Authentic Writing!!

Textbook (Real writing 1)

This textbook is “Real writing with answer 1” which can be suitable to university students who would like to study abroad and learn English as a foreign language in Japan. The purpose of this textbook is to enhance learners’ writing competency in real-life situations such as writing letters, so it can be identified as a task-based textbook. The quality of this book’s appearance is high since it looks attractive. For example, it adopts a large number of illustrations which can be fascinating to students. Also, it is so colourful, so it allows them to feel comfortable to study. Moreover, target students probably have interest in this book as it focuses on real-life situations and they need to develop English competency for studying abroad. In other words, teachers enable them to have motivation to learn English. In addition, the content of this book can be considered as authentic since it is based on real communication. Also, the level of this textbook is fit for target learners. Therefore, it is easy for teachers to use it in a classroom. On the other hand, the question forms are not appropriate for the purpose although the content is authentic. This textbook should concentrate on improving learners’ writing skills. However, there are a significant number of multiple-choice in the question forms. Accordingly, it might be difficult for teachers to enhance and evaluate their writing skills because of the multiple-choice forms. Furthermore, there are not sufficient extras in the textbook. For instance, it does not provide separate teacher’s book and explanation for the answers, so teachers may need excessive preparation for conducting a class with the textbook. To sum up, this textbook has some improvement points such as question forms and extras although it has advantages which are appearance, interest and authenticity. Therefore, it could be an effective material if teachers can solve weakness of this textbook.

                              

References

Palmer, G. 2008, Real writing 1: with answers, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.