2. Uses of textbooks differ depending on the teachers' experiences and the types of class being taught.

Textbooks writers usually gather their own ideas in a book that teachers should use in classrooms. Those ideas can remain theorical if they are not concretely applied by both teachers and learners in order to test their meaningfulness, their usefulness, and also their effectiveness.

"Materials writers need to work from a solid base of classroom experience and awareness of the realities of the classroom interactions of teachers and students in particular settings who are trying to realize particular goals."

Textbooks that are written without taking into account the real needs, expectations and characteristics of those who are going to use them (students but also teachers) are simply meaningless and consequently ineffective or useless. Students and teachers would not have any interest in such textbooks. 

2. It is imperative that materials writers have a thorough grasp of developments in the field they are writing in. In addition, they should be able to test their theories with concrete practice.

Materials writers should have the experience of the ground to actually become aware of what is really going on in classrooms. Writers should avoid basing their writings on presupositions or other people' experiences. Instead, they could conduct practical research with actual students, interact with them as well as teachers in order to grasp the real classroom demands.

"...we use language holistically, not as a series of bits and pieces."

I think all textbook writers should kepp this in mind when writing. Language learners should be provided with the 'whole thing' instead of just some bits that cannot, unfortunately makethem use the language communicatively. The purpose of textbook writers should be, overall, to give equal consideration to accuracy and fluency. We certainly want our stuents to use the language communicatively but at the same time wewant them to make some sense.

2. Materials should be submitted to some trialling and evaluation in order to their effectiveness.

The benefits of such textbooks, if effectively used, are predictable. Students will easily be interested and motivated becuase their concerns are dealt with. More importantly, the learning can be facilitated because the textbook and the teaching are directed to their actual needs while addressing their different characteristics and learning styles.

"Teachers need to be enable to write their own materials in order to reduce their dependency on publisher materials and as a mean of professional development."

I fully agree with this statement. I think that publishers are making money on the back of materials writers. There are also times when the materials are not adequate to a particular group of students, and yet, they have to buy the textbook anyway without actually gaining any benefits from it. If teachers are allowed to write their own textbooks, we can decrease the possiblity of having inappropriate textbooks. The more so because teachers know their students best. Therfore, they are right put to write "texts" that address the real needs, expectations, and characteristics of their students.

2. Intelligence does not affect language learning potential.

Because there is not such thing as "best personality", it is worthless to try to adjust our students' personalities to a model. Nevertheless, we can positively influence some of their characteristics such as motivation, learning styles, and attitudes towards the target language. We can get our students to learn the language depending on the selection of the textbook and the activities, and the way we use them. Textbooks, activities, techinques should all be interesting, related to students' needs and expectations, at their levels, meaningful and challenging enough to arouse their motivation. We, teachers should also have a positive attitude toward the language we are teaching. Usually, our attitute influences our students' attitudes.

2. Because of the lack of grammar knowledge of some teachers, textbooks should make the explanations easy and understandable to students while providing a teacher book where explanations are given to the teachers.

3. Materials writers should closely consider the differences between spoken and wriiten grammar when writing textbooks.

4. Authentic examples are often hard to find, but they guide students to the ways in which language is actually used.

Obviously, an example is used to illustrate an explanation. It does not make sense to give an example of something that we have not previously explained. What will be the purpose of the example in such a case?

"...many of the condemnations of the teaching of grammar are, in fact, discussions of problems with a particular approach to classroom activities along with a particular appraoch to classroom activities along with a particular approach to the designing of the content of those activities."

My understanding of this statement is that it is not the teaching of grammar that causes problem, but the way grammar is actually taught. Many people have complained that grammar teaching is boring, useless, meaningless, and so on, yet the actual issue here should be how to make the teaching of grammar interesting and meaningful. There should not be any debate on whether or not grammar is useful. I personnally do not think that we can teach a language without its grammar. So, we teachers should look at ways to make its teaching effective.

2. The success of teaching grammar today will certainly depend on teachers' willingness to deviate from the traditional way of teaching it.

3. Many textbooks present grammatically accurate use of language speeches, but they fail to tell students the appropriate conditions in which they have to use them.

4. That-clauses are often used in conversations, primarily to express one's own opinions and ideas or report someone else's.

It an unrealistic venture to try to cover every grammar point in a language class, even a grammar class. For this reason, curriculum writers as well as teachers should make a good selection of the grammar points they want to cover, based on the actual needs and expectations of the students. It is better not to overwhelm them with grammar explanations that they will not benefit from.

"The implication of corpus research for pedagogy is that grammatical study needs to take place within the  context of a register or by comparing registers."

Materials writers as well as teachers should present the grammar structures in the contexts of registers in which they actually occur in real life. As such, we prepare students to meet the expectations that are awaiting them out of the classroom setting.

2. In designing activities, it is better to keep them in different categories. Students should know exactly what grammar point is being practiced in a given activity. By putting categories together, students may get confused and at a loss what to do.

3. Drawing can be used as an activity in which students demonstrate comprehension of a given grammatical feature.

4. Grammar and writing are closely related, but have different approaches in both the selection and implementation of activities.

When giving prompts to students, we teachers have to make sure that they understand what we want them to write about, what the purpose for writing are and also who the audience will be. It is always better to avoid topics that are too broad but also those that are  too narrow, which actually will not trigger enough thinking.

"Most often, the writing activities are based on a reading task, and the writing skills are practiced repeatedly in several chapters with different topics."

By giving writing activities that are based on a reading, we provide the necessary schemata (vocabulary as well as content) to the students in order to approach the task. 

2. Students learn graduallly and holistically, that is, learning both form and meaning as well as how to use them.

3. Learners do not learn structures one at a time.

4. Errors are part of the process of learning. 

Teaching grammar is not just a matter of giving rules to the students, but rather to make them use the grammar communicatively. The desire to see our students speak accurately should not prevent them from producing the language. Errors are part of the learning process. We are not expecting our students to become grammarians; rather, we want them to be good communicators who have an acceptable  mastery of grammar.

"...students' production plays a very important role in learning grammar. It is not enough to have awareness raised if students can't produce the language."

Teachers should value students' output as much as they value the input they receive. We must help students produce or give back the language we give them. As such, they can get feedback either from their teachers or from their peers, or from people out there. And they can use such feedback to make the necessary changes or improvements in their language use.

2. Just like any linguistic feature of text, vocabulary features differ across registers.

3. An academic word list should contain an even-handed selection of words that appear across the various subject areas covered by the texts contained within the corpus.

4. Studies such as the corpus-based study create lists, concordances, or data concerning the clustering of linguistic items in coherent and purposeful texts. As such, they will be most valuable in setting goals for EAP courses.

This seems to be a very big issue in teaching vocabulary. Students come to the classroom with a lot of expectations and needs. Sometimes, those needs and expectations are not in sync with the progrmme's curriculum. Other times, students expect things that they actually do not need. It is often hard in such cases to select the materials. To address this, it seems preferable to always make inquiries about the real reasons why students are learning the L2. Based on those reasons, materials designers and teachers can better know the kinds of materials, or words in the particular case of vocabulary teaching, they have to use in the classroom.

"Direct teaching through vocabulary excercises, teacher explanation, and awareness raising, and deliberate learning using word cards need to be balanced with opportunities to meet the vocabulary in message-focussed reading and listening and to use the vocabulary in speaking and writing." p.228

When presenting a new word to students, teachers should give the opportunity to encounter that word in all four language skills, and give them the opportunity to practice it as often as possible, so that the new word can become part of their knowledge.

2. Similarities between words can make learning more difficult because of interference and the confusion students can make about pairs of words.

3. Most second language learners come to the classroom with the expectations of learning a large amount of vocabulary. It would be a mistake not to teach them vocabulary.

4. Learning language chunks give lower level learners, especially, a sense of fluency, and also help to decrease their frustration for not being able to fluently produce the target language.

A word usually has more than only one meaning or interpretation. It all depends on the context or the situation in which it is used. Therefore, it is an absolute necessity to provide students as many contexts and situations in which the word is used. As such, they can avoid pragmatic failures, which are very common in L2 learners' language productions.

"'Knowing a word' includes not only knowing the meaning of the word, its part of speech, and its word family and other associations, but it also means knowing if its occurrence is restricted by certain collocations." P. 293

A word has meaning only in context. And we know that words do not appear in a single context. There are different contexts in which a word can appear, and those contexts influence the meaning of that word. Therefore, a student may know the meaning of a word and use it accurately in one context but use it inaccurately in another context. Suffice it to say that new words should be presented in many different contexts, and the teacher should point out to the students the different possible meanings that those words can have depending on the context or the situation.

2. It is preferable to expose the words in contexts rather than give them in isolation. 

3. Because functional language proficiency requires mastery of a large number of words, it is necessary to make students at the intermediate and advanced levels learn a large vocabulary.

4. In L1 acquisition, the new word and its meaning are learned simultaneously; but L2 learners need to be familiar, first, with the L2 label of the covered concept (when the two labels cover semantic equivalent), or be able to integrate that L2 label into their conceptual frmaework.

This statement seems so true to me. As an L2 learner myself, I often had to deal with texts that were full of new words, and which meanings I was unable to infer because the whole texts were completely chinese to me. Even when I would use my dictionary, which in fact will make me consume a lot of time, I would end up in confusion. 

"Retrieval of a word from the mental lexicon for productive use requires a higher degree of accessibility or, in other words, a more solid integration in various networks than is needed for receptive use."

For this reason, it would be preferrable that teachers make students practice more often producing the newly learned word themselves than just recognizing it from a passage or a talk. The more students will practice using a new word themselves, the more they will consolidate their knowledge of that word.

2. Students are often eager to know the other members of a lexical set when those members are presented one at a time.

3. If related words such as cold and hot are taught together, learners will certainly know that they refer to heat, but many can get confused about which word goes with which of the meanings.

4. To avoid interference between related words, it is better to present those words at different times, starting by the most frequently used or the most useful or mostly needed one.

This is a true discovery for me. As a learner, I always learnt my vocabulary words in lexical sets. And now as a teacher, I have transfered that strategy to my teaching. In addition, the textbook I am currently using presents related words together. I now understand why my students will use one word instead of the other in different situations. I want to give this a try. However, I am worried about the way students will react in case they are people who always want to learn all the menbers of a lexical set.

"In addition to the criteria of frequency and avoidance of interference, course designers need to apply a criterion of normal use, meaning that words should occur in normal communication situations, not in contrived, language-focussed activities." P.6

The job of the teacher is to actually prepare students for real world. Language-focussed activities are certainly good practices, but they are not beneficial to students when they are in real life situations. The classroom setting should be the place where students are prepared to meet real life expectations.
Nevertheless, words should not be presented only in communication. Students will also have to read papers, watch TV's, listen to lectures and the radio, etc. So, it is important that the language teachers use in the classroom takes into account all the real life situations in which students will happen to be.

2. In vocabulary learning, some classroom instruction is better than no instrustion at all, even though it does not account for all the words that students need to learn.

3. Many researchers are starting recognizing that explicit reference to word meanings is a viable way of gaining only partial knowledge of a word. This teaching approach can certainly handle many words, but those words may be inessential or too specialized in meaning and use.

4. The more familiar students become with word stems, prefixes, and affixes, the better they will recognize the meaning of many words; one root or affix can provide students with a clue to the meaning of a certain number of words.

In my sense, dictionary use should the very last resort of learnrs. Learners should then be trained to be independent from dictionaries. They should be taught strategies for guessing the meaning words in the contexts in which they appear by looking at the relationships that exist among the words of one sentence for example. Because of the multiplicity of meanings that a word can have, based on the context it appears in, the dictionary can give students meanings that do not fit in the particular context in which the word they have trouble with appears.

"It is unrealistic to expect L2 students to comprehend the intricacies of a given lexical item and be able to use the word appropriately after one single exposure. " P. 33

Vocabulary words need to be presented ot students more than often, "reviewed and recycled in meaningful contexts" in order to widen students' knowledge of the word, and at the same time consolidate that knowledge. It is only then that they will feel comfortable using thost words accurately in meaningful contexts.

2. The Grammar and Language Reference (GLR) supplies addtional explanations and authentic examples of the grammar features discussed in the chapters. Teachers can use the GLR to individualize instruction for students who need extra work on particular grammar structures.

3. Readings within each chapter help students develop ideas for writing. Nevertheless, students can gather materials from other sources to get ideas for their assignments.

4. Students depend on three main sources to gather information to develop their writing: personal experience, interaction with others, and reading.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

For a long time, grammar and writing have been viewed as interrelated and unseperable. I personnally support this view for two reasons. First, writing is a language skill that requires a high degree of formality and cognition. Contrary to speaking, which looks at the overall intelligibility of students, writing requires a certain degree of accuracy. Because the writer is not always present to facilitate comprehension with other nonverbal cues, repetitions, paraphrases, s/he needs to be accurate enough to allow the reader to understand the written text. Yet, I would say that grammar should be complemented with vocabulary. Knowing grammar rules, but having a poor vocabulary knowledge will still make the writing difficult.

"As a student, you are also surrounded by instructions, both written and oral. Receiving instructions is a way to learn new materials and skills, so, naturally, it is a vital part of your education." (Textbook, P. 30)

Giving instructions and receiving them constitute one major part in language teaching. To perform a task successfully, students need to understand the instrucions of the teacher. Therefore, the teacher's instructions have to be very clear and precise. Teachers may repete, paraphrase, ask students to explain to make sure that they understand. On the other side, students have to make sure that they understand the instructions well before performing a task.

2. One way for students to illustrate their understanding of the course material is through the writing of academic papers. Organization, development, and accuracy play important roles in this type of writing.

3. To develop the linguistic accuracy, maturity, fluency, and variety students will need to write effective essays for academic courses.

4. In structure and composition classes, students meet periodically in computer labs and use word processing and the World Wide Web (WWW) to complete the writing and grammar activities.

As students get the chance to actually type, or write a paragraph or so, they not only practice on the grammatical features, but also and especially, they practice on actual writing. And, thisseems to me a  very important and positive strategy for a Structure and Composition class.

"In order to help you learn from your mistakes, you will need to keep a record of the types of grammar errors that you make. In addition, you will need to write the sentence with the error, the corrected sentence, and the reason or rule related to the error for selected errors in each of your major papers."

This seems to be a strategy to help learners consciously focus on their language problems. As they identfy the mistake, correct it, and then keep both the mistake and the correct answer, students get a sense of what they are actually learning. As they understand why such and such is a  mistake, they are likely to avoid the same mistake again when they come across a similar problem.

2. Ideally the team of writers must first meet  and agree on the overall approach and methodology that they want to use. Then they go away to write their own chunks, which could be thematically related or unrelated. Then they meet regularly to comment on each other's work, and go away to improve their chunks with the benefit of the feedback.

This quote shows the importance of working together, as materials writers, to come up with valuable products. We learn from the experiences of each other, give feedback to each other in order to write materials that can be relevant enough to be used in classrooms. Even though the final product is written individually, the process of writing, when done in collaboration with colleagues, makes that final product look like something.

2. Most ESL contracts (particularly for first-time authors) are "standard", that royalties for most ESL contracts, especially form the larger publishing houses, were set at 10 percent, and that publishers are generally ethical.

The reason why I mentioned this quote is that I entirely agree with Reid. Because textbooks are written to be used by teachers and students, it seems senseless not to have teachers, who have the actual experience with the students, write their own materials. It is certainly true that some materials writers ask for the feedback of some students, but, we know that students differ from one setting to another, from one culture to another, from one classroom to another. So, a textbook can and will never match a particular group of students if it was not written by someone who actually knows the real characteristics and needs of that group of students. 

2. Textbooks are for both students and teachers. Both students and teachers' needs and expectations should be taken into account when designing materials.

3. Teachers have to be aware of their lives in their classrooms. They must also be knowledgeable about the larger system in which they work and about possible ways that the system might allow for their participation in its administration processes. Influencing the textbook selection process in such situations is both a matter of pedagogical knowledge and political skill.

4. The issues that must be addressed in a textbook evaluation system are the fit between the materials and (1) the curriculum, (2) the students, and (3) the teachers.

As both teachers and material writers, we should make sure, in the materials that we design, that this process is facilitated. How do we present a new material? How do we recycle a former one? Are the activities really practicing on the lessons? What activities can be used by the teacher (especially inexperienced teachers) to evaluate the course? 

"While planning the ways in which the textbook will be used for the whole academic term, a teacher needs to be making concrete if tentative decisions about how different activities will be used  during the academic term..." P. 420

Somewhere else, Dr. Byrd suggested that teachers, especially inexperienced teachers, should read the whole textbook they are given before they even start the first day of class. This seems a sine qua non condition to succeed in planning activities that can be relevant to the everyday lessons. A textbook is not necessarily to be followed in the order in which it was written. Teachers know best what the needs of their students are, and so, they decide what chapters, and what activities are relevant to those needs. 

2. Obtaining feedback from a variety of learners provides insights into how individuals approach a particular language learning task, CALL software, and the specific content of the material.

3. The think aloud protocol is the most common method for collecting data in usability testing sessions because it is an easy way to obtain a good deal of qualitative data. Users are asked to say what they are thinking as they complete the tasks.

4. To prevent any testing anxiety that can impact the trialing of materials, it is important to make it clear to the users that it is the material that is being tested, not them. 

This relates back to one of my previous thoughts. Teachers are the persons who are in real contact with the students. They are better put to know and better understand the students. Therefore, they are in a better position to design  materials that can address the students' needs and characteristics. Yet, it does not mean that the materials that they write will automatically be effective. For this reason, they need to be trained on how to become effective materials writers.

"Because learners are the audience for the material, their ability to use and learn from it must be considered." P. 16

This is a matter of creating reliable materials. Students, who are targeted as users of the materials need to put those materials to trial. Their feedback and the way they approach the materials is determinant in testing their effeciency, or making necessary changes to make those textbooks useful and relevant to the learners' variables (age, L2 proficiency, etc.) and needs.

2. Learners need help with specifics of the input they receivve in order to comprehend it both semantically and syntactically.

Teaching and learning a language, in my sense, should be done holistically. It means that teachers and materials writers should not focus on only a few aspects of the language; instead they should focus on the language holistically. To be competent L2 users, students need to be have both syntactic and semantic input. Nowadays, the syntactic aspect of language is tended to be given litttle attention, if any. And yet, syntax still plays a determining role in the process of language learning (Ferris, 1999). Besides, students themselves expect to develop their syntatic knowledge. It is important to address that need.

2. Different learners learn the target language for different reasons, with different expectations and needs. Therefore, the appraches, content, materials, and language aspects teachers decide to use or focus on also vary accordingly. For this reason, the learning and teaching goals have to be clearly defined from the beginning.

There is absolutely no doubt that today, learners are encouraged to take responsibility for their learning; in other words, to be autonomous and take actions for their own learning. Although the benefits of that approach are outstanding, yet, learners should be trained in that process first. Autonomy, as Healey points out, is viewed differently across cultures. Teachers need then to explain what autonomous means in the target language, and what they concretely expect from students. 

2. TSP's (Tom Snyder Productions) TimeLiner can help students to visualize content, summarize, compare and contrast, and use graphic organizers to arrange information in the target language in any area of study, because the software is content free. It can be used for example to trace the biography of a famous person, help students define life plans, etc.

Learning a language (either second or foreign) means that learners expect to interact someday with the native speakers of that language; or at least to use that language communicatively. With regard to such an expectation, students need to be train to be successful communicators in the classroom by simulating the interaction that really takes place in the real world. The language taught in the classroom, and the situations in which it is used should be authentic enough to reflect the demands of the real world, or the academic world in case we have a program that specically focuses on academic purposes.

2. In the past, research showed that people who read from larger screens read faster than those who read from smaller screens. But, thanks to screen resolution improvement, reading from small screens  has become easier and better.

I have selcted this quote because I have been wondering why some people choose to read from the screen rather than on papers, and how they succeed in reading efficiently. Personnally, I always print texts before reading, because it makes it easier to me to highlight things, write in the margin, marking a point where I stop, etc. I did not know that the computer could offer reading strategies such as highlighting and almost all the strategies that I use while reading on papers. I find this an interesting a great tool for learning. So, as a whole, we can also interact with texts on the computer screen. 
Nevertheless, I think some students, like myself, will always prefer reading on paper, especially because reading on the screen may damage the eyes, and also because it is more convenient to have your paper anywhere, anyplace. Laptops are certainly convenient, but are so expensive and inaccessible right now. The more they will become accessible to the majority, the less people will read on paper.

2. The first stage of the process for CALL involves drawing up an initial set of dessign issues and principles from three sources: (a) user needs expressed through scenarios of use, (b) general principles of good HCJ design, and (c) a general constructivist orientation to the design of learning materials.

Learners are not automatons, but rather thinking beings. Even if teachers assume that they know more than students (which is the case), they need to consider that the latter have some knowledge, some abilities that they themselves can exploit to make their own learning easier.