Extensive Reading Coursebooks in China

Abstract

This article reports on a principle-based evaluation of eight dedicated extensive reading coursebooks published in mainland China and used in many universities across the country. The aim is to determine the extent to which these coursebooks reflect a core set of nine second language acquisition and extensive reading principles. Our analysis shows that while some of the coursebooks contain features that comply with these principles to an extent, the rest exhibit features of traditional intensive reading coursebooks. Most of these coursebooks contain reading materials that are linguistically too demanding and tasks that are cognitively and affectively unappealing. As a result, they are unlikely to achieve their designated purposes.

Keywords

Extensive reading Coursebook evaluation SLA principles Intensive reading L2 proficiency

Introduction

Since the publication of Richard Day and Julian Bamford’s book Extensive Reading in the Second Language Classroom (1998), numerous empirical studies have been conducted to examine the language learning benefits of extensive reading (ER). Most of these studies have now been documented in a specialized ER bibliography on the Extensive Reading Foundation webpage (http://erfoundation.org/wordpress/er-bibliography). Results of these studies generally confirm the beliefs held by many experienced language teachers that ER can have a beneficial impact on learners’ second language (L2) development. L2 learners who read in quantity over a period of time tend to enjoy many cognitive, affective, and linguistic benefits. As Bamford and Day (2004: 1) point out:

Good things happen to students who read a great deal in the foreign language. Research studies show they become better and more confident readers, they write better, their listening and speaking abilities improve, and their vocabularies get richer. In addition, they develop positive attitudes toward and increased motivation to study the new language.

Given the many positive benefits of ER, L2 scholars, including ELT experts (e.g. Macalister, 2014; Maley, 2005, 2008), L2 reading specialists (e.g. Day and Bamford, 1998; Grabe, 2009; Nuttall, 2005), coursebook researchers (e.g. Brown, 2009; Tomlinson and Masuhara, 2013), and SLA researchers (e.g. Ellis, 2005; Nation, 2007) give ER a respectable place in language teaching. Indeed, Maley goes so far as to suggest that ER is perhaps ‘the single most important way to improve language proficiency’ (2005: 354).

The theoretical underpinnings of ER can be traced back to Krashen’s comprehensible input hypothesis (Krashen, 2009). This hypothesis suggests that learners need plentiful language input in order to learn a language. Not all input is useful however; only that which learners comprehend can lead to acquisition. In addition, this input will have to be meaningful to learners and available in a large quantity. Although not all L2 researchers agree with Krashen’s comprehensible input hypothesis in its entirety, no one disagrees that input is a key factor in language learning, especially in contexts where language input is often lacking. Support for Krashen’s claim about the importance of comprehensible input can be found in the recent writings of renowned L2 researchers (e.g. Ellis, 2005; Nation, 2007). Working independently, they each came up with a set of pedagogical principles for L2 teaching which include the provision of large amounts of comprehensible language. Nation’s (2007: 9) first two principles, for example, stress the key role of ER in language instruction:

Principle 1: Provide and organise large amounts of comprehensible input through both listening and reading.

Principle 2: Boost learning through comprehensible input by adding a deliberate element.

However, despite strong empirical evidence for the benefits of ER and recommendations by ELT experts that ER be made an important part of a language programme, it has not always been fully embraced by teachers. While many believe that ER is important, there are some practical concerns that often hinder the full adoption of ER in the classroom. Some of these concerns are summarized below (Brown, 2009; Day and Bamford, 2002; Jacobs and Farrell, 2012; Maley, 2008; Renandya, 2007; Renandya and Jacobs, 2002):

The impact of ER is not immediate. It may take up to one year to see tangible effects on learners’ language development (Renandya, 2007). Since teachers are often under pressure to produce tangible results of their teaching, they tend to avoid projects that have delayed impact on learning.

ER means that students read silently and independently for a period of time without interruption. When students read silently, some teachers may feel uncomfortable because they often view teaching as involving talking to students and explaining language points. As Day and Bamford (1998) rightly point out, being silent during a reading lesson is something that teachers are not accustomed to.

The last and perhaps the most important reservation that stakeholders have about ER has to do with the issue of legitimacy. Students doing independent silent reading in class are often ‘not perceived as a class learning, let alone being taught, both by the students themselves and the school administration’ (Prowse, 2002: 144). Because of this, ER is often perceived as an optional extra (Yu, 1993) and therefore seen as playing a peripheral role.

The last point above deserves elaboration. If we are interested in encouraging a wider adoption of ER in language programmes, it has to be perceived as a legitimate activity. Unless teachers and administrators are convinced that ER is a credible and legitimate learning activity, not many schools will implement ER. One way to overcome the issue of legitimacy would be to integrate ER into coursebooks. Coursebooks, according to Brown, can provide legitimacy and credibility because they are often seen as ‘powerful legitimizing tools, for teachers, for learners, and for institutions’ (2009: 240).

We find the idea of incorporating ER into coursebooks intriguing and deserving further exploration. We agree with Brown (2009) that coursebooks can be a powerful and effective vehicle for promoting ER’s wider adoption in schools. As far as we know, there are some commercially available coursebooks that attempt to incorporate ER. Brown (2009), for example, discussed several ELT coursebooks that included ER ideas, which he categorized into two types. The first type included those that made casual mention of ER with suggestions that students read easy, graded materials in their spare time but without actually providing specific titles. The second type included actual extracts or complete stories from graded readers, thus providing students with first-hand experience to enjoy reading easy and interesting materials. Brown, however, did not mention any coursebooks that were specifically designed to teach ER in the classroom, i.e. ones that contained easy and interesting materials and ER-friendly post-reading tasks and activities.

We were therefore excited when we came across dedicated ER coursebooks for use with undergraduate EFL students in China. We were curious to find out what these coursebooks look like and also wondered if they are written in ways that reflect current SLA and/or ER principles. This paper therefore aims to evaluate the overall quality of several dedicated ER coursebooks published and used in many universities in China and identify those that come close to what we think an ‘ideal’ ER coursebook should contain.

We must, however, mention that ER coursebooks are no replacement for a full-fledged ER programme, where students do large amounts of self-selected reading. It is not realistic to expect coursebooks to provide this type of reading because ‘the resulting books would be large ungainly things’ (Brown, 2009: 241) and the cost of producing these books would be prohibitively high. ER coursebooks, however, can and should introduce students to the joys of reading by enabling them to read short and easy reading materials and by encouraging them to do further ER in their own time. It is with this goal in mind that we set out to evaluate a number of ER coursebooks produced for university students in China.

We describe below the coursebooks that we selected from a range of textbooks that we managed to get hold of. This is then followed by a description of the principles that we used for evaluating these coursebooks.

The ER Coursebooks

In the Chinese EFL context, reading instruction holds a unique and dominant place in college English teaching. Among the five macro language skills (i.e. listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translation) specified by China’s Advisory Committee on Foreign Language Education in Higher Education, only reading is offered as a compulsory degree course for both undergraduate English majors and non-majors, whereas other skill-based courses are either optional or required only for English majors. Reading instruction is typically provided in two separate courses in Chinese universities: intensive reading and extensive reading. Given the unique importance of reading instruction and our aforementioned interest in the incorporation of ER into coursebooks in China, we decided to examine officially designated ER materials for the second type of reading instruction.

We began by casting our net wide on the dozens of ER coursebooks available in the market. We then screened these coursebooks systematically according to a set of selection criteria we agreed on. These criteria are summarized below:

We would only consider ER coursebooks published by highly reputable publishers (e.g. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press; Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press) and/or those whose editors-in-chief are well-known scholars (e.g. Hu Zhuanglin and Dai Weidong). The reason is simple: such coursebooks are likely to have a larger market share and, consequently, may exert a great influence on how ER is implemented in Chinese universities.

The ER coursebooks selected for further analysis should include those written for both English majors and non-English majors. Despite differences in their English proficiency and in instructional and assessment requirements for these two groups of students, we believe that ER coursebooks produced for them should be subjected to an evaluation by the same fundamental learning principles.

Like graded readers, English coursebooks designed for undergraduates in China are also graded. Usually, an ER coursebook set consists of four books, with each one intended for use in a semester of 18 teaching weeks. Thus, Books 1 and 2 are for the two semesters of the freshman year, whereas Books 3 and 4 are for the two semesters of the sophomore year. As students’ English proficiency and reading competence grow, their ER needs are also likely to change. Consequently, we needed to sample ER coursebooks intended for use at different year levels so that we could examine examine the extent to which the ER coursebooks made deliberate attempts to cater to students’ developing command of English. In view of the recognised importance of ER to lower-proficiency stages, we decided to focus on Book 1 or Book 3 of each shortlisted coursebook set.

The application of the above criteria led us to settle on eight ER coursebooks for undergraduate students. Table 1 presents general information about these sampled coursebooks. We decided to sample three units from each chosen coursebook for detailed analysis. These units, we believe, would yield a representative sample of the ER materials in each coursebook. If a coursebook had no more than 10 units, units 3, 5, and 7 were selected. If there were more than 10 units, units 3, 7, and 11 were chosen. In total, 24 units were sampled from the eight coursebooks for evaluation. These units were divided among us equally so that each unit would be evaluated by two of us independently.

Table 1.

The Extensive Reading Coursebooks.

Label	Book title	Edition	Year	Level	Editor-in-chief	Writer	Target Users	Publisher
Coursebook A	Extensive Reading	1^st	2008	1	Rong Linhai	Wu Jinghong and Chen Jing	Non-English majors	Southeast University Press
Coursebook B	Insights for Today	2^nd	2010	1	Wang Jianfang	Zhou Jie	Non-English majors	Higher Education Press
Coursebook C	Extensive Reading	1^st	2011	1	Huang Yuanshen and Yu Sumei	Liu Naiyin	English majors	Higher Education Press
Coursebook D	English Extensive Reading	2^nd	2012	1	Hu Zhuanglin	Feng Yihan and Jiang Yajun	English majors	Peking University Press
Coursebook E	Extensive Reading	2^nd	2011	3	Zheng Shutang	Wu Yong and Hu Kaibao	Non-English majors	Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press
Coursebook F	Extensive Reading	3^rd	2011	3	Dong Yafen	Zhang Yanqiu	Non-English majors	Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press
Coursebook G	Reading Course	Rev. ed.	2013	3	Dai Weidong	Wang Shouren and Yao Yuan	English majors	Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press
Coursebook H	Reading to Develop Your Ideas	2^nd	2013	3	Dai Weidong	Jiang Jingyi	English majors	Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press

All the reading texts in each unit were word-processed and then submitted to a Flesch-Kincaid readability analysis in Microsoft Word and a vocabulary frequency analysis with VP-Compleat (http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/comp/), an online vocabulary profiler that has been used widely for teaching and research purposes. The resultant readability indices were averaged over the three units of each coursebook to derive combined statistics. The numbers of word tokens from different frequency levels identified in the vocabulary frequency analysis were summed over the three units in each coursebook, and the percentages of word tokens beyond the first 4,000 most frequent words were computed. The readability indices and vocabulary frequency information complemented our comprehensibility judgments based on a close reading of the texts.

Principles for Evaluating the Coursebooks

Following a selective review of the literature, we identified a set of principles from a number of published sources. We focused in particular on L2 learning principles suggested by SLA researchers (e.g. Ellis, 2005), ELT specialists (e.g. Nation, 2007; Nation and Macalister, 2010; Tomlinson, 2012), and L2 reading experts (e.g. Day and Bamford, 2002; Nuttall, 2005; Williams, 1986). We then narrowed them down to principles that could be used to help us evaluate ER coursebooks. The resulting set of nine principles is listed below:

The coursebook provides interesting and comprehensible reading materials. As Williams writes, ‘In the absence of interesting texts, very little is possible’ (1986: 42). In addition to being interesting, these texts should also be relatively easy for students to understand (Krashen, 2009). Ideally, students should know about 98% (or more) of the words in the reading passages (Hu and Nation, 2000).

The coursebook provides plenty reading materials. Quantity is one of the key features of ER because the language learning benefits of ER begin to emerge only when students read in quantity (Jacobs and Farrell, 2012). Although some ER researchers suggest ‘a book a week’ (Day and Bamford, 2002) for students to obtain the benefits of ER, this desirable target would need to be adjusted when applied to coursebooks.

The coursebook contains tasks and activities designed to help develop students’ fluency in reading. Fluent reading is a result of fast and automatic processing (Hu, 2013). Research shows that unless students have developed some automaticity in processing textual information, they will have difficulty building a coherent understanding of the text (Grabe, 2009). Tasks that require students to engage in repeated reading of the same material, and activities that encourage students to read faster, for example, can help students achieve fluency in reading (Macalister, 2010). Care, however, should be taken so that the fluency activities do not take away students’ reading enjoyment.

The coursebook contains authentic texts and tasks. Texts and tasks of an authentic nature involve natural language and are pragmatically relevant (Rilling and Dantas-Whitney, 2009). The notion of authenticity is controversial; some people define authenticity in terms of who produces the text and/or the purpose for which the text is produced. For the purpose of our paper, we adopt Tomlinson’s definition of authentic text and task, as follows: ‘an authentic text is one which is produced in order to communicate rather than to teach, and an authentic task is one which involves the learners in communication in order to achieve an outcome, rather than practice the language’ (2012: 162).

The coursebook contains multimodal texts. Such texts convey meanings through a combination of different semiotic modes – verbal, audio, and visual (Lankshear and Knobel, 2011). With the advances of information technology, reading materials in the real world have become increasingly multimodal in nature. Thus, effective comprehension of such materials requires skills in simultaneous and complementary processing of information presented in multiple modes (Smolin and Lawless, 2003).

The coursebook contains texts and tasks that are cognitively and affectively engaging (Tomlinson, 2003). Coursebooks often include texts and tasks that are bland and unappealing, and are hence unlikely unlikely to lead to deeper learning. For, as Tomlinson rightly points out, ‘without affective and cognitive engagement there is little possibility of deep processing … and therefore little hope of enduring acquisition’ (2012: 164).

The coursebook provides texts that reflect how English is used in the world today. Because of the status of English as an international language, coursebooks should include texts written by both native and non-native speakers of English (Hu and Mckay, 2014). This will sensitize students to the different varieties of English used by a wide range of people in the world today.

The coursebook provides opportunity for learners to develop autonomy (Day and Bamford, 1998). Carrell and Eisterhold argue that an ultimate goal of L2 reading programs is ‘to develop independent readers outside the EFL/ESL classroom, readers whose purpose in learning to read in English as a foreign or second language is to learn from the texts they read’ (1983: 569). ER can be a natural and effective way of cultivating independent readers and fostering learner autonomy (Farrell and Jacobs, 2010; Maley, 2008).

The coursebook contains reading materials of various topics and text types (Maley, 2008). The availability of a variety of reading materials is key to encouraging students to read extensively. As our students are likely to have diverse interests in and purposes for reading, coursebooks should strive to provide for students’ varied needs (Day and Bamford, 2002).

The Evaluation of the Coursebooks

We present below our evaluation of each of the eight coursebooks using the nine principles we described above. We turned each principle into a question and then discussed the extent to which the contents of the coursebooks fit this principle. Following Tomlinson and Masuhara (2013), we present the findings in table form below. Each coursebook is given a score (1=little, 2=somewhat, 3=much) showing the extent a principle is reflected, followed by a brief commentary.

Principle 1.

To What Extent Do the Coursebooks Contain Interesting and Comprehensible Materials?

Coursebook	Score	Comment
Coursebook A	1	Some of the texts are quite interesting (e.g. a text about a famous basketball player, Yao Ming), but the majority are not. It is hard to imagine college students appreciating a densely written text on the organizational structure of a company that contains complex sentences and unfamiliar vocabulary. The readability analysis confirmed our assessment of the difficulty level of the texts: Reading Ease Score = 48.7; Grade Level Score = 11. Based on our experience working with college students in China, texts with a Reading Ease Score of 70 or above and a Grade Level Score of 5 or below are linguistically more manageable.
Coursebook B	1	Overall, this coursebook looks more like an intensive reading, rather than, ER coursebook. The texts are short and contain many low-frequency words. Not surprisingly, the activities that follow these texts are designed to practice language rather than to enhance students’ comprehension. The readability analysis yielded the following results: a Reading Ease Score of 53.3; a Grade Level Score of 10.6; hence, the texts are set at the students’ frustration level.
Coursebook C	3	The texts are mostly narratives, generally interesting, and quite easy to understand. There are only a few low-frequency words (e.g. harness) and the meanings of these words are explained in Mandarin. The comprehensibility level of the text is quite high (Reading Ease Score = 83; Grade Level Score = 5).
Coursebook D	1	The texts are neither interesting nor comprehensible. The first two units are life stories of western writers such as Aldous Huxley and Henry David Thoreau, which some literature major students might find interesting, but probably not EFL students. In addition, the passages contain too many low-frequency words such as phantom and wiles. The readability analysis gave us a Reading Ease Score of 57 and a Grade Level Score of 9.6.
Coursebook E	2	The texts are on interesting but academic topics, e.g. high-stakes tests and the invention of the World Wide Web. On average, the sampled texts have 17.2 words per sentence, with a Reading Ease Score of 60.5 and a Grade Level Score of 8.9. The vocabulary frequency analysis revealed that about 7.9% of the word tokens are from the fifth thousand and lower-frequency word levels. These statistics indicate that the texts are linguistically challenging. Although a glossary is provided, this can affect students’ reading enjoyment.
Coursebook F	3	Most of the topics (e.g. study methods and a love story in an air and space museum) appeal to college students. The readability indices (i.e. Reading Ease = 78.2; Grade Level = 5.7) indicate that the texts are highly comprehensible. The comprehensibility of the texts is further enhanced by marginal Chinese glossaries (about 30 words glossed for each text) and English endnotes on idiomatic expressions and cultural background.
Coursebook G	1	This coursebook contains the linguistically most difficult texts, as indicated by the readability statistics (Reading Ease = 48.3; Grade Level = 11.23) and the vocabulary frequency analysis (about 8% of the word tokens not among the first 4,000 most frequent words). Comprehension is made more challenging by the absence of marginal glossaries of new/difficult words in the texts.
Coursebook H	2	In general, the texts are interesting, covering topics such as (un)happy marriages, dating online, friendship and love, and television addiction. They are also linguistically manageable, as can be seen in the readability indices (Reading Ease = 65.7; Grade Level = 7.2). Although about 7% of the word tokens are from the fifth thousand and lower-frequency word levels, these words are bolded in text and glossed in simple English.

Principle 2.

To What Extent Do the Coursebooks Provide Large Amounts of Reading Materials?

Coursebook	Score	Evaluation
Coursebook A	2	The coursebook contains reading passages of various lengths. The book has 15 units and each contains about 2,000 words worth of texts. Altogether, the total number of words is about 31,500.
Coursebook B	1	The book contains short reading texts, very much like those found in intensive reading coursebooks. There are six units, each of which consists of four short texts of around 450 words. Altogether, the book contains about 11,000 words worth of reading passages.
Coursebook C	3	It contains longer reading passages for ER and shorter passages for speed reading. Altogether, the 15-unit coursebook contains 75 reading passages of around 65,000 words, thus making it the book with the second largest number of words after Coursebook G.
Coursebook D	2	The coursebook has 12 units, and each unit contains two relatively long and difficult reading passages. Each reading text is about 1,700 words. The three sampled units contain slightly over 10,000 words. Altogether, the book contains some 40,000 words worth of reading texts.
Coursebook E	1	The coursebook has 10 units, and each unit consists of three 1,000-word texts. The three sampled units contain slightly over 9,000 words. Altogether, the book has about 30,000 words worth of reading passages.
Coursebook F	2	Each of the 10 units in this book has three fairly long texts, and each text is about 1,500 words long. The nine texts in the three sampled units amount to about 13,100 words. The whole book has some 45,000 words worth of reading texts.
Coursebook G	3	This 18-unit coursebook has the largest amount of reading (about 68,000 words worth of reading texts). Each unit contains two longer passages of about 1,250 words each and 5 short passages forming a connected text of about 1,200 words.
Coursebook H	3	Each of the eight units in this coursebook has four texts of varying lengths, ranging from 342 to 1,549 words, and the 32 texts are about 27,000 words. In addition, the interactive CD-ROM accompanying the coursebook provides a background passage and four thematic texts for each unit, adding up to over 33,000 words.

Principle 3.

To What Extent Do the Coursebooks Provide Texts and Tasks that Promote Reading Fluency?

Coursebook	Score	Evaluation
Coursebook A	1	There are shorter texts of about 500 words long, designed to help students read faster and more fluently. Unfortunately, the texts contain too many unfamiliar words (e.g. promiscuity and vulnerable) which defeat the purpose of giving students fluency practice.
Coursebook B	1	The coursebook makes no attempt to give students practice in fluency development. The main texts, while short, contain too many difficult words.
Coursebook C	3	Each unit provides two short and easy texts for speed reading practice. After reading the text, students are asked to respond to general comprehension questions. Overall, this coursebook provides sufficient and systematic exercises to develop automaticity, a key factor in fluent reading (Macalister, 2010).
Coursebook D	1	Just like Cousebooks A and B, this one has no reading fluency tasks and activities. There is no deliberate attempt to engage students in repeated reading of the texts or reading with a faster speed.
Coursebook E	2	The preface to the coursebook states that it was designed to enhance fluency in reading, and indeed students are asked to scan parts of a text (usually, the opening and closing paragraphs) to preview it. This fluency-building intention, however, is frustrated by the syntactic complexity of the texts, the need to pause frequently to deal with lexical difficulties, and the post-reading tasks requiring students to attend to details.
Coursebook F	1	There is little explicit effort to develop students’ reading fluency. The reading tasks either require close attention to the reading passages (e.g. true-or-false and multiple-choice questions) or focus on language work (e.g. translation exercises).
Coursebook G	3	This is one of the two coursebooks that deliberately attempt to develop reading fluency. Each unit also contains five short, relatively easy passages that engage students in fast reading. The number of questions however could be reduced so that time can be better spent on practicing fast reading.
Coursebook H	1	Although many texts in the coursebook and its accompanying CD-ROM are short and linguistically manageable for second-year English majors, there are no explicitly designated speed reading tasks to foster automatic reading processes.

Principle 4.

To What Extent Do the Coursebooks Provide Authentic Texts and Tasks?

Coursebook	Score	Evaluation
Coursebook A	1	The reading passages seem to be adapted from various sources and look quite authentic. The tasks, however, are quite traditional and are designed to check comprehension and provide language practice. There is little attempt to engage students to meaningfully explore the contents of the reading passages.
Coursebook B	1	Generally the reading passages are abridged versions of the original texts and contain interesting information (e.g. family life, healthy living). The tasks, however, are not authentic and consist mainly of comprehension exercises (in true-false and multiple choice formats) and vocabulary building activities.
Coursebook C	2	The reading passages were adapted from original sources (e.g. The Call of the Wild by Jack London) and are cognitively and affectively engaging. The tasks provide students with traditional comprehension activities and vocabulary building exercises. The discussion questions are quite interesting and could potentially encourage students to engage meaningfully with the contents of the text.
Coursebook D	1	Just like the other coursebooks, the reading passages are adapted authentic texts, but are not particularly interesting as the contents are too western-oriented and contain too many unfamiliar cultural references and low-frequency words. The tasks were designed to provide language and comprehension practice.
Coursebook E	2	The sampled passages are abridged authentic texts. For example, Patricia Kean’s article ‘Hopping to Harvard’ published in 2000 on a news site has been shortened by two-fifths. The majority of the reading tasks, however, are not authentic and consist of multiple-choice comprehension questions and translation exercises.
Coursebook F	1	Most texts were adapted – some (e.g. ‘Detour to Romance’) extensively and others (e.g. ‘The Gift of Understanding’) minimally – from authentic materials, mostly dated and published in the 1920s – 1940s. The majority of the reading tasks (e.g. multiple-choice comprehension questions, translation and vocabulary exercises) do not involve students in genuine communication.
Coursebook G	2	Almost all the texts were adapted from authentic materials; for example, a main text in the unit on language is an extract from Ronald Wardhaugh’s well-known book Introduction to Linguistics. It is hard to call the multiple-choice reading questions and pre-/post-reading vocabulary work authentic reading tasks, though most of the post-reading discussion questions invite students to share their background knowledge and engage them in meaningful reflection.
Coursebook H	2	The texts were adapted from various sources, e.g. literary works, newspaper/magazine articles, online postings, and reading/writing coursebooks published in the 1990s-2000s. Most of the reading tasks are meaningful. For example, the group discussion questions encourage students to share their relevant knowledge and experiences; and the post-reading activities invite them to make meaningful connections.

Principle 5.

To What Extent Do the Coursebooks Promote Multimodal Literacies by Providing Multimodal Texts and Tasks?

Coursebook	Score	Evaluation
Coursebook A	1	This book contains texts with very few pictorial illustrations. There is a picture of the Statue of Liberty on the top left hand corner of each unit, but it has no connection at all with the contents or activities in the unit.
Coursebook B	2	Each reading passage is accompanied by a relevant picture and/or diagram. The text entitled ‘Oil as an Important World Resource’ is accompanied by a large and informative diagram describing the drilling and refining process.
Coursebook C	1	Some pictures accompany the reading passages but these serve mostly as decorations and do not form an integral meaning with the text. One can read the text without referring to these pictures.
Coursebook D	1	Just like Coursebooks A and C, this coursebook has very few pictures, which do not seem to serve any useful purposes.
Coursebook E	1	There are no accompanying visuals or audio supports that are thematically related to the texts. The only non-linear textual feature found in the coursebook is its use of superscript numbers pointing students to the marginal glossaries.
Coursebook F	2	Each text is accompanied by one thematically related drawing or photo. For example, a drawing of a small boy in a candy shop is embedded in the text ‘The Gift of Understanding’, which relates an unforgettable experience in a candy shop of penny treasures.
Coursebook G	1	A pictorial illustration of the unit theme appears on the opening page of each unit. For example, a line drawing of three businessmen bowing to each other starts the unit on body language. A thumbnail drawing of a girl and boy reading together also prefaces each reading task or text. There is no systematic attempt to foster multiliteracies.
Coursebook H	3	Each unit opens with a large high-definition photo that is centrally related to the unit theme. Visual supports (e.g. movie posters and photos of TV celebrities) are also available for the background passages found in the interactive CD-ROM accompanying the coursebook. Furthermore, the CD-ROM provides voice-overs for the quotations, instructions, printed texts, and discussion questions. Hyperlinks and rolling texts are also available in the CD-ROM materials.

Principle 6.

To What Extent Do the Coursebooks Promote Deeper Learning by Providing Cognitively and Affectively Engaging Texts and Tasks?

Coursebook	Score	Evaluation
Coursebook A	1	The texts are mostly of the informational types, which present information in a rather bland manner. The topics are not particularly appealing to young college adults, either. In the absence of interesting texts, it is not easy to engage students in meaningful discussion about the contents.
Coursebook B	1	Some of the texts are rather appealing for EFL college students, but the general tone of the texts is a bit serious. One of the reading passages, for example, discusses in detail how petroleum is produced. One wonders what sort of emotional connection one can make with this process.
Coursebook C	2	The reading passages are quite interesting and could potentially engage the students in deeper processing. The mostly narrative texts contain many dialogues, which make the story come alive and enable the readers to make meaningful
		connections with the characters. There is some attempt to make the tasks appealing (e.g. open-ended discussion questions), but the majority are intended for language practice.
Coursebook D	1	The writers could not have made worse choices of the reading passages. Not only are they linguistically too demanding, but the contents are also unappealing. The tasks are equally unappealing and were designed to test students’ comprehension and give them vocabulary exercises.
Coursebook E	1	The texts are cognitively and affectively engaging to young adults. For example, one text is about J.K. Rowling reading her unfinished book to a dying girl; another text narrates how a critical incident in the author’s life has enabled her to understand the true spirit of thanksgiving. However, most reading tasks (e.g. translation and vocabulary exercises) are rather unappealing.
Coursebook F	1	There are some highly engaging literary texts, e.g. a love story that defeats the laws of probability and a Reader’s Digest short story about the gift of understanding. There are also interesting informational texts that can engage readers cognitively. The reading tasks, however, are rather dull and unappealing.
Coursebook G	2	Some topics are rather dull, but others (e.g. nonverbal communication) are cognitively engaging and informative. Several topics (e.g. crosscultural communication and evaluating information on the Internet) also cater to college students’ learning needs. There is some effort to encourage critical thinking through reflective discussions.
Coursebook H	3	Most of the texts can be characterized as ‘human interest’ readings that centre on people, together with their achievements and failings. Such texts invite students to contemplate human conditions and promote a positive lifestyle. Although some of the reading tasks (e.g. paraphrasing sentences from a text and vocabulary exercises) are unappealing, other reading tasks are more engaging. For instance, the crossword puzzles add a game element to vocabulary learning; the collaborative reading and debate activities engage them in critical thinking and discussion.

Principle 7.

To What Extent Do the Coursebooks Promote English as an International Language (EIL) Ideas?

Coursebook	Score	Evaluation
Coursebook A	1	Except for one text that talks about Yao Ming, the rest are about people from Inner-Circle countries (e.g. Douglas Ivester – former CEO of Coca-Cola). In addition, there are no instances of texts written by non-native speakers of English.
Coursebook B	1	This coursebook is also low on the EIL dimension. Both the texts and the pictorial illustrations largely reflect the culture of native English speaking people.
Coursebook C	1	Except for one text that discusses international marriage, the rest of the stories, while interesting, centre around traditional western cultures and famous writers such as William Shakespeare and Jennifer Basset.
Coursebook D	1	EIL ideas are hardly found in this coursebook. The contents of the reading texts are drawn wholly from western cultures (e.g. autobiography of Virginia Woolf), so much so that the coursebook writers have to provide several pages of cultural notes.
Course book E	1	The majority of the texts focus on topics, places, and people related to Anglo-American societies, e.g. SAT and ACT tests. Of the nine sampled texts, only one is about non-Anglo-American people. Notably, issues related to non-native varieties of English are never broached, let alone a text written in such a variety.
Coursebook F	1	The coursebook focuses predominantly on topics, people, places and events in native English-speaking contexts, especially USA (e.g. Richard Nixon). Only a very small number of texts are about other contexts (e.g. Edgar Snow’s visit to China in 1929). All texts appear to have been authored by native speakers of English. No attention is given to cross cultural communication in English as a lingua franca.
Coursebook G	2	Unlike the other coursebooks, this one presents people, places, events, and artefacts from many cultures. There is a unit on body language discussing gestures in different cultures, and a unit on crosscultural (mis)communication in different cultures. There are, however, no instances of texts that exemplify how English is used in EIL contexts.
Coursebook H	1	Of the 32 texts in the coursebook, the settings for 26 can be unambiguously identified, and all of them are situated in USA! Virtually all the texts were written by native speakers of English, and EIL ideas and issues are completely absent from the book.

Principle 8.

To What Extent Do the Coursebooks Promote Learner Autonomy?

Coursebook	Score	Evaluation
Coursebook A	1	No additional or supplementary readings are provided in the coursebook. Neither does the coursebook include tasks that encourage further independent reading.
Coursebook B	1	The coursebook makes no attempt to promote independent, self-selected reading outside the classroom.
Coursebook C	1	There is no deliberate attempt to provide additional readings or refer students to online materials that they can read outside the classroom.
Coursebook D	2	This is one of the few coursebooks that encourage students to do independent reading on their own by providing links that lead to websites that contain related reading materials. The coursebook writers, however, do not provide specific websites for students to explore.
Coursebook E	1	There is little effort to promote learner autonomy. Although the coursebook writers state that students should be encouraged to make self-study plans, none of the reading tasks appears to lend itself to such a goal. Notably, none of the tasks invites students to do ER outside the classroom.
Coursebook F	1	The coursebook writers stress the need to motivate students to self-study outside of class, but none of the tasks is devoted to fostering autonomous learning.
Coursebook G	2	The third text in each unit, thematically related to the other texts in the same unit, is explicitly designated for self-study by students outside the classroom. The coursebook, however, could do more to foster learner autonomy by encouraging students to find and read additional materials on the Internet.
Coursebook H	3	The coursebook requires students to read all four main texts in each unit on their own and fosters their interest in reading by asking them to read thematically related articles they self-select in the library and on the Internet. Four 90-minute self-assessment tests of reading comprehension and vocabulary learning are provided in the interactive CD-ROM to help students integrate their comprehension.

Principle 9.

To What Extent Do the Coursebooks Provide Varied Materials?

Coursebook	Score	Evaluation
Coursebook A	1	There is not much variety in terms of text types. Most of the reading passages are informational texts, although they cover a range of topics. Information in the texts is presented mostly in paragraph form, except for a few reading passages that include interviews (e.g. interview with Yao Ming). The tasks that follow the reading passages are largely of the same types.
Coursebook B	1	The course contains mostly informational texts, written in essay format and having typical language features that characterize information reports (e.g. mostly the present tenses, with some instances of the past tense), thus giving a rather restricted range of language features. The topics (e.g. technology, diet, and family life) are quite varied and rather interesting but the tasks lack variety.
Coursebook C	2	The course contains a wide variety of texts, including stories, recounts and information reports, and covers a wide range of topics. The reading passages exemplify a wide range of language features such as different sentence structures (e.g. simple and complex sentences, question types, a range of tenses, etc.). The tasks, however, are quite monotonous.
Coursebook D	1	The coursebook contains reading passages that cover a range of topics, but they are mostly informational texts. Narratives, personal recounts, anecdotes, and other genres are conspicuously absent. The tasks lack variety and are largely geared towards providing language practice.
Coursebook E	1	The texts cover different topics. There is a reasonable variety of text types: informational texts, expository essays, narratives, and biographies (e.g. Maurice R. Hilleman and Arnold Schwarzenegger). However, the reading tasks are monotonous and presented in the identical format.
Coursebook F	2	There is a diversity of topics (ranging from study methods for college students to an American father overcoming his psychological crisis as a cancer patient) and genres (e.g. short stories and interviews). There is, however, a general preference for fictional texts at the expense of non-fictional writing. The tasks are fairly standard but lack variety.
Coursebook G	1	The topics covered are wide-ranging, but there is a marked preference for informational and expository texts at the expense of literary and other genres. The reading tasks are monotonous.
Coursebook H	3	This coursebook, together with the accompanying CD- ROM, has a great number of texts. There is also a more balanced representation of different genres. Furthermore, it provides a greater variety of individual and group reading tasks – crossword puzzles, comprehension checks, library/online research, debate, and group discussion.

Conclusion

Our aim was to find out whether the ER coursebooks we selected reflect a set of SLA-based principles. Our analysis shows that not all of the coursebooks come close to what an ER coursebook should contain. Only three of the eight coursebooks have received fairly high scores on the nine evaluation criteria. Coursebooks H has received the highest score (21 out of a maximum of 27), followed by Coursebooks C (18) and G (17). The writers of these coursebooks seemed to be aware of the key features that distinguish extensive from intensive reading. They also made a deliberate attempt to include these features in the design of their coursebooks.

We note, however, that although Coursebook G performed quite well overall, it scored poorly on our first criterion, i.e. comprehensibility. In fact, our readability analysis shows that the reading passages in Coursebook G are linguistically the most demanding. We feel that a major rewrite of the reading passages is in order so that they contain shorter, less complex sentences and fewer low-frequency words.

Upon closer inspection, we have also found that in general the books written for second-year students contain more comprehensible reading passages than those for first-year students. Also, the books written for English major students tend to be more comprehensible than those intended for non-English major students. As first-year, non-English major students generally possess lower proficiency in English, they should be exposed to material that more closely matches their linguistic competence and language learning experience. Research shows that when students understand what they read, they tend to enjoy reading and become more motivated to do more reading on their own (Day and Bamford, 1998; Nuttall, 2005). This then is one area of concern that ER coursebook writers should take note of.

Except for the three coursebooks mentioned above (C, G and H), the rest score quite low on the nine criteria. They contain reading passages and tasks that look more like those found in traditional intensive reading coursebooks, i.e. short and demanding texts that are specifically selected to teach reading comprehension skills or strategies and provide students with language practice. Thus, it would seem that major revisions would be needed before they could be legitimately called ER coursebooks. Such revisions would include adding longer reading passages that are not only varied in terms of contents, language and text types, but also linguistically, cognitively and affectively appropriate for the target students. The post-reading tasks would also need to be revised so that they allow students to interact with the texts in ways that are cognitively and emotionally meaningful. We believe that tasks that engage students in personally meaningful ways would motivate them to do self-selected reading outside the classroom in their own free time.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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