COURSE BOOK - ENEMY OR ALLY OF THE MODERN TEACHER?

COURSE BOOK - ENEMY OR ALLY OF THE MODERN TEACHER?

Mihulja, Gordana

Course book has always been considered the best teaching material used in classroom. But, with time and with advanced development of pedagogical and methodological conscience of students, teaching and classroom discourse, course book just wasn't enough for student to achieve optimal conditions for efficient second language acquisition. Soon a great dissension appeared between teaching methods of the teacher and the course book itself; between teacher and student in general. Those two didn't have the same goals or the same picture of who each of them was and what was their role in the second language acquisition process. In this paper we will present some advantages and disadvantages of a set of course books for L2; in particular those of Italian that are used in Croatian schools or constructed by Croatian teachers and experts. Also we will present results of a content analysis of those books done with a questionnaire that has been adapted particularly for this research. We made the hypothesis that the problem lies somewhere in the content of the course book. Our goal is to find out which aspects of course book design, especially regarding its contents, should be changed in order to reduce that dissension between teachers and students; to make the course book better and more efficient in the second language acquisition process. This paper and the results presented inside can be considered a new direction in course book design policy; new perspective and the new way to harmonize book contents with the school curriculum premises. Thus the quality of course books that our children use will be increased significantly and the great leap in students' educational success will be noticed.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2014

3442