Justin Cubilo
Textbook Review
Liu, Y., Yao, T., Shi, Y., Ge, L., & Bi, N. (2010). Integrated Chinese: Level 2 part 2.
Boston: Cheng & Tsui.
The number of students enrolling in courses of Chinese as a foreign language
(CFL) has increased significantly in recent years. In fact, a recent survey conducted by
the Modern Language Association (2006) found a 51% increase in enrollment in Chinese
language courses between the years of 2002 and 2006. With such jumps in enrollment, it
has become more important to create adequate textbooks for the instruction of the
Chinese language These textbooks should make use of recent research in the field to be
more effective. Integrated Chinese (中文听说读写)Level 2 Part 2 has been designed
with these needs in mind. It provides second year college students studying Chinese
many materials and exercises and uses an easy-to-follow format and a communicative
approach.
The authors of this book identify their pedagogical approach by stating that the
textbook utilizes a learner-center approach, contextualized and interactive language
practice, and linguistically and thematically appropriate cultural information and
authentic materials. The approaches stated in the preface reflect much of the current
research in the area of language teaching. For instance, the use of contextualized and
interactive language practice as well as the use of linguistically and thematically
appropriate cultural information and authentic materials would fall under the category of
communicative language teaching (CLT), which Celce-Murcia (1991) included within
her definition of what the communicative approach to language teaching is. She believes
that students are supposed to be active participants in the language learning process and
are supposed to work in a collaborative fashion to negotiate meaning. In addition,
Gilmore (2007) has stated that, while inclusion of authentic material does not necessarily
create a pedagogically sound lesson, the use of appropriate cultural information and
authentic materials has become increasingly important in past few decades and
attempting to include authentic materials into the text is an important step in the field.
However, even with these claims, whether the practice activities can truly be
called communicative and whether there are “linguistically authentic” materials present
in the book are rather questionable. In fact, the biggest problem is with the claim that
there are linguistically authentic materials in the book. All of the dialogues within the
book and those used for the listening materials in the workbook are specially crafted for
the workbook exercises, making them non-authentic. The only other possibility is that the
authors are considering the photos of Chinese signs found within the text, and
occasionally in the workbook, as being authentic. However, most of the time students are
not instructed to work with these materials, and if they are, the questions are often very
superficial in nature and don’t require much effort or communication on the part of the
students.
The language practice activities do follow a communicative approach, but they
often stifle the learner’s ability to freely use the language since many of the exercises are
simple pattern drills in which students simply follow a specified pattern already given in
the example. This is contradictory to the idea of the output hypothesis, which states that
output should serve the purpose of helping the learner to notice gaps in their language
knowledge, test hypotheses that they may have developed for the use of the language, and
to reflect about their own language use (Swain, 2005). For this reason, supplemental
activities are often needed with the textbook.
The book is organized into ten lessons. Each lesson is divided into the same
sections, providing students with a regulated format with which they become familiar.
Furthermore, each lesson is theme-based and begins with a list of learning objectives and
questions asking students to think about how certain customs related to the topic of that
chapter are done in their own culture. The overview allows students to prepare for the
content of the lesson. Students are then supplied with two or three full color illustrations
that depict the cultural factors discussed in the chapter and also the scene in which the
chapter dialogue will take place aiding in the ability of the student to both frame and
comprehend the reading (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). However, the questions meant to
be answered before reading can sometimes be unrelated to what is actually discussed in
the text, and it is confusing as to why they are included. Following the opening questions
and pictures is a dialogue written in the textbook accompanied by before-, while-, and
after-reading questions and statements. A list of new vocabulary words for the lesson also
accompanies the dialogue. Each dialogue has certain phrases or words highlighted in
green and new grammar points highlighted in red to draw students’ attention to their
usage. This enhancing of the input provides what some researchers, such as Lee (2007)
and Long (2000), have called an effective focus on form technique, in that students will
be more likely to attend, process, and eventually learn the lexical or grammatical form if
it is highlighted, bolded, or enhanced in some way.
Following the section with the dialogue is a cultural highlights section written in
English which contains both more cultural information related to the chapter theme and
pictures related to the information. While the cultural information may be very interesting
to students of the language, there is little done with it. No questions are asked about the
information to engage the learner, and it is not referred to elsewhere in the lesson. In
addition, I would expect that at this level students would be able to read more Chinese,
and, therefore, I would think that it would be better to have this reading in Chinese, even
if it ends up being shorter or heavily glossed since previous research has found that
extensive reading of a text in the target language aids in vocabulary acquisition (Eskey,
2005). Furthermore, the authors state that they have incorporated “linguistically
appropriate” authentic material into their culture sections, but as far as I can tell, the only
authentic material found in the culture sections are the accompanying pictures, and very
few of them necessitate the use of linguistic ability.
The chapter continues with a grammar section and a words and phrases section
discussing the usage of the grammar patterns as well as the different usages of certain
words and phrases highlighted in the text. This section may be one of the greatest
strengths of the textbook. The explanations of grammar points, with a few exceptions, are
very clear and give several examples not found in the dialogue of the structures or words
being used. However, while the grammar and usage explanations are clear, the practice
exercises in the following language practice section provide little opportunity for
meaningful use of the language. The textbook has a forms-focused concentration (Long
& Robinson, 1998), meaning that the content of the textbook centers on the instruction of
specific grammar points and, as a result, sometimes the focus on meaning can be pushed
to the side. This is especially prevalent in the exercises provided which are focused on
drills for grammar in which readers are expected to make exact replications of the
example sentences by just switching out words. This goes against what Larsen-Freeman
(2009) suggested in her idea of “grammaring” in which she stated that the ability to use
grammar structures accurately, meaningfully, and appropriately should be the focus of
any grammar instruction. If this is the case, then Integrated Chinese is following the first
of these criteria, but there is little opportunity, other than surface level writing activities
where students are expected to imitate the text, for meaningful production since
meaningful production requires that there be similarity between the context of learning
the grammar and the context of its use (Segalowitz, 2003).
My greatest criticism of this book is directed towards the materials that are
provided with it (i.e., the workbook and listening materials). The audio for the level of
students being taught is far too slow and is far from authentic. More effort should be
devoted to showing culturally relevant and topic-related authentic materials since there
are many that would be accessible to students at this level of language study. The
workbook, like the textbook, is very focus on forms oriented and primarily uses grammar
drills to have the students practice new grammar points and word usages. However, I do
think that each lesson’s workbook activity in which 4 pictures are given and a story has to
be written in Chinese is a good activity that encourages more meaningful output.
Overall, Integrated Chinese has appropriate introductions to new grammatical
concepts and the themes of each lesson, such as Chinese holidays, travel, interviewing,
and Chinese history, all provide information for a range of interests that can involve
students and teach about Chinese culture. However, the textbook’s lack of authentic
materials, meaningful grammar use, and encouragement of output production are all
serious shortcomings that need to be addressed.
References:
Celce-Murcia, M.,ed. 1991. Teaching English as a second or foreign language. 2d ed.
New York: Newbury House/HarperCollins.
Eskey, D. (2005). Reading in a second language. In E. Hinkel (Ed.). Handbook of
research in second language teaching and learning (p. 563-580). Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Gilmore, A. (2007). Authentic materials and authenticity in foreign language learning.
Language Teaching, 40, 97-118.
Kress, G., & VanLeeuwen, T. (2006). Reading images: The grammar of visual design
(2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
Larsen-Freeman, D. (2009). Teaching and testing grammar. In M. H. Long & C. J.
Doughty (Eds.), The Handbook of Language Teaching (518-542). Malden, MA:
Blackwell.
Lee, S. K. (2007). Effect of textual enhancement and topic familiarity on Korean EFL
students’ reading comprehension and learning of passive form. Language
Learning, 51(1), 87-118.
Long, M. H. (2000). Focus on form in task-based language teaching. In R. D. Lambert &
E. Shohamy (eds.), Language policy and pedagogy: Essays in honor of A. Ronald
Walton (pp. 179 – 192). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Long, M. H., & Robinson, P. (1998). Focus on form: Theory, research, and practice. In C.
Doughty & J. Williams (Eds.), Focus on form in classroom second language
acquisition (pp. 15-41). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Furman, N., Goldberg, D., & Lusin, N. (2006). Enrollments in languages other than
English in United States institutions of higher education, fall 2006. New York:
Modern Language Association.
Segalowitz, N. (2003). Automaticity and second languages. In C. J. Doughty & M. H.
Long (eds.), The handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 382–408). Malden,
MA: Blackwell.
Swain, M. (2005). The output hypothesis: Theory and research. In E. Hinkel (ed.),
Handbook of research in second language teaching and learning (pp. 571-583).
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.