How to Choose a Good Textbook for Your Self-Study of a Foreign Language?

A good textbook is a self-taught language learner's best friend!

What makes a particular textbook a good source of reference for a self-taught language learner? Today I would like to present the features of a good self-study reference book, and thus possibly answer this question. There are many books on the market to choose from. As the bookstores are full of different books how can we then choose the right one for us? The thumb rule here is to pay attention to some key-features that the textbook should have. I will try to give a brief outline of those for you. Obviously, not every book that we come across in a bookstore will be just a good fit for a number of reasons. For this instance, the textbooks commonly used in language schools did not really work for me as they did not have an answer key. Moreover, it was hard to follow them without a teacher.

Well, it is believed that books are man's best friends, right? And so they are also in the context of foreign language learning. It is crucial for you to have a good source of reference packed with texts, grammar rules and vocabulary sections even if you are not a keen book lover. To cut a long story short, the book itself needs to be learner-friendly as you will refer to it quite often. So let us have a closer look at what our textbook needs to have to meet this requirement:

1. TEXTBOOK OVERALL ORGANIZATION - What I mean here is if the textbook is divided into single units / lessons. Then you can plan accordingly, and it will be a whole lot easier for you to organize your learning time - i.e. focus on one unit in a week, etc.

2. PRONUNCIATION INTRODUCTORY UNITS - Usually I like the book to have a separate section on pronunciation itself. Why? The reason is the following one: once you go through those units you can familiarize yourself with pronunciation rules (by following examples included in that section and at the same time listening to the recordings). As those sections are separate, you can come back to them any time you like without having resort to flicking through the whole book.

3. Lessons are presented in accordance with the PPP approach, i.e. presentation, practice and production:

PRESENTATION - The lesson unit needs to have a dialogue (or a short text) in which new words and grammar structures will be presented. Also, it will be useful for you if this section will have a vocabulary list (with translations into your mother tongue). This way you will not lose time for finding the meanings of new words, and then you can focus on remembering those new vocabulary units.
PRACTICE - Usually, the text/dialogue will be accompanied by reading or listening comprehension exercises, etc. that will allow you to practice and use the newly learnt grammar and vocabulary chunks.
PRODUCTION - At the end of every lesson there may be a writing practice section for you. At first, especially if you study on your own, it may be difficult to estimate if the texts that you wrote are correct or not. You may ask native speakers for help or a friend of yours who learns this language to help you out. Don't give up and remember that practice makes perfect! / ¡Practicar es mejorar! /Cwiczenie czyni mistrza!

4. GRAMMAR RULES are presented neatly by means of sentence examples with translations into your mother tongue, e.g. verbs conjugations, and their patterns in a new grammar tense. (Also, I liked when the textbook outlined the usage of a particular tense or grammar structure so I knew when and how I should use it).

5. A CD with recordings and TRANSCRIPTS of (all) the recordings included in the textbook: It is also important if you intend to study on your own, and will not have the chance to listen to the teacher who would read the texts at loud. The transcripts will help you if you do not understand or find it hard to follow the recordings; you can then consult your dictionary, find the meaning of unknown words, attempt to listen to the recording once again, and hopefully understand more.

6. WORDLISTS AND GRAMMAR PAGES. Those sections usually can be found at the very end of the textbook. Wordlists will be useful when you wish to revise the vocabulary from a given lesson unit. Quite frequently the words will also have an international phonetic alphabet transcription (IPA).

EXAMPLE: a box (IPA transcription) - /'boks/ (Please mind you that this transcription is somewhat simplified as I could not use IPA characters in the body of this article).

At first glance, the IPA characters may scare you, but once you master the pronunciation of those 'weird characters' you will find it irreplaceable when learning new words, and their pronunciation. Grammar pages contain a short summary of tenses (their patterns and usage), or verbs conjugations and other useful information concerning grammar of the language.

7. And last but not least, an ANSWER KEY - (For me this is the basis - it is particularly useful when we want to check the answers, and see how many mistakes we made. In my case, a book without a detailed answer key was just useless, and simply did not work out... No matter how great the contents, or style could be as I was frustrated when not being able to check my exercises.

A perfect example of such a textbook is 'Espanol de Pe a Pa', part 1, by Anna Wawrykowicz. (A free sample chapter of this book can be found on the Internet so that you could see how it is organized).

I learnt the basics of Spanish with this book, and I really enjoyed it. The book has all the previously mentioned features. Moreover, it is full of funny and colorful pictures as well as photos that helped me memorize new words and have fun while learning. I did not feel 'lost' as all the new texts had vocabulary lists, and answers were provided to all the exercises in the book.

NOTES:

The concept of PPP approach is used in foreign language methodology. If interested, you can easily find more information on the Internet.

You are invited to visit my blog for all foreign language geeks!

http://myforeignlanguagecraze.blogspot.com/

Hopefully, everybody will find something useful on language learning strategies, resources, and other tips.

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