Teaching English As A Foreign Language Research Papers (original) (raw)

Introduction English textbooks play a crucial role in education in developing countries. They are often used as the guiding teaching material in the curriculum and effectively contribute to the quality of education (Besser, Stone, & Luan, 1999). Determining suitable teaching materials for the curriculum is crucial to a language education program. However, in the textbook market, it is getting harder to choose an appropriate English textbook for a course (Minoo & Nikan, 2012). Although extensive research in light of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) has been carried out to investigate the language of government-approved English textbooks in schools in Australia and worldwide, the language of international textbooks chosen for teaching specific English skills in universities and language centers in non-English speaking countries has still been under research. With the diversity and availability of English as a foreign language (EFL) textbooks in the book market, a question raised is that what criteria do English language educators and teachers in non-English speaking nations based on to choose EFL texts and textbooks for their students and language teaching curriculum, and how appropriate they are? It is supposed that there are a number of factors that educators and teachers can rely on when choosing EFL textbooks to teach general English to second language learners (L2Ls) such as content orientation, pedagogical principles, text types, and linguistic complexity. However, with reference to the context of teaching EFL in Vietnam, it seems that there are no unified and consistent criteria for education policy makers and educators to choose EFL textbooks for the language teaching curriculum in universities or language centers. It is not uncommon to see that Vietnamese educators and teachers of English choose texts and textbooks for their students based on the book levels proposed by textbook writers. For instance, after students sit in a placement test, depending on the results, they will be placed in classes of different levels including elementary, low intermediate, intermediate, and upper intermediate (Anderson, 2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2003d). Then, educators will choose a series of books consisting of four equivalent levels proposed by the writers as the course textbooks. As a result, students who sit in the elementary class will study the textbook written for elementary level in general. Likewise, the students who sit in intermediate class will study the textbook written for overall intermediate students.