Reflection on Tutorial Task Week 4 & 5: Cunningsworth's Arrticle (Materials Development)

This week, the task for our group was to present/analyse the checklist of Cunningsworth. We were to create a powerpoint presentation based on the checklist. At the beginning, we did not have any idea on what to put into the powerpoint slides. We knew that we were supposed to analyse/evaluate the checklist but, we faced some problems while doing that. For instance, we had no idea that the 3 checklists; Design and Content, Interactive Communications and Style and Appropriacy are actually 1 checklist. We thought that Cunningsworth had a total of 3 different checklists.

Our first powerpoint presentation was quite confusing for the lecturer and our peers as the points were all arranged based on the sequences in the original article. We followed exactly which point came first in the article and that happened to be one of the mistakes that we made. Our points were not arranged in an orderly manner. We rearranged the slides and this time, the so called ‘3 checklists’ were put together and being analysed as one checklist. We tried to organized the slides so that, there is a ‘flow’ within the contents.

Basically, we knew that Cunningsworth’s checklist was all about Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). So, it was not hard to understand where and how the checklist would function/ be used in evaluating a coursebook. We tried to identify what we like and dislike about the checklist. So far, we think that the checklist is very specific when it comes to the terms in CLT. The criteria in the checklist are very specific in helping to determine whether a certain coursebook is communicative or not. However, it is too limited also as it only focuses on CLT and no other aspects. Teachers can use this particular checklist to identify whether a certain coursebook can help students to improve their communication skills. 

I, myself feel that this checklist is very specific in identifying the communicative criteria. It is easy to understand and straight to the point. In my opinion, this checklist is very important and should be used by teachers in evaluating a coursebook. This is because learners can learn/master the English language faster if they were to have more interactions/communications with others and also people around them. Having opportunities to communicate with others will allow them to experiment with the language and carried out simple or certain tasks in daily life (as in asking for directions, greeting others or having a small talk). This is further supported by the Interactionist theory in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) as learners do learn a language through interactions with others.  But, it is of course not the only way of learning a language and that is why checklists are needed to help teachers to identify different criteria needed in a coursebook. Despite being an important part of checklist to me, I think it should not be the only checklist used when evaluating a coursebook as it focuses only on CLT.