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Testing the truth: content and code in reading texts in Portuguese produced ELT coursebooks .

3rd International Conference on Teaching English as a Foreign Language 26th & 27th November 2010. Testing the truth: content and code in reading texts in Portuguese produced ELT coursebooks . Nic olas Hurst , The Department of Anglo-American Studies , The Faculty of Letters ,

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Testing the truth: content and code in reading texts in Portuguese produced ELT coursebooks .

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  1. 3rd International Conference on Teaching English as a Foreign Language 26th & 27th November 2010. Testing the truth: content and code in reading texts inPortugueseproduced ELT coursebooks. NicolasHurst, TheDepartmentofAnglo-AmericanStudies, TheFacultyofLetters, TheUniversityof Porto.

  2. Culture as content “Culture is a concept which needs to be handled carefully. Nowadays it is much used, often far too loosely. One of the problems is that the most common use of the word - as national culture - is very broad and conjures up vague notions about nations, races and sometimes whole continents, which are too generalised to be useful, and which often become mixed up with stereotypes and prejudices. … It is necessary to be far more precise than this.” Holliday, A. 1994: 21-22 “Culture is where identities, desires and investments are mobilised, constructed and reworked. It is a site where antagonistic meanings push and pull at our sensibilities, deep investments, and relationships with others. Any consequently there is not one monolithic culture that communicates unitary meanings. Circulating within any culture are an array of contesting and contradictory discourses that vie for our attention.” Britzman, D. 2003: 71

  3. Reasons for Reading: L1 and L2 L1 context: Getting information to suit current purpose Gaining pleasure and/or emotional stimulation Attain social advancement or advantage L2 context: Acquire knowledge of a language feature Practice a syntactic structure Analyse a discourse feature or the structure of a text “… there should be a clear separation between teaching reading and teaching language using texts. Most of the reading materials try to kill two birds with one stone and seem to fail to hit both targets.” Masuhara, H. in Tomlinson, B. 2003: 345.

  4. Background on ELT Texts and Reading: A: “Materialsaimedatexplicitlearningusuallycontriveexamplesoflanguagewhichfocusonthefeature to betaught. Usuallytheseexamples are presented in short, easy texts or dialogues and it is argued that they help the learner by focussing attention on the target feature.” Tomlinson, B. inCarter, R. & Nunan, D. 2001: 68. B: “The more concrete, imaginable and interesting, the more readable the text. Texts on arcane topics are likely to be harder to process ... Texts located in familiar settings, on everyday topics, are likely to be easier to process than those that are not” Alderson, J. C. 2000: 62.

  5. ELT, Coursebooks and Cultural Content “Culture in language learning is not an expendable fifth skill, tacked on, so to speak, to the teaching of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. It is always in the background, right from day one, ready to unsettle the good language learners when they expect it least, making evident the limitations of their hard-won communicative competence, challenging their ability to make sense of the world around them.” Kramsch, C. 1993: 1 “Language teaching is a particular institutionally shaped learning space where cultural, discursive and linguistic flows merge, are transformed under the given pedagogical, social and material conditions and are sent on in the – in the final resort – global flow of meaning.” Risager, K. 2006: 24

  6. The present study: the Extreme series The books by Belita Carlo Almeida, EditeFrias & Elisabete Caldas Almeida cover the national programme of English for ‘3º ciclo do ensinobásico’ (7º, 8º e 9º anos), published by Porto Editora. 2004 2005 2006

  7. The Triple “A” Test for ELT Reading Texts • A:1 = authentic in relation to the genre that the text represents...to the source/purpose...to the responses required...to the linguistic features... (see Wardman, C. 2009: 14-18) • A:2 = appropriate in relation to the L2 level...to the age of the learners ...to their cultural background......to local educational expectations... (see Gray, J. 2002: 151-167) • A: 3 = accurate in relation to facts and figures...to the topic/theme in question... to the social, political and geographical features of the target culture... to issues of identity... (see Byram, M. 1993a: 3-16)

  8. Sample texts 1) Extreme 7: Unit Six: p.140: Extended dialogue on choosing holiday detinations, planning a holiday... 2) Extreme 9: Unit Three: p.70: Large text on five different ways to earn some extra money in your free time...

  9. In conclusion ... “Particular global and local discourses create the conditions of possibility of engaging in the social practice of using ‘English’, they produce and constrain what can be said in English.” Pennycook, A. 1994: 33 “ The cultural representations contained in the material, in both text and images, help to provide the students with mirrors for their own lifestyles, perspectives, identities and images of the world.” Risager, K. 2006: 181

  10. Thanks for being here. Please contact me if you’d like to discuss any of the issues raised in this talk ... My e-mail address is nrhurst@letras.up.pt

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