Issues In Coursebook Evaluation

In Issues in Coursebook Evaluation, Azarnoosh, Zeraatpishe, Faravani and Kargozari (Eds.) take a theory to practice approach in investigating basic topics in evaluating English language textbooks. In each case, theoretical foundations, specific evaluation criteria, and practical examples are presented.

The main concern is effective learning and how this can best be achieved in ESP courses. This book discusses the evolution of ESP, the role of the ESP teacher, course design, syllabuses, materials, teaching methods, and evaluation procedures. It will be of interest to all teachers who are concerned with ESP. Those who are new to the field will find it a thorough, practical introduction while those with more extensive experience will find its approach both stimulating and innovative.

Teaching and Learning in English Medium Instruction provides an overview of the nature of English Medium Instruction (EMI) in both secondary and tertiary education. The book explores the nature of academic literacy in EMI the ways in which EMI is implemented in different contexts issues related to teaching and learning through the medium of English teaching challenges and coping strategies used by EMI teachers support for EMI through EAP the professional development needs of EMI teachers approaches to the evaluation of EMI programs. The book contains a number of short chapters written in an accessible style with discussion questions and practical follow-up tasks. Throughout the book, key theory and research serve to introduce the core issues involved in EMI, which are then explored in terms of implications for practice. The book can be used in workshops and courses and for groups that include EMI teachers of content subjects, EAP teachers, TESOL students, and teachers and education officials involved with the implementation of EMI in different contexts. With the expansion of EMI worldwide in recent years the book seeks to introduce EMI to a new generation of EMI teachers and language teaching professionals.

Issues in Materials Development provides readers with theoretical foundations and practical aspects of designing materials for EFL/ESL contexts. It starts with discussing some basic and preliminary principles of materials design followed by scrutinizing critical issues in materials development in an objective and systematic way. This ranges from considering learners’ needs, adopting, adapting, selection, and gradation of materials to the specific focus of the book on developing various types of materials for the four language skills, pronunciation, ESP vocabulary, and computer assisted language learning materials. Authenticity of materials to be designed and the inclusion of affective factors to develop motivating materials to engage language learners, in addition to features of materials design at a universal level are other areas to read about. This book finally tries to open new horizons and possible futuristic approaches to improve today’s ELT materials.

Cartographies of becoming in education: A Deleuze-Guattari Perspective proposes a non-hierarchical approach that maps teaching and learning with the power of affect and what a body can do/become in different educational contexts. Teaching and learning is an encounter with the unknown and happen as specific responses to particular problems encountered with/in life. In this edited volume, international scholars map out potential ruptures in teaching and learning in order to conceptualize education differently. One way is through the multidisciplinary lens of MLT (Multiple Literacies Theory) in which reading is intensive and immanent. The authors deploy different aspects of MLT while creating and experimenting with ethology, teaching, learning, curriculum, teacher education and technology in relation to visual arts, music, mathematics, theatre, workplace literacy, second language education, and architecture. With the forces of globalization, digital media and economic re-structuring reconfiguring the social, political and economic landscape, societies require innovative ways of thinking about education. Cartographies of becoming in education: A Deleuze-Guattari Perspective is a response to problems posed by such forces. The problematic surrounding Deleuze-Guattari and education continues to grow. Diana Masny’s scholarship in this area is well known and appreciated through her many essays and books that develop MLT (Multiple Literacies Theory). Cartographies of Becoming in Education: A Deleuze-Guattari Perspective continues her effort to broaden the notion of education and show its intersections with MLT. The series of essays do this by forming a number of ‘entries,’ five to be precise: politicizing education, affect and education, literacies and becoming, teacher-becomings, and deterritorializing boundaries. Each ‘entry’ explores the way an MLT inflected orientation enables us to further grasp the creative inventiveness of the Deleuze-Guattarian tool kit that can be applied to areas of music education, ethnography, art, drama, literacy, mathematics, landscape ecology, ethology and teacher education. It is a vivid illustration of the cartography that maps the rhizomatic movements that are taking place by international scholars who are deterritorializing education as a discipline of modernity. I highly recommend this collection of essays to those of us who are continually asking how might education be rethought through the unthought. It opens up new territories. – Jan Jagodzinski, University of Alberta, Author of Psychoanalyzing Cinema.

Providing integrated and wide-ranging coverage of the topic, this is the ideal book for those studying or practising language teaching or applied linguistics.