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3. PHONOLOGY

a) Systematical covering some aspects of Phonological System

Under this title, we will evaluate how New Interchange covers the following aspects of phonological system systematically and thoroughly.

·                                                       Articulation of individual sounds

·                                                       Words in contact (assimilation)

·                                                       Word stress

·                                                       Weak forms

·                                                       Sentence stress

·                                                       Intonation

  New Interchange explains the features above at the Pronunciation section. In this section some example sentences related to the topic are given. And then students are asked to listen and practice the pronunciation work. By doing so, students are expected to catch the sentence stress, intonation, weak forms, word stress, and assimilation.

Each unit focuses on different aspects of phonological system. For example, Unit 4 focuses on the “falling/rising” intonation about “yes/no” questions and “wh-questions” (see Appendix 5). On the other hand, Unit 5 focuses on the assimilation of helping verb “does” at the Pronunciation section. Consequently, some aspects of phonological system are covered systematically and thoroughly in New Interchange.

            b) Integration of Pronunciation Work

Pronunciation work does not stand separately in New Interchange. It is built on the other types of works such as listening, dialogue practice, grammar focus listening. Each unit has a conversation section in which is a dialogue to be listened and practiced. Students firstly listen to the dialogue and then practice it. It is the same case for the grammar section. Consequently, there is a harmony of pronunciation throughout the units (see Appendix 3).

  c) Use of Phonological Terminology

A simple phonological terminology that students can easily understand is used. These are the words such as stress, intonation, sentence stress, blending (assimilation). By this way, students can understand the terms without having difficulty when the teacher explains.

  d) Use of Phonemic Alphabet

In New Interchange, phonemic alphabet is used at the pronunciation section of some units. There is no explanation about the phonemic writing. Students are asked to focus their attention on cassette rather than the phonemic writing. In this way students will be able to learn the pronunciation with the help of the cassette even if they do not know how the phonemic alphabet is read. However, when the teacher simply gives instruction they are possible to learn as much as they need.

  e) Quality of Models Provided by Cassettes for Pronunciation

As mentioned before there are cassettes which, provide good models for pronunciation practice in New Interchange. Again, there is a Conversation and Listening section of each unit. These sections contains dialogues by native and nonnative people’ pronunciations. Students by listening and imitating the sounds that they hear, improve their pronunciation with very helpful and real models.

  f) Use of Diagrammatic System

New Interchange uses diagrams to show stress and intonation. It uses simple arrows that any learners will easily understand. The course book uses not only simple arrows but also cassettes for pronunciation. Even if a learner does not understand and pronounce according to the arrows he will be able to understand and pronounce by listening to the cassette. To sum up, both diagrams and cassettes are used for the pronunciation work to show stress and intonation.

  PART III. TOPIC and METHODOLOGY

1. TOPIC

            a) Reality and Variety of Topics Included in the Course Book

The course book, New Interchange contains and treats real and of high interest topics that learner will make use of in their real life. In addition to reality, it also includes various topics. Let’s take a look at the first unit on page 7 for instance. At the reading section, there is a reading passage about ‘meeting and Greeting Customs’ (see Appendix 2). Here, the passage gives information about the customs of some countries. So, students have an opportunity to learn about the meeting and greeting customs of those countries. When they want, they can make use of that information in the real life. By way of a foreign language-learning lesson, they have also useful and real information to use.

As for the variety, it is also for New Interchange course book. Because, every unit exploits different topics. This duty is performed in Reading sections. As an example, Unit 4 exploits “the sound of Music” while Unit 5 exploits “the changing family”. At the end of the analysis, New Interchange can be said to have paid grate attention to the variety of topic that will be dealt with.

  b) Relation of the Topics to the Learners’ Knowledge System

New Interchange relates to and engages the learners’ knowledge system they bring with them. Topics treated in the course book reflect the learners’ knowledge about the world. That’s to say, it makes reference to the learners’ knowledge and broadens the frame of his knowledge. Because, the topics are selected from those of high interest among people and designed accordingly.

As a result, the topics in New Interchange can bring the learners’ level of information to an upper level certainly.

  c) Types of Topics Treated in New Interchange

Topics treated in New Interchange are of different kinds. But the common point is their being mostly informative. They give information of different cultures, life styles, interesting events and etc. so that students become aware of them. For instance, in Unit 5 on page 31 the topic is about the families in the United States at the Snapshot section (see Appendix 16). This topic is an informative one. Students are informed by this way about the life style of families in the United States. But this is valid for the first book of New Interchange. We see controversial and humorous topics in the other levels of the course book (see Appendix 17, Reading passage). These variety in topic types get students challenge and amuse. When all these considerations are taken into account, New Interchange’s way of handling this necessity is can be said to be well.

  2. METHODOLOGY

  As described in the introduction section of the book, New Interchange aims to teach students to use English for everyday situations and purposes related to school, social life, work and leisure. The underlying philosophy of New Interchange is that learning a second or foreign language is more rewarding, meaningful and effective when the language is used for authentic communication. Throughout New Interchange, students are presented with natural and useful language. In addition, students have the opportunity to personalize the language they learn, make use of their own knowledge and experiences and express their ideas and opinions. Now, under the title of methodology we will discuss the approach used by New Interchange, its attitude towards the use of students’ mother tongue, the orientation of the method, the basic principles in preparation of the book and student’s role throughout the course.

 1.Approach

The approach applied throughout the New Interchange series is an inductive approach to learning in which the starting point in each unit consists of examples of language by means of texts, passages, listening and conversation activities, which illustrate or contain a rule, without the rule being stated.

From the examples used in conversation sections which asks the students to listen and practice, students are able to hypothesize about what the rule might be and then check the hypothesis, either against further examples or by producing instances of language themselves and getting feedback from the teacher as to whether they are correct or not. The authors think this resemble the way in which children acquire their mother tongue so they try to apply the same method into the course book.

 2. Attitude Towards the Use of Students’ Mother Tongue

Since the course book tries to constitute a situation in language teaching like in mother tongue acquisition, it leaves no place for students to use their mother tongue and translate the items in their minds. Therefore, no ‘translation into mother exercises’ as in other books like Hotline Series is included the course cook. Nevertheless, learners have the opportunity to get support from the teacher for the points they could not understand.

 3.Orientation

New Interchange is a process-oriented series, which assumes teaching as a matter of negotiation with learners and sees communication as its main concern. To achieve this, so many activities, which involve pairs, groups or the whole class, are prepared and placed into the units. In this context, knowledge is not seen as a static external entity “out there” which has to be transmitted, but a dynamic changing entity which learners are expected to approach through their own experiences and discovery. This certainly makes the time spent in class very attractive and amusing for the students.

 4. Principles

The principles, which are taken as basis in preparation of New Interchange, are as stated briefly at the back-cover page of the book as follows:

·                                                                                An integrated multi-skills syllabus

·                                                                                Contemporary, real-world topics

·                                                                                Conversational language

·                                                                                Grammar in communicative contexts

·                                                                                Natural recordings with a variety of accents

·                                                                                Task-based listening activities

·                                                                                Opportunities to share opinions and ideas

·                                                                                A thorough treatment of pronunciation

·                                                                                Vocabulary-building exercises

·                                                                                High-interest reading passages

·                                                                                Review units at regular intervals

(see Appendix 18)

We see these principles dealt with much attention and applied into the sections of New Interchange. And they entirely conform to the aim and underlying philosophy of the book.

 New Interchange has a special focus on accuracy and fluency and these are tried to be achieved by much exposure to the language with listening and speaking activities. The approach New Interchange used in the teaching of skills is handling them each separately in a different section with special activities and making them acquired as effectively as possible.

Some of the activities allow students to use the language creatively by open-ended questions. And also, students are encouraged to have a private and personal learning style or strategy by enabling them listen and study from the cassettes and CDs at home.

In addition, the workbooks provide sufficient and useful exercises by giving them with communicative situations and ask them to be enjoined and self-conscious while acquiring the language. In this way, the learning is intended to be made personalize and joyful.   

Since the accuracy is focused mainly, students are expected to produce correct sentences as much as possible. However, since the errors are inevitable in learning of a language they are treated not very strictly up to the time they’re reduced to very little figures and the level of students improve.

  5. Student’s Role

Within this tiring process like language learning, there comes out a question in our minds:

What is the role of student?

As the answer of this important question we see the student in New Interchange as the center of teaching environment. Everything goes around him. All of the activities are intended to make the student as active and communicative as possible. Throughout the course, the student is seen as active and participant as was in real life who has a competence and waiting to open up. The studies to be done in classroom contains real-life situations or they’re intended to be so… and the learner is expected to the person who will explore, live and realize them. But these are not clarified with words in Student’s Book, he becomes aware of these expectations by discovering and undertaking a variety of tasks which involve problem solving of one sort or another.

  PART IV. SKILLS

  1. Balance of All Four Skills

We can see the flexibility in the balance of four skills in New Interchange. It emphasizes that in depth and balanced treatment of all four skills is not necessary for all teaching situations. For instance, while extensive reading is preferred in the lower levels, extensive listening and speaking is emphasized in the upper levels.

In general, grammar, lexis and the skills of listening, speaking and etc. go together in a sequence. New Interchange develops students’ skills using English as much as they help to develop students’ knowledge.

As the grammar element in the course progress and the vocabulary becomes more extensive. Dialogue work becomes more complex in the upper levels, in book 3 and 4. Similarly, listening passages become longer and are spoken more quickly. Reading passages become longer and the discourse structure gets more complex. Comprehension questions check only the understanding of simple facts in the early stages. As the course progresses comprehension questions require learners to infer meaning or to extract certain relevant information from a mass of less relevant information.

As an example of how four skills work can progress, we can compare two examples of dialogue work from New Interchange Student’s Book 1 on page 5 (see Appendix 1).

The Lower level activity is a straightforward dialogue which follows a very predictable question-answer sequence and is consequently relatively easy for elementary level learners to follow and repeat.

  2. Integration of Skills in Realistic Context

Despite the differences in complexity of operation required from learners the examples above include directly or indirectly practice in using all four skills in an integrated way around the same topic.

In New Interchange a great deal of authentic and semi-authentic materials are used and this brings realism and relevance and increases learner motivation. The examples of language presented and practiced are good models for learning purposes and representative of real-life language use.

  3. LISTENING

  New Interchange handles listening as oral work and includes dialogues and role-plays. Listening sections contract strategies for quick thinking and accurate prediction of what to expect. By means of this, students are encouraged to develop strategies for coping with the difficulties. This would range from making informed guesses based on practical comprehension to asking for a repetition.

Listening parts also provide pre-listening activities to take learners’ attention on the topic of passage. By doing this, New Interchange takes the form of pre-questions, or asking students to look for certain items of information included in the listening material.

Each book includes two cassettes or a CD. The recorded sounds are clear and qualified. In the lower levels, the speed of speaking is appropriate to the learners’ ability and level.

Listening sections are so well designed that they give background information to make comprehension easier. A set of four Lab Cassettes contains practice exercises that supplement each unit of the Student’s Book.

In the upper levels of New Interchange over-articulated speech exists and the models presented include features such as elision, weak forms, assimilation, etc. (for examples, see Appendix 6 and 10)

  4. SPEAKING

  Speaking practice in New Interchange takes place through the oral presentation and practice of new language items, in dialogue works and role-plays.

The New Interchange speaking activities are pair work, group work or whole class activities involving information sharing and role-playing to encourage real communication. These exercises are a central part of the course and allow students to extend and personalize what they have practiced and learnt in each unit (for example, see Appendix 5, 6^th activity).

New Interchange course book sets up more realistic interactions through the use of communication activities. The more mechanical aspects of speaking are also covered in pronunciation practice. These elements combined ensure that students receive good spoken models from their teachers and provide opportunity to practice themselves.

  5. READING

  New Interchange reading passages use various types of texts adapted from authentic sources. Reading passages develop a variety of reading skills, including reading for details, skimming, scanning and making inferences. Reading sections also include pre-reading and post-reading questions that use the topic of the reading as a board for discussion.

Some reading passages are recorded on cassettes and ask learners to listen as they read. The advantages of this, include linking written English to its pronunciation, providing models for stress and intonation. Another aim is to bring the text to life. However, sometimes learners may be unable to set their own pace, at least at the first reading.

New Interchange reading texts are sometimes used as a model for written work and learners are usually asked to write something based on the model but using different information or giving information in a different form.

At the advanced level of New Interchange, Student’s Book includes more demanding tasks to link reading with writing such as summarizing and note-taking. This requires both selective progressing of the written text and expressing the information selected in a different written form and style.

In Reading sections the topics are interesting and culturally acceptable. Presentation of the topics is clear and includes color blocks (for reading passages, see Appendix 9, 17).

Reading passages are always integrated with speaking activities by means of role-plays that follows those texts as seen in the examples in Appendix 9,17.

             6. WRITING

Writing exercises in New Interchange include practical writing tasks that extend and reinforce the teaching points in the unit and develop students’ compositional skills. The Teacher’s Book demonstrates how to use the models and exercises to focus on the process of writing.

Sometimes, a model is given and students’ task is to produce something similar, usually based on additional information given.

The writing sections include various types such as a record for a newspaper, filling in grids, writing notes to others, making lists, filling in forms, writing a diary, writing formal and informal letters, summarizing texts and many others (for example, see Appendix 8).

New Interchange not only asks learners to identify the type of text that each extract comes from, it also encourages them to think about what linguistic clues in the extracts let them to their decision.

As a course book, New Interchange covers different kinds of writing that have different conventions for their organization and expression. The writing sections also deal with paragraphing, which is the basic unit of organization for most kinds of written English.

In this course, writing sections make use of different language resources than speech, for instance, paragraphing, spelling and pronunciation. Moreover, as in real life, writing is done with a readership in mind. It also judges how much knowledge of the subject their readers already have in order not to patronize them on the one hand or mystify them on the other.

 PART V. EVALUATION OF TEACHER’S BOOK

 New Interchange is a course book written by native speakers for the international market. Therefore, certain terminology and cultural values are dealt with a careful explanation in the Teacher’s Book of New Interchange.

The teacher’s book of this materials package fulfils a number of possible roles as we stated in the following parts:

 1. TEACHER’S BOOK

a) Guidance For Teachers

New Interchange considers cultural values and variations among regions, so, course book units are related easily to their corresponding sections in its teacher’s book. This is helped through cross-referencing by page number and by clear page layout. As an increasingly popular format, this Teacher’s Book compounds the pages of Student’s Book with the Teacher’s Book. As a result of this, the pages of the Student’s Book and Teacher’s Book appear next to each other so that the teacher does not bother with two separate books at the same time.

One of the most important emphases in this Teacher’s Book is on correction. The best correction techniques are used as correction contributes greatly to effective learning. New Interchange Teacher’s Book is a good monitor, a role that course books cannot fulfill well.

New Interchange Teacher’s Book offers regular tasks, which are used to give students feedback on their progress, and also gives teachers information on which areas of language need to be revised. As the learning motivation is a major factor in success in language learning, New Interchange helps by providing advice on including sufficient variety of activity in lessons by using topics of real interest to the learners. It also adapts course book exercises to match the level and ability of the learners and makes quick changes of plan if their interest seems to be reducing.

New Interchange Teacher’s Book provides a detailed lesson plan for each unit of material further support is provided by spelling out just what materials and aids are required. For instance, it sometimes shows exactly what flash cards, board drawings, etc. should look like.

As guidance, New Interchange Teacher’s Book provides suggestions for the planning and teaching of lessons.

 b) Comprehensibility and Flexibility of the Teacher’s Book

New Interchange Teacher’s Book meets the needs of their users as fully as possible. As it is an international course book it pays attention to the flexibility as much as possible.

Although native speakers wrote this course book for the international market, it uses a clear and understandable language, explanation and every teacher understands and presents materials easily.

New Interchange Teacher’s Book describes the basis for the selection and grading of the language content. It also explains the rationale for the methodology used in a very detailed and clear way that non-native speaker teachers can use and produce many materials easily. The Teacher’s Book promotes better understanding of the principles and practices of language teaching in general and helps to develop teaching skills

 c) Cultural Explanation

New Interchange Teacher’s Book provides background cultural information where this is necessary. A variety of examples from the cultures around the world appear in the Teacher’s Book. Especially the marketing countries are aimed and at least an example of food, living style, weather etc. exist in both Teacher’s and Student’s Book. For instance, it contains some proverbs that belong to different cultures around the world and gives their definitions and cultural background. Learners can interpret the relationships, behaviors, intentions, etc. of the characters portrayed in the book by means of the explanation in Teacher’s Book.

 2. TEACHER’S  ROLE

New Interchange Teacher’s Book serves a guide for the teacher. It does not insist on the usage of the Teacher’s Book constantly and strictly. It gives flexible examples and optional advice and enriches teacher’s creativity. 

As students have different learning styles, so teachers have different teaching styles. The same material can be taught in quite different ways.

New Interchange Teacher’s Book is aware of the unpredictability of activities in the presentation in a classroom. So, it recommends that teachers should feel free to make changes where they fell it to be necessary according to the students’ interests.

As a teacher’s book, New Interchange aids teachers and students in many ways but it does not dictate a strict method by which the language will be taught and learnt. 

 PART VI. ASSESSMENT OF NEW INTERCHANGE

 In this section we tried to make an assessment of New Interchange on the criteria that we analyzed it. And we gave grades according to the its approach to the given criteria and showed on a chart which is taken example from our course book. Certainly, the results may change according to different critics. We tried to evaluate the points we studied as fair as possible. The grades are shown on chart with symbols of  “√ “ and  “X”. We hope this study reflects the features of the course book, New Interchange correctly.

“√√√” means perfect;

“√√” means very good;

“√”  means good enough;

“X”  means bad.

  Assessment Chart