Analyzing materials (coursebooks, lesson plans and activities for teaching)

CONCLUSION
The paper has examined coursebooks as being the commonest kind of ELT material adopted, and their widespread use makes them objects of great interest among professionals and scholars within the pedagogic field. This paper focused on some of the variables that influence teachers and educators when evaluating a certain textbook. In the results of the research carried out with EL teachers, the expected view that books are considered important resources for teachers proved to be true among this particular group of participants. This finding is significant, considering that many times coursebooks are the subject of negative criticism in the educational environment. However, they still appear to be the main guidance for lesson planning and the main source of teaching ideas, at least for these nine participant teachers. In this study the findings were consisting with the fact that teachers expect a coursebook to have texts, written and oral activities and cultural references to the target and the source language. Above all, it appears that a coursebook should be a resource of ready materials that helps teachers in the time-consuming task of preparing lessons. However, as coursebooks are unlikely to fulfill all the particular demands of different teachers and learners, the wisest attitude for teachers of EL might be to use coursebooks as one resource among many others to promote language learning. In this sense such materials would be just a means to an end. Thus, the teacher would be free to change tasks and exercises; rephrase instructions; adapt the assignments in terms of their lengths of time, purpose and how they should be performed; deconstruct and reinterpret the texts along with the students. Finally, based on the knowledge I have concerning what teachers mostly expect from coursebooks, I understand that textbooks should not be static, or rejected. Instead, such useful materials – because they can be really useful – should be alterable to suit the learners’ and teachers’ needs and choices.