Education and course books

Education is a basic human right and a significant factor in the development of children, communities, and countries. Opening classroom doors to all children will help break the intergenerational chains of poverty because education is intrinsically linked to all development goals, such as supporting gender empowerment, improving child health and maternal health, reducing hunger, fighting the spread of diseases of poverty, spurring economic growth, building peace, and gaining knowledge from anywhere in the world that became a global village. To gain the international knowledge we need international language, and today everyone recognizes the importance of learning the English language. More people around the world than ever before are studying and learning English because it has become the international language of education, technology, and business, and the ability to speak and write English properly allows people to advance in the professional world. Being able to speak in English also widens one’s horizon in communicating globally, as well as, knowing English will allow us to access to an incredible amount of information which may not be otherwise available. All those who are concerned with teaching and learning English have always expressed their complaints about weakness in the students’ performance. Such complaints are in need of research so as to pinpoint the problems behind teaching and learning English in our schools and finding solutions for these problems. (Khalil and Kattan, 1994).

Course books are a core part of any curriculum as the unique contributors to content learning. They are the most commonly used course materials in transmitting knowledge and skills, and in order to teach English fluently and accurately we seek good textbooks that need to have the following features and functions:

1)      Layout, design and ease to use: what does the course book look like and how it is easy to find your way around it; especially for young learners.

2)      Instructions: it is worthy to have instructions/ rubrics for the given exercises throughout the book.

3)      Methodology: what kind of teaching and learning the material provokes- the methods, techniques and procedures it suggests.

4)      Syllabus: it should agree with the selected language that the students need to learn and the amount of time given for the different language skills, based on the core standards we are following and taking into consideration if it is balanced and appropriate for the students and the given course.

5)      Topics (and content): it should contain a realistic, engaging topics and content. Adding that the material should be culturally appropriate for our learners.

6)      Teacher’s guides and teacher support: the course book needs to have a good clear teacher’s guide to accompany it, especially for novice teachers to help them in deciding their selections through the teaching process.