Журнал жылына 4 рет жарыққа шығады (наурыз, маусым, қыркүйек, желтоқсан) иб №15211
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vestnik-pedagogika-4-69-2021-dlya-sajta
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- Literature review
| Research Questions
With respect to the aim of the study stated above, the following questions are aimed to be answered: 1. To what extent are the 21st Century skills in - cluded in ELT coursebooks? 1.1 To what extent are communication skills in - cluded in ELT coursebooks? 1.2 To what extent is are collaboration skills in - cluded in ELT coursebooks? 1.3 To what extent are critical thinking skills in - cluded in ELT coursebooks? 1.4 To what extent are creativity skills included in ELT coursebooks? Literature review With the incredible advance in information and communications technologies (ICT) in the 21st cen - tury, machines and robots have expanded their capa - bilities and been able to accomplish tasks done by human, which was not the case in the 20th century (Dede, 2010:60) [6]. These improvements have a direct influence on what skills people were required to have in the 20th century and are required to have in the 21st. The ba - sic knowledge skills; reading, writing and arithme - tic (3Rs), were regarded as fundamental in the 20th century while the applied skills such as collabora - tion, communication, creativity and critical think - ing (4Cs) are ‘very important’ to succeed in the 21st century. In the 20th century, being literate, having very good reading and writing skills with a great under - standing of arithmetic could have been enough to be successful in life, and thereby schools offered more knowledge-based education, focusing on de - velopment of 3Rs. However, as Rotherdam and Willingham (Rotherdam and Willingham,2009:18) [7] claim, in today’s world students need 21st cen - tury skills to be successful in life and schools should prepare students for life by incorporating communi - cation, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking skills in their teaching. As the term ‘21st century skills’ has become more of an issue with the developments and chang - es in ICT in the present era, some educators and researchers have discussed what could be done in the field of education. Furthermore, some organisa - tions and institutions have worked in partnership to produce a series of research briefs on key as - pects of conceptualizing, developing and assessing the 4Cs of 21st century skills (Mishra & Kereluik, 2011:3306) [8]. Communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity skills, the 4Cs of 21 st century, are not only to prepare the students for the real life outside the classroom, but also for their immediate learn - ing within the classroom. Being energetic and tech- savvy; having a short concentration span, the 21st century learners desire their learning to be challeng - ing, inspiring and collaborative. It might be wiser to have a deeper understanding of the information age and its requirements, to study the general character - istics of today’s students and then shape the learning environment at schools accordingly. As for language teaching, for the past century, much has been done to make sure that the quality of the methods will help improve the quality of teach - ing and eventually a supermethod will be developed to ensure the efficacy of teaching which, once, was considered as the Silent Way, Suggestopedia or the Natural Approach for some. In the late twentieth century, though, the focus of the super-method was on meaning rather than the structural knowledge of language, which forms the basis of “communicative competence”. When it comes to the 21st century, the language classroom is quite different from the one employed in mid and the late 20th century. The lan - guage classroom, then, focused mainly on grammar, memorization and learning from rote. On the other hand, the 21st century language classroom counts on language as a means to communicate intercultur - ally and globally. As a result of increasing mobility, the world is becoming a ‘global village’, which also has effects on language education regarding what is being taught and how it is taught since the methods, approaches and new skills applied and found to be successful in a part of the world spread around the other parts of the world (Dupuy, 2011:28) [9]. Thus, people tend to apply what has been tried and approved by some other people to be on the safe side while trying something new. As suggest - ed by Taylor (Taylor,2009:7) [10], EFL classrooms should avoid traditional methods and include new approaches which incorporate content, culture, technology and lifelong skills. Fandiño (Fandi - ño,2013:200) [11], likewise, claims that students should be provided with practices and processes of fostering creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, self-direction and crosscultural skills in EFL class - rooms. Considering some of the studies conducted on integrating 21st century skills into English language teaching, it can obviously be seen that the impor - 96 An analysis of elt coursebooks in terms of 21 st century skills tance of the issue has been realised by some re - searchers, educators and bodies actively taking part in education. However, the fact that teachers are the practitioners and facilitators of the systems in the classrooms gives higher responsibilities in terms of associating their teaching with 21st century skills. Despite the fact that teachers should be supported by educational policy makers, teacher trainers, ad - ministrators, researchers and textbook designers and be provided with guidance and materials, to ensure the best practice of 21st century teaching and learn - ing, what happens in most cases is that they depend on coursebooks to get guidance on what and how to teach. From this point of view, it can be inferred that coursebooks are influential components of teaching. The studies stated above mainly rely on the fact that advances in ICT which have changed one’s life rou - tines and the skills needed to be successful in life should be taken into consideration by any parties be - ing closely associated with education. The term ‘21st Century Skills’ has become a matter of educational discussions due to the fact that the advances in the 21st century and the chal - lenges of the information-age society need to be addressed and emphasized, particularly in the field of education, to better prepare today’s learners for tomorrow. However, before elaborating 21st century skills, it would be more sensible to look up what the word ‘skill’ actually means. According to European Parliament and Council of the European Union’s Cedefop glossary (Cedefop, 2008:3782) [12], ‘skill’ is defined as “the ability to apply knowledge and use know-how to complete tasks and solve problems”. Merriam-Webster Dictionary, on the other hand, defines the word ‘skill’ as “the ability to use one’s knowledge effectively and readily in execution or performance” (www.merriamwebster.com). With regards to these two definitions of the word ‘skill’, it can be assumed that ‘21st century skills’ refers to the ability of using the knowledge and know-how to be able to meet the requirements of the 21st century. The purposes of education should be develop - ing learners’ core skills and competencies regarding the life they are currently going through or will be living in the future no matter where they are in the world. In order to achieve this purpose, educational systems should make sure that students can solve real-world problems by applying their knowledge; be innovative, creative and productive; make use of digital tools for creating new resources, communi - cation and discovery of new things (Douglas & Has - sler, 2016:5)[13]. Having stated the advantages, role and impor - tance of coursebooks in a language programme, the decision as to what makes a coursebook more ben - eficial for a particular language programme and how it should be selected and evaluated is another issue to be looked at. As Alemi and Mesbah (Alemi and Mesbah,2012:65) [14] suggest, the fact that course - books have a crucial role in language teaching and learning brings an utmost importance and necessity to the evaluation of coursebooks in a variety of con - texts to find out the advantages of choosing one over the others. Knowing that many commercial coursebooks are available to the use of learners and teachers to - day, selecting one that fits the learners current and future needs by evaluating them based on systematic criteria is essential. Teaching materials which reflect “the needs of the learners and the aims, methods and values of the teaching program” have to be carefully select - ed. While selecting a coursebook which is appro - priate for the students’ needs, characteristics and preferences, one should make sure that the ultimate purpose is to motivate the learners and raise their language performance. Hence, a need analysis in - cluding leaners’ level, language need and interest can be applied using questionnaires and/or inter - views. The need analysis would help one to decide on what to include in the criteria of evaluation and selection. As Ghorbani (Ghorbani, 2011:515) [15] claims coursebook evaluation should be based on updated criteria since it does not only reflect on the appropriateness of the practice, but also on the advances and changes in the field of education. Therefore, systematic criteria for coursebook eval - uation that includes the needs of the local context should be defined and applied. However, before coursebook evaluation, ques - tions related to the role of the coursebook, the teach - ers and the learners in the programme should be overviewed. These questions might cover the fol - lowings: ▪ Is there a well-developed curriculum which describes the objectives, syllabus and content of the program or will this be determined by the textbook? ▪ Will the book or textbook series provide the core of the program, or is it one of several different books that will be used? ▪ Will it be used with small classes or large ones? Will learners be expected to buy a workbook as well or should the textbook provide all the practice stu - dents need? ▪ How experienced are the teachers in the pro - gram and what is their level of training? ▪ Are they native speakers of English? If not, how well they speak English? 97 M.E. Seitova, M.A. Narymbetov ▪ Do teachers tend to follow the textbook closely or do they use the book simply as a resource? ▪ Do teachers play a part in selecting the books they teach from? ▪ Are teachers free to adapt and supplement the book? ▪ Is each student required to buy a book? ▪ What do learners typically expect in a text - book? ▪ Will they use the book in class and at home? ▪ How will they use the book in class? Is it the primary source of classroom activities? ▪ How much are they prepared to pay for a book? On the other hand, the model proposed by McDonough and Shaw (McDonough and Shaw 2003:50) [16] to evaluate ELT materials consists of two stages as “external evaluation” and “internal evaluation”. The initial stage of evaluation is per - formed to get a broader sense of the material organi - zation that the author or publisher explicitly states. When it comes to the area of comparisons, the goal is to introduce in two parts. Part one allows the sections presenting comparisons of the students’ own language and the foreign language to be locat - ed, whereas in part two, sections presenting com - parisons of the students’ own culture and the culture of speakers of the foreign language is to be located and if there is any, opportunities of comparing cul - tures are to be explored. For each part, two yes/no questions are included for rating. Lastly, in rating communities, the goal is to locate areas in the texts requiring the language be - yond the classroom, which is presented in four-yes/ no question items. The model that Rubdy proposes for coursebook evaluation includes three categories of validity, namely, ‘psychological validity’, ‘peda - gogical validity’ and ‘process and content validity’. Psychological validity is associated with learners’ needs, goals and pedagogical requirements while pedagogical validity is about teachers’ skills, abili - ties, theories and beliefs. Process and content valid - ity, on the other hand, is related to the author’s pre - sentation of the content and approach to the teaching and learning. In this model, Rubdy (Rubdy,2003:39) [17] suggests two modes of evaluation as жүктеу/скачать 3,54 Mb. Достарыңызбен бөлісу:
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