Yeun calls materials or textbook ‘an inevitable teaching partner’,7 It is a teacher’s assistant in deciding the common items of any teaching program. Sheldon consider it as ‘valid labour-saving tools’, ‘ basis for everyday teaching’, ‘the route map’ and ‘represent for both students and teachers the visible heart of any ELT programme’(Sheldon:1988:237)8 Materials are a kind of cohesive device between teacher and learner. It is materials that teacher takes into the class. It is difficult to visualize any kind of teaching-learning taking place without materials. (McGrath: 2002:8)9 talks of important metaphors used by teacher for a course book. They are-
A course book is…………………….
A recipe A springboard
Students and teachers constantly consult the prescribed materials in the classroom and very often these materials act as the major source of guidance of language teaching process. These are the materials which “inform learners about the language” (Tomlinson: 2003: 2)49. In other words they act as informative text, about the planning and executing of their language instruction. These materials are informative in nature and help the instructor in providing instructions to the students. These are the teaching materials which teach features of language and language use overtly. They tell the learners about the feature (by, for example, giving them examples of the present simple tense, giving them rules for forming and using the present simple and giving them focused practice of the present simple). Both the teaching and the learning are deliberate, conscious and focused. This is the normal practice in schools and textbooks. Examples of these materials can be books, worksheets, samples of items one is teaching about, pictures of objects, CDs with music from places, audio CDs with samples of a language teaching, charts and graphs which give visual information. The quality of instructional materials has a direct impact on the quality of teaching-learning
They are published materials which generally needs approval by the Ministry, government, publisher or institution and designed by group of experts specifically involved in materials production process. With the efforts of the selected panel of experts, these materials are revised, re-revised, re-evaluated and piloted before they get actually launched in the market. They are compiled in a book form before hand, published and sold by a particular renowned publisher, Teachers generally adapt them as required for their classrooms. A Course book is ‘A textbook which provides the core materials for a course. It aims to provide as much as possible in one book and is designed so that it could serve as the only book which the learners necessarily use during a course.’ (Tomlinson, Brian: 1998:ix)2 Generally a course book is seen as an instrument of control, authority and management and support. It allows ease in the changing of a curriculum. O’ Neill comment that ‘no other medium is as easy to use as a book’.(1982:107).57 The present 21st century is a landmark for a new type of books in e-format, called electronic