TESL 0170 - Assignment #3

Real Talk 2 - Authentic English in Context

Throughout my experience teaching ESL to adults, I interacted with a number of strong resources to help with instructing. The resource I chose to discuss is Baker and Tanka’s Real Talk 2 - Authentic English in Context, a textbook and audio recording set that my sponsor instructor uses to plan and organise lessons. This textbook focuses on using authentic situations to help learners learn to communicate through speaking and listening and the audio files provide examples of different types of conversational situations. The textbook was published 2007. 

Throughout my interactions with this resource, I realized it provides many serious benefits to the planning and organizing of lessons for ESL learners, however it faces some drawbacks as a result of its age and the rapid change in vocabulary that is present in contemporary society.  Despite some of its drawbacks, the ease of use, benefits for lesson planning, and learning takeaways make this a useful resource for teaching ESL. I regularly used this resource to plan lessons that I taught throughout my practicum.

Overall, the textbook is very easy to follow for both learners and instructors. The lessons are easy to follow and the affiliated audio recordings help support learners abilities to listen and understand English.  These resources are easy to use in conjunction and help the textbook to provide a better all-around lesson for the learners.

As an instructor, the textbook is extremely easy to follow. It has many written activities which can be helpful, however the course being conversational requires the exercises and activities be modified. The textbook focuses a great deal on vocabulary which can be very beneficial for the learners. For all of the listening activities, the scripts can be found in the back of the textbook. This gives learners the opportunity to both listen to the conversation and see it written down which can help further their understanding.

The textbook is very dated and some of the vocabulary is not relevant to learners today. Using words like “ ‘zine, Y2K, and yuppie” will not be relevant for learners as those words are not common today. The book is not inviting for learners and the pages are very densely worded. This could make the textbook difficult for some learners to follow and may deter some learners. 

Despite these drawbacks, the book gives some great suggestions that helped me to better plan lessons. One thing I learned from using this resource is the benefit of having learners review a series of questions during listening activities. This approach helps keep the learners engaged with the audio throughout the exercise.  

I would recommend this resource for an instructor to use as a reference tool. There are some drawbacks to the resource which would require it to be modified for its use in a classroom, however the basis and connection between listening and speaking would make for a strong supporting resource. Overall, I would use this textbook as a supporting document to help with listening activities and provide additional vocabulary for students who may be interested in going beyond the vocabulary they hear in daily interactions with English speakers. 

Source:

Baker, L. & Tanka J. (2007). Real Talk 2: Authentic English in Context. London: Pearson Education ESL.