Critical assessing and adapting a course book

• Autor(a) principal: Saraiva, Sandra Marina Andrade
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/22033
• topic: Course book appraisal; Language acquisition; Mentally engaging activities; Affective engagement; Atividades mentalmente envolventes; Envolvimento afetivo; Avaliação do livro; Aquisição de uma língua; Domínio/Área Científica::Humanidades::Línguas e Literaturas

This study tries to perceive whether mentally engaging activities, which provide opportunities for active use of language, promote affective engagement (i.e. fun and enjoyment) and help to create conditions for the acquisition of English. It took place from September to December 2016 and involved a group of twenty-five grade four students and their course book. In order to choose which activities I ought to use in my class for my study, I firstly did an appraisal of the course book activities to perceive if they needed to be adapted or supplemented, with a view to answering my research questions. I used different types of approaches that allowed students to work independently, in pairs and in groups. Data collection tools included questionnaires, oral follow-up and a teacher diary. Taking into account the findings of this research I learned that I need to consider the involvement and affective engagement of learning when designing activities. Both are very important for English language acquisition. I believe this study might be helpful to other teachers as it gives further understanding on how to approach the English language to improve teaching and increase the students’ interest and motivation. It is also important for teachers, in general, to be actively engaged in the process of a better understanding about their own classroom context and, whenever needed, to make informed decisions for development or change in practices.