules and answer the question “How do you form the present simple?”, then to find examples of the present simple in the text. After reinforcing the rules from practical examples, students practise the structure in exercise 4 (Put the verbs in the brackets in the correct form of the present simple), and use the structure through practice of the language in context in exercise 5 (Put the words in the correct order. Then answer the questions: Where/you/live/do?). Therefore, it can be claimed that the textbook emphasises forms and functions of the language, as well as use.

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The speaking and functions section adheres to a situational syllabus, as there are a number of tasks that aim to link the development of the language skills with the context in which to use the language by inviting learners to imagine something that inspires them for creative writing and speaking. For example, exercise 3 on page 37 (see Appendix 7) invites learners to imagine they are lifeguards and gives visual clues to motivate students to use their own speech. Likewise, the authors often use open- ended questions in discussions to take into account different learners’ competences and needs. For example, exercise 4b on page 30 (see Appendix 5) invites students to discuss the question “What makes this place out of the ordinary?” (as opposed to “What are the two/three things related to the climate that make this place out of ordinary?”) so that students of different levels of proficiency in L2 can have their own say, based on their understanding of the passage. In addition, the majority of the units include a “think” rubric that aims to develop students’ critical thinking and their cognitive domain by asking questions such as “Should children work? Why/Why not?” (page 77); “Which of the following would you prefer: fame, wealth, or happiness? Why?” (page 110); “Does advertising influence your choices? To what extent?” (page 111), and so on.

“Access 3” emphasises pair and group work as it continually asks students to complete activities in their pairs/groups. Moreover, it provides a great number of controlled question-and-answer speaking activities, and targets some communicative speaking tasks designed with information gap as the central principle (see exercise 2, Appendix 7 for an example). However, the textbook features a limited number of authentic tasks - defined by Tomlinson, 2011:IX as “tasks which involve learners in using language in a way that replicates its use ‘in the real world’ outside the language classroom” - that put L2 speakers in a position where they have to use their linguistic and communicative resources to obtain purposeful information. To illustrate the point, exercise 5 on page 6 (see Appendix 6), and many other similar activities embodied in the textbook, might be used to a certain extent as genuine informative communicative activities when students do not know each other very well. Yet, used in an EFL class in a small city of Albania, in a context where students know each other, and their families very well, the only interest students might have in asking and answering these kinds of questions is that of displaying the correct use of the simple present.

The syllabus also devotes some time to the development of writing skills, such as paragraphing, and writing a thesis statement with supporting sentences and linkers, through the use of several portfolio tasks, as exemplified below:

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Figure 3.2: Writing exercise illustration (“Access 3”, student-book, page 94.)

To summarise, “Access 3” contains many visual clues, colourful pictures, coherent content, a number of authentic texts, and interesting topics to prompt learners’ responses to materials. Nonetheless, despite the fact that there are a number of reading and listening texts that can be used for explanatory and informative purposes, the majority of the materials used in this textbook seem to have been tailored to encourage students to discover and practise specific L2 linguistic items, rather than help them to make discoveries about the language or to enable learning beyond just simple practice of the L2. Lastly, the authors of “Access” seem to believe that languages are primarily learned by building a solid grammatical stock of knowledge as its content is mainly centred around grammatical items.