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Grade 7 English Textbooks Assessment (PHOENIX, REX, VIBAL, SIBS)
Article · July 2019
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Roma Joy Rañoco
Emejidio Gepila
Polytechnic University of the Philippines
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Lemuel Buenaobra
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Polytechnic University of the Philippines
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Grade 7 English Textbooks Assessment
(PHOENIX, REX, VIBAL, SIBS)
By
Buenaobra, Lemuel L.
Rañoco, Roma Joy ES.
Recluta, Shairyn D.
Introduction
Education aims to produce learners with efficient and capable
competence. This enhances the skills and knowledge of the students to make
them respond to the demands of their future endeavours. To achieve this, they
must undergo certain adversities in which they can improve their learning
competency through the help of various learning materials. With the help of these
various materials, students are honed to raise and answer questions, read
intensively, engage themselves academically, and to recognize main points and
different ideas. As a well-known professor once said, the primary goal of
education is to hone the characters of individuals.
As the K-12 surfaced, it brought new beginnings to the students as to fit
their needs as 21st century learners. Moreover, new teaching materials arose to
fulfil the changes in how students learn and for teachers to generate new
strategies to counter the circumstances. Given that the new curriculum was
made with mere suddenness, it is only appropriate to critically evaluate these
materials whether they lack something, its competence in quenching the minds
of the youth and check them whether they contain hints of certain anomalies.
There are certain publishing houses that caters the needs for the teaching
materials of the K-12 Curriculum, some of which are the Phoenix, Vibal, Rex and
Sibs Publishing Houses. There is a great number of schools that uses these books
as the basis of their teachings so it is only essential for us to analyse whether these
books are credible enough to be utilized by the students. Also, teachers should
be more critical on what information they are dissipating to the youth as it can
mold them to think something in a completely different way that is apart from
what should be learned. Therefore, with the right assessment for these books
comes the clarity of what things should we take note of from the following books
and have the awareness so that teachers, such as our future selves (if ever), would
be able to educate the youth in accordance to what is right knowledge.
Guide Questions:
1. Are the material to be used as the main core/s are to be supplementary to
it?
2. Is the teacher’s book in print and locally available?
3. Is the vocabulary and/or index available?
4. What visual material (parenthetical, photographs, charts etc.) does the
book contain? Is it there for cosmetic value or is it integrated to the text?
5. Is the material culturally biased or specific?
6. Do the materials represent minority groups and/or women in a negative
manner?
7. Do they present a balanced picture of a particular country or society?
8. The inclusion of audio/video material is readily available?
9. Is it essential to possess these extra materials in order to learn successfully?
10. Is the inclusion of tests (progress, diagnostics, achievements) would they be
useful for your particular set of learners?
Material as the Main Core/s
Learning competencies are the main ideas or skills you expect students to
have. This means that the teacher must make it as a goal to train his/her students
to achieve the desired knowledge, skills, and behaviour of a student. Teachers
often use textbooks as guide to attain the said goal.
The four main publishing houses in our country must abide to what a proper
education is requiring. Students must improve with their reading, viewing, and
listening comprehension, literary and grammar awareness, writing and
composition fluency, vocabulary development, and oral and language fluency.
With this regard, textbooks should consider these main skills in their contents.
Phoenix Publishing House managed
to meet the said requirements to have
positive learning outcomes. They include
literatures from different local and foreign
cultures to grant the readers awareness
about the diversity of social conditions in
various places. Through this, they were able
to achieve the different areas of the
subject.
Whilst, Vibal Publishing House utilizes
literature to be able to teach the English
entireties, which is a great strategy as this
enhances the students’ comprehension in
terms of analysing uncertainties in a text.
Furthermore, the students are also equipped
with lessons learned from what was read, and
which boosts their wisdom and morale.
On the other hand, Rex Publishing House showcases the grandeur of the
Philippine culture to lay the lesson overall of the subject. The book displayed the
culture from the chosen literary texts to examples and tests. For an example,
constructed sentences in the textbook uses some Filipino names like Baldo, Jose,
Maria, Pablo etc.
Sibs Publishing House’s focus is grammar essentials. The publishing house
facilitates the teaching of grammar in learning the English language in different
contexts.
Local Availability
All of these publishing houses are all located in the Philippines. The Phoenix
and Sibs Publishing House are under the same company which is the Sibal Group
of Companies. Rex and Vibal Publishing Houses are on different turfs.
Textbooks under these four publishing houses are locally available yet some
are hard to locate. Books under the Phoenix and Rex Publishing House are easy
to find and readily available on several bookstores in the Philippines. Their books
are easy to locate on bookstores. Yet there is a limit in terms of the availability of
the book as well as majority of the prints from Vibal and Sibs Publishing House as
they do not cater bookstores, nonetheless they distribute their books directly to
school.
Vocabulary and/or Index
It is a conventional feature of a certain textbook to have a Vocabulary and
Index Section on the last few pages. Vocabulary is central in teaching English to
better understand others and express their own ideas. With this notion, it is only
imperative for the books to have a vocabulary section to furnish students with
knowledge that they did not know beforehand which helps them to comprehend
more easily. For example, there is a word that a student is not familiar with and he
doesn’t have a dictionary in hand, he can simply flip the book and look for it in
the back section (provided that the word is listed at the back). Same as the Index
section, it aids the reader to simply look for words and what page/s it appeared.
Books under Sibs, Phoenix and Vibal publishing house seems to lack their
index as well as their vocabulary section. These books just have sections like
Bibliography, Appendix, and Acknowledgement that still adds informational texts
that were used in the books.
Meanwhile, the book under Rex has its index and glossary section that is essential
for the learning of the students, as well as learning new words to add to the
students’ vocabulary.
Publisher
Appendix
Index
Glossary
Acknowledgements Bibliography
PHOENIX
REX
VIBAL
SIBS
X – none
O
X
O
O
X
O
O
X
X
O
X
X
O
X
O
X
O
O
O
O
O – available
Visual Materials
It is essential to include visual illustrations in a textbook provided that the
users of the book are 21st century learners and most are more reliant on their
viewing skills, adding that they are only in grade 7. These representations are a
huge help for them to accumulate knowledge from what is being taught. It is
unavoidable for these four publishing houses to use visual materials in their
textbooks to further the progress of the student’s learning process.
Phoenix, Vibal, and Rex Publishing Houses provide different materials such
as photographs, charts, and diagrams. The book used the following materials to
grabs attention, explain tough concepts, and inspire students. The photos used
contribute in storytelling and makes the book more engaging and to make the
students get involved. The use of the charts help to present data, clarify
interpretations, and explain concepts. The amusing part is that the publishing
house assists the students with their viewing skills with the photos included in the
book.
Unlike the three publishing houses, Sibs Publishing House somehow lacks this
kind of feature that is prevalent in the previous publishing houses. Their book
contained marginal numbers of visual representations and somehow appears a
little dull and monotonous. This is a downfall in a way as the students’ interests are
sometimes fuelled by what they visually perceive. Having this special feature
supplements the book, therefore coaxing students to engage themselves to it
more.
The use of visual materials in these books such as photos, charts, tables and
diagrams, helps the learners to visualize the ideas. This would greatly benefit those
students that learn through visual presentation, as they would grasp the ideas
when it is represented through diagrams and such.
Culturally-Biased and Specific
Cultural education helps the
students to reflect on their own culture,
the culture of others, and culture itself.
This is essential for them to realize their
love of the country and foster patriotism.
This is to deepen their appreciation and
respect to different cultures, specially
their own.
The books published under Rex,
Phoenix and Vibal demonstrates and
focuses on Philippine culture. They use
literature in different cultures as examples
and tests to teach all the skills.
However, Rex really showcases the
Philippine epic stories, legends and
folktales, Phoenix and Vibal also included
other foreign countries’ literary texts and
works; furthermore, the two books still
have enough works for students to have a
deeper appreciation for Philippine
literature and culture.
All these books based their examples in Philippine culture for a deeper
understanding of it. Although this is the case, it is still not considered as bias since
the curriculum is requiring this to be taught in Grade 7.
In addition, it is presented in the K-12 Curriculum Guide that the Grade 7
English focuses on the Philippine Literature rather than other countries’ literary
texts. With that being said, the Rex Publishing House abides to what are
instructed by the Curriculum which aids the curriculum itself.
Representation of Minority Groups and Women
Even though these are books for Grade 7 students, these book may also
contain hints of discrimination towards a certain group of people. Hence, it is
significant for us to be aware whether these textbooks have these anomalies and
eradicate these problems to present the students the right education.
Fortunately to the books published under Vibal and Phoenix, minority
groups were somehow empowered by presenting literary works which relates to
them and women’s capabilities were acknowledge and is used to help students
analyse. Also, men aren’t the only ones having a major role in the stories and in
sentence examples, women are also taken note of as well, which give both of
them enough exposure.
On the other hand, Rex Publishing
House’s textbook does have a literary work
where women portrayed in an
unconventional manner and deviate the
attitude of what is accepted in a
masculine society. The book gives minimal
recognition to women that when viewed in
a feministic perspective it is inappropriate.
Balanced Societal Picture
Giving an overly favourable exposure to a particular country or society may
have negative implications. It eliminates objectivity and deviate sensitivity. With
the use of pictures to signify this, learners are more prone to imitate and
acknowledge what is implied in the book. It is important to eliminate the bias
thinking and be inclusive to receive respect from the readers.
Fortunately, all of the four publishing houses exhibit a balanced picture of
our country or society. There are literary works that are present in the books which
relates to various places in the Philippines, and not inclusive of only a certain
place. Like for example, the literary texts are not only from the part of Luzon but
also from Mindanao and Visayas.
Audio/Video Materials’ Availability
Aside from only settling in what we can read, we can also consider other
ways of learning such as by listening and viewing. Furthermore, these enhances
the multi-sensory experience of the students as it engages them to comprehend
things more thoroughly by the use of these Audio/Video materials.
For example, in the Rex book, it included activities wherein the learners
were instructed to listen to a particular radio interviews and dialogs. This strategy
use will help the learners to note specific details, take down notes, and evaluate
thoughts and feelings from the audio.
The remaining three publishing houses, namely Vibal, Phoenix, and Sibs
didn’t include audio/video materials for any further dive for knowledge. This
deprivation in the said material can supplement to the learning of the students
for them to instil the lessons through utilizing other means of learning, like viewing
and listening.
Tests
After every chapters on certain textbooks, there is a section there
containing questions, tests, or activities in order to evaluate what the learners
have absorbed from the previous lessons. These are actually crucial for the
students to refresh their minds on the topics tackled in the class.
Phoenix Publishing House includes
different tests such as essays, fill in the blanks,
identification, and sentence construction.
The way they use these tests are useful for the
learners because these are different
approaches. These are strategies to help
students decode correctly the meaning of
words, express and compose ideas, and
demonstrates the command of assembling
of standard English grammar and usage
when writing.
There is no much difference with the Rex Publishing House, for it provides
tests such as identifications, essays, multiple choices and some subjective
questions. These tests would examine the student’s learning and they would get
the chance to assess the ideas they have learned from the discussion. These are
to apply the learnings in a more academic way.
Vibal Publishing House comprise of tests such as fill in the blanks, essays,
word search and identification. They also have recommendation quizzes in the
book that would connect the student to the website and would allow the learners
to sharpen their minds with its help. These tests challenge the learners to ponder
on the previous discussions and exercises the students’ cognitive development.
Whilst, Sibs Publishing House has fill in the blanks, checklists, identifications,
and essays to observe the students’ Subject Verb Agreement. The tests main
objectives is for the learners to improve their grammar proficiency and to exercise
it to have better communication and interaction.
PHOENIX PUBLISHING HOUSE
Skill Builders for English Proficiency
Araceli M. Villamin, PhD, Evelyn S. Salazar,
Zenen R. Alumbro
SIBS PUBLISHING HOUSE
Grammar Essentials
Rosalinda M. Cupcupin
REX PUBLISHING HOUSE
Essential English
Worktext in Literature and Language
Carolina T. Gonzales
Nelda R. Francisco
VIBAL PUBLISHING HOUSE
Language in Literature
Philippine Literature
Lourdes M. Ribo
Victoria L. Carbonell
Leopaldo A. Rojas
Sr. Bernadette S. Racadio, SPC, PhD
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