TESL 100 - Unit 6 reflection personal questions


While doing the readings for Unit 6, I had quite a few questions as the textbook brought up ideas that in my educational experience had told me the contrary. I decided to do this post to flush out the questions and ideas as well as giving a place for people who have ideas to add. The first main question or idea, is the idea of teaching from the textbook. According to Brown and Lee, on page 202, they discuss the idea of starting your lesson plan by teaching from the textbook. I have always known that using textbooks can help guide your lesson planning and your units, but the idea of following the textbook and teaching directly from it has never been suggested in my education. I was always told it was a resource and something that you can use to supplement your lessons or a resource in terms of materials to use for texts. When I came across that sentence in the textbook, I felt uncomfortable and not sure how to react. I see it as a similar question to “Should we teach to the test?” I know people who do look at education from this point of view and find that learners tend to miss learning certain skills that could be useful to them when only working on the content that is in the textbook or on the test. I am wondering if this could be different in TESL, compared to a normal classroom.

Brown, D. & Lee H. (2015). Teaching by Principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy. White Plains, NY: Pearson Education, Inc.

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