English textbooks: are they really necessary?

14.08.2016

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English textbooks: are they really necessary?

English students tend to be quite different people: hardworking and lazy, punctual and not, fans of textbooks and haters of them.
English teachers, to tell you the truth, are not much different, in the end, they are people, too. They also don’t agree on the matter of textbooks in language learning.
Let’s try to figure out the advantages and disadvantages of studying English using a textbook.
Advantages of English textbooks
Important note: the following is true in case you bought a decent book written by a decent author.
1. Structured information. After you buy a textbook you don’t ask yourself «Where do I begin?» since the answer is obvious: «Unit 1!» You don’t need to design the course yourself, look for information; everything has been done for you. The author (of course, if you bought a decent book) is a professional who knows how to explain topics to you, starting from easy things and going to the hard part. (By the way, if you don’t know, how to start studying English, you can read our article here).
2. Right amount of information. If you look through a few textbooks within the same series (for instance, American English File), you will notice that authors often return to the topics that have already been covered, and give some more information on it. The conclusion: a textbook won’t let you drown in huge amounts of information that you don’t even need in the beginning of learning process. On the contrary, a textbook gives you knowledge in right proportions. Got something new, practiced it. After some time you return to it, find out something new about it, practice it and so on. It’s quite the same in all school lessons. You don’t get to know what limits and logarithms are during you first lesson, because you can’t even count well.
3. Necessary vocabulary. Textbooks don’t contain words that you will never see or hear again. They only have the information you will need, words that are crucial for any kind of communication. There is a beautiful article in our blog, where we talk about the influence of the Zipf’s law on the words that we consider necessary to be learned.
4. Efficient exercises. Explaining new information is just the first step. Giving a student a chance to practice new knowledge is way harder. Textbooks offer texts and grammar exercises at the right time. Even after practice the information doesn’t get left behind. It is used all the time.
5. Textbooks save time. This is a logical conclusion made based on the points above. Using a textbook saves time that you could have spent on searching the material.
Disadvantages of English textbooks
Again, note: the following is true even for decent textbooks written by decent authors.
1. A textbook can’t teach you to speak. If your main goal of studying English is speaking it, then a textbook can only be an additional tool, not the only one. The best way to learn to speak is to speak. Many people think that reading lines of dialogues can somehow help them learn what to say and when. Some also think «OK, I’ll learn as much as possible now, and then, when I’m ready, I’ll start speaking». It doesn’t work like that. If you want to know how it really works, read our article.
2. A textbook can’t teach you to understand native speakers. Yes, most textbooks are sold with CDs, conversations recorded on them. However, such conversations often include only those words that you covered during lessons. In the real world people speak way harder and faster (they don’t know you haven’t covered it yet). So, we have a disappointed student, who wasn’t prepared to what the situation really is. Textbook listening exercises can be done correctly (read out article to find out how).
3. Textbooks don’t take student’s personal preferences into account. Maybe, you are wonderful at vocabulary, but have difficulties with grammar? Textbooks don’t care! Sure, you can skip something, but how can you be sure you don’t skip something truly important? You need a teacher here.
4. Textbooks can be outdated. This point cancels the third advantage that we wrote about. It’s unlikely that you buy such an outdated book that even the grammar there is outdated. Languages don’t change that fast. However, it’s pretty easy to find a book with really old words.
5. A textbook is placebo. It feels great to buy a huge academic book. It feels like you are taking action. However, odds are, that in three months this book will be sitting on your shelf collecting dust, being a painful reminder of something you couldn’t finish.
As you see, there are different attitudes to textbooks in language learning. We think that textbooks can only be bought as an extra source of information that you use from time to time.
Strangely enough, using a foreign language is the best way of learning it.

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English textbooks: are they really necessary?

Advantages of English textbooks

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