The course textbook, Let’s Go: Let’s Begin Student Book 4th Edition, is designed for English language learners of a very young age that have little experience in formally learning any language. The text is appropriate for a classroom or individual setting. If in a classroom setting, it is most appropriate for small groups of children of a young age. I will be evaluating Chapter 6 of the text, “Food.” Each chapter is structured in the same form in terms of units within each topic. The structure includes “Let’s Talk, Let’s Learn, Let’s Learn More, Let’s Learn to Read,” and “Let’s Review.” This demonstrates that the chapter has a set of general goals for different learning objectives. For specific objectives, this chapter is focused on obtaining vocabulary relevant to food. While this includes the names of pieces of food, it also includes vocabulary for the cafeteria line, birthday parties, and picnics. Additionally, there is also focus on speaking and reading aloud objectives. There are also sociolinguistic communicative competency goals for the children to be able to have appropriate conversations when handling or being around food. Finally, there is an objective of learning the letters “Q, R, S, T.” 

As mentioned, the general structure of the activities follows “Let’s Talk, Let’s Learn, Let’s Learn More, Let’s Learn to Read,” and “Let’s Review.” Beginning in the first section of the chapter, there are basic activities surrounding the idea of birthdays, age, and food that is associated with birthday parties. This text is designed to be used alongside a CD as a technological addition. This CD offers the opportunity for a much more engaged learning experience as the student listens and responds to questions. For the first section, students are asked to listen to an interaction between two children, and then create their own sentences based on the CD model. This section progresses in difficulty by having students begin with listening and responding, followed by verbalizing a response and acting out a conversation, then listening to a song and singing along, and finally with listening to a command and acting it out. The topic begins with acquisition of content as they attempt to replicate a model, to application as they attempt to physically model a command. The next two topics, “Let’s Learn and Let’s Learn More,” are heavier in vocabulary acquisition. For now, the birthday theme is carried over and students are to listen and learn words such as “ice cream” and “cake.” The technique of Reading Aloud, a controlled technique as referenced by Brown, is viewed heavily in the entire chapter (185). In this unit specifically, there is heavy emphasis on encouraging students to follow along and repeat words, sentences, and questions. As the content switches to more general foods, the content also increases in difficulty. Students are then asked to listen to one conversation about food. They are provided with a number of facial expressions of students holding a certain food. Students, using the conversation they listened to as a model, are supposed to form original sentences explaining whether or not a child likes a certain food based on the facial expression. This is a difficult activity for a student to accomplish as it requires grammatical and sociolinguistic communicative competence. Finally, the “Let’s Learn to Read” section works on connecting what students have heard to letters in their books. This unit emphasizes letters “Q, R, S, T.” This is also a more difficult tasks for students as it is introducing the concept of words being broken down into their individual letters. Many students know the alphabet, but struggle to connect individual letters from the alphabet into individual letters in words. This unit is more unstructured in design because it allows for students to hunt for hidden letters and discover and name objects in a large picture. The “Let’s Review” section of the chapter is simply a few short two choice questions to ensure students understand concepts and vocabulary they have just learned. 

Overall, this chapter is successful in working towards the acquisition of the topic at hand. It is very engaging for the young age group as the chapter contains many bright pictures with familiar objects, songs to learn and sing, and content that is relevant to the age group. Additionally, the chapter is effective because it encourages independent learning. There are many opportunities for students to verbalize original sentences based off of a model they listened to. These activities allow for the student to work on reading, listening, and speaking skills. The “Let’s Learn to Read” section is particularly creative and engaging. The section begins with students singing the alphabet and has them emphasize the target letters. Often, students connect the entire alphabet into one string of sound, and this emphasis of the target letters reminds them that they are individual units of sound. The section then connects each letter to objects and characters that children would recognize, puts these things in one large picture, and encourages the students to find all of the objects in the picture. This activity also works on many language objectives at one time. In terms of disadvantages of this chapter, there is a lack of writing practice. There are only a couple of opportunities for students to write anything down. While the students are working towards mastery of many language skills, there are few chances for students to practice their writing skills. Additionally, there could have been more free or unstructured technique activities. The majority of the activities were structured and encouraged students to follow a specific method or path to achieve the answer. While this is important for young language learners, there also ought to be an opportunity for them to engage in more creative and open-ended learning techniques such short games, interviews, or discussions (Brown 186). This may not be possible depending on the learning environment. If in a classroom setting, these activities would be very beneficial to the learning process of the students.

Works Cited

Brown, H.D. (2007). Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy, 3^rd Edition. White Plains, NY: Pearson Longman.