North Star: Listening and Speaking, Basic/Low Intermediate Robin Mills & Laurie Frazier Pearson Education: Longman

ISBN 0-201-75568-8 Introduction: This textbook review of North Star: Listening and Speaking, Basic/Low Intermediate is situated and organized extensively around Littejohns (1998) three levels of textbook analysis and pedagogic framework. First, based on Level 1 of Littlejohns textbook analysis, a factual description of the content and organization of North Star is provided. Second, an evaluation vis--vis major claims made by the textbook authors and publishers will be related. This evaluation is situated around North Stars claims to an effective integrated skills development and communicativeness of its listening and speaking activities. Since the textbook claims to be written specifically for listening and speaking skills, the evaluation will also incorporate several of Rod Ellis (2005) Principles for Instructed Language Learning, particularly Principles 2, 6, and 7, which pertain to focus on meaning, input, and output. After the general evaluation, North Star Unit 5 Celletiquette will be closely examined using Littlejohns Level 2 and Level 3 textbook analysis. This is done in order to separate assumptions about what is desirable from an analysis of the materials at hand, such as the classroom textbook (Littlejohn 1998, p. 192). In particular, this type of tasks-as-workplans analysis, where a textbook may be examined based on objective and teacher-centered beliefs through a comprehensive framework and task-based checklist, can inform a teacher whether or not the methodology and content of the materials is appropriate for a particular language teaching context (Littlejohn 1998, p. 191).

Description of content: North Star Listening and Speaking: Basic/Low-intermediate was first published in 1998 and reprinted for the second addition in 2004. It serves as the student textbook and includes audio CDs. There are accompanying Teachers Manual, Video Series, and Companion website, however these materials were not considered for this review. The textbook contains 10 thematically-based units (162 pages), additional student and group activities as appendices (3 pages), grammar references (2 pages), transcripts from listening activities (14 pages), and a phonetic alphabet chart (1 page). The textbook contains very few images or visual stimulus except within the Focus on Topic lessons. Otherwise each unit is rather compact and aesthetically sterile. The authors do not specify allotted class time per unit nor do they suggest a pace, but it is understand that each unit stands alone and does not necessarily build from one unit to the next. The textbook is meant to serve as the base or foundational material of the classroom, from which all activities may be used to structure a lesson plan or the entire class curriculum.

The North Star series is written predominately for university-bound students and other EAP contexts. In each textbook, units are divided thematically and built to stand alone; as such, an instructor could potentially change the order of the units. The North Star series publishes two separate strands: Reading & Writing and Listening & Speaking, the latter at the Basic/Low-intermediate level will be evaluated. This textbook contains According to the authors, units are designed to provide intellectually challenging and contemporary topics in order to stimulate critical thinking skills while building language competence (Mills & Frazier 2004, p. iv). The Unit topics in North Star Listening and Speaking:

Basic/Low-intermediate include Offbeat Jobs, A Piece of the Country in the City, A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned, At Your Service: Service Animals, Celletiquette, Is it Womens Work?, Good-Mood Foods, An Ice Place to Stay, Staying Healthy, and Endangered Languages (Mills & Frazier 2004, p. x-xiv).

The North Star authors recognize learning as a process and design each unit along a specific skill-focused sequence and spiral these sections and tasks throughout each unit. The sections within each unit are divided as Focus on the Topic, Focus on Listening, Focus on Vocabulary, and Focus on Speaking (Mills & Frazier 2004, p. iv). The scope of the textbook encompasses critical thinking skills, listening and speaking tasks, vocabulary, and grammar. The critical thinking skill objectives are written somewhat similarly to tasks, as they require a student to perform and finish a certain skill set. These skills tend to be recycled between units or expanded to include cognitively more demanding skills (i.e. moving from topic prediction to hypothesizing reasons). The most common critical thinking skills include interpreting, classifying, relating, inferring, comparing, and evaluation (Mills & Frazier 2004, p. xi-xv).

Based on the scope and sequence, North Star does not appear to have an overwhelming focus on form or grammar. Each unit highlights only one grammar structure in focus, typically a subheading under the Focus on Speaking section. The grammar points listed in the table of contents grid include, descriptive adjectives, simple past tense, comparative adjectives, Wh-questions with do, verbs plus gerunds and infinitives, adverbs and

expressions of frequency, count and non-count nouns, can and cant, should, ought to, and have to, and future with will (Mills & Frazier 2004, p. xi-xv).

Evaluation vis--vis major claims: The central, overarching claim made by North Star authors and publishers is the categorization of listening and speaking skills. If the textbook promotes such a skill base, then the textbook should thereby provide an ample amount of meaning-making (meaning focused, rather than form focused) activities that utilize contextualized input and studentgenerated output. Rod Elliss Principles of Instructed Learning also support these core elements of listening and speaking within language instruction. For instance, in Principle Two, Ellis states that learners [should] focus predominately on meaning (Ellis 2005, p. 10). This set-up of meaning-focused instruction can be separated into two categories: semantics and pragmatics (Ellis 2005, p. 10), the latter being best suited for task-based language instruction. Since Littlejohns Three Levels of Analysis lends itself to identifying tasks within a textbook, activities which are identified as tasks can also be analyzed for their pragmatic quality. After performing an analysis on Unit 5, it was seen that most activities could be classified as tasks (according to Breen 1987 definition). These tasks did not draw explicit attention to form, but rather focused students on identifying their own personal opinions on a subject, eliciting information from peers who may have differing opinions, inferring information outside the textbook (from personal background knowledge), and creating hypotheses or rationales about the content after a discussion. The textbook weaves content throughout the tasks and students are required to use language with one another in order to complete most of them (seen as information gap or jigsaw).

The meaning-focus is so strong, in fact, it may be too far away from any focus on form. Elliss Principle Three states Instruction needs to ensure that learners also focus on form (Ellis 2005, p. 11). While it will be discussed in more detail below, it was seen that North Star authors made a clear objective within their textbook to not focus explicitly on form during student-centered tasks, only drawing attention to grammar structures during highly scaffolded, teacher-centered exercises.

Elliss Principle Six says Successful instructed language requires extensive L2 input (Ellis 2005, p. 15). This idea is also supported by Krashen (1981; 1994), who promotes input must be plentiful but also contextualized in order to be comprehensible (Ellis 2005, p. 15). While this may be a tricky component to analyze, the central idea is that language cannot be learned in a vacuum and cannot be teacher-centered or overly structured. North Star achieves this by writing tasks where students must provide personal information about the topic in focus. There are moments of structured input, such as example dialogues as a pre-speaking activity, but these do not occupy the main type or function of most tasks. Indeed, if an instructor were to use the North Star textbook as designed, most of the input provided would be student-generated. This is a possible drawback, however, if students are looking at the instructor to provide the correct use of the target language. North Star does not specify the teacher role within this student textbook, so it is unclear at times how an instructor could or should present an activity.

Elliss Principle Seven states Successful instructed language also requires opportunities for output (Ellis 2005, p. 16). Ellis summarizes claims by Skehan (1998) and Swain

(1995), in that output benefits L2 learning by forcing syntactic processing, automatizing existing knowledge, and providing opportunities for learners to develop discourse skills (Ellis 2005, p. 16). The Focus on Speaking lessons begin with fairly structured pronunciation activities (typically with a listening component from the teacher and audio CDs). This activity flows into small group work, where questions and topics are sometimes provided by the textbook and sometimes student-generated. Depending on the unit, this post-pronunciation activity may be more or less student-centered. Afterward, however, comes a highly teacher-centered grammar lesson. It is a bit confusing as to why this Focus on Speaking section contains the grammar lesson and exercises which rarely require students to interact. It also typically the only section of a unit which gives explicit focus on form. After the grammar lesson, the lesson structure opens up greatly to studentcentered role play tasks and research activities. Each unit and section contains an ample amount of speaking activities and tasks, but one would expect the Focus on Speaking to contain the most or at least the most student-centered. North Star does not fail to provide enough activities to satisfy Elliss Principle Seven, but it may lack a cohesive thread within this particular focus.

Unit 5 Celletiquette analysis: In order to build a comprehensive content analysis of the North Star textbook, Littlejohns framework and levels of analysis was applied to Unit 5 Celletiquette. Unit 5 was chosen because it resides at the very center of the textbook and may provide a more leveled and even view of the units design and authors aims. In order to apply this analysis, a

definition for a task and task-as-workplan must be made clear. According to Littlejohn (based on Breen 1987)
a task refers to any proposal contained within the materials for action to be undertaken by the learners, which has the direct aim of bringing about learning of the foreign language (Littlejohn 1998, p. 198)

Therefore, in order to qualify for analysis, an activity needed to include three characteristics: a process through which learners and teachers are to go, classroom participation, and content that the learners are to focus on (Littlejohn 1998, p.198). Unit 5 activities eligible for this analysis included discussions, information gap, listening comprehension, vocabulary comprehension through reading, editing/correcting a text, crossword puzzles, interviewing, role play, and topic research/presentation.

Most of the activities in Unit 5 qualified as tasks based on Breens definition. The tasks had a relatively even balance between teacher/textbook-initiated versus student-initiated elements, and all tasks allowed for some element of student response. However, all Focus on Topic sections, which began with whole class discussion and schema activation, are heavily teacher-centered and do not provide a substantial amount of opportunity for students to lead whole class discussions other than a personal opinion on the topic. Tasks did, however, lend themselves for student-centered content, where students must provide personal information or opinion to other students in order to complete the task. Additionally, tasks required a range of mental operations, including prediction, summarization, and inference. In this manner, Unit 5 is aligned with the authors claims of critical thinking skill development.

Activities which qualified as tasks almost always focused on meaning rather than form. Areas which called for a focus on form appeared as highly teacher-centered and structured individual exercises, such as fill-in-the-blank and underlining text. These exercises tended to appear as pre-listening exercises (sometimes multiple choice format) or within the one grammar focus of each unit. This grammar focus appears in the middle of the Focus on Speaking lesson, and even its visual design seems to separate it from the rest of the lesson, even from the unit as a whole. The grammar structure is presented in isolation with no tasks for students to engage in content or participation in a meaningful way. Additionally, the grammar structure in focus is not made explicit (or curbed in any way to elicit) during either of the Focus on Speaking role play tasks that follow. While the authors never claim to propose a focus on grammar accuracy, they also do not support learning the structure in a meaningful way. While a focus on meaning, according to Ellis, should be the primary approach to language instruction, without a contextualized focus on form students may not be able to produce the grammar structure naturally within a less-scaffolded environment. As such, even with a well designed textbook in terms of meaning-focus, student-centered discourse, and critical thinking skill development, this lack of focus on form may potentially be the biggest downfall of the textbook.

From this analysis and the evaluation above, it is clearer to propose a general aim of the authors and the textbook. As indicated, tasks and task sequencing are driven by studentprovided responses and mental operations (or cognitive load) that is called upon in order to complete a task. The turn-taking moves from a teacher-centered/whole class discussion at the beginning of the unit, to a completely student derived role play and outside-of-class

research project at the end of the unit. Students are called upon to work in pairs or groups throughout in order to making meaning out of tasks, whereby language is used as the vehicle to learning, not the object of it. The textbook provides a plethora of activities which may be easily adjusted to incorporate individual exercises or expanded to include more group work. The textbook is a guide, but a very open-ended one. The questions is, is it too open-ended for an unseasoned teacher? I would argue that without a more explicit focus on form, an unseasoned teacher would have a harder time navigating corrective feedback and questions regarding grammar structures because the textbook does not provide a detailed key. Conclusion: For the most part, North Star delivers on most of its claims and promises to the language learner. The textbook challenges learners to perform an array of mental operations and cognitively demanding critical thinking skills in an implicit, contextualized way. This is done by offering learners a variety of modern and contemporary topics while also focusing many of the activities around student opinions. This aspect may need coaxing and additional support by an instructor (i.e. metaskills associated with prediction and summarizing) but there are many activities available for students to stretch their critical synapses. The textbook also delivers a variety of listening activities while also recycling structures so that students are not overwhelmed cognitively. Pre-listening activities are teacher-centered and gradually open up to student-centered post-listening tasks. The speaking activities and tasks proliferate throughout, however the main strand Focus on Speaking seems to lack a cohesive bind which situates it appropriately within spoken production.

Works Cited Ellis, R. (2005) . Principles of instructed language learning. The Asian EFL journal, 7(3) , 10-16. Frazier, L., & Mills, R. (2004). North star listening and speaking: Basic/lowintermediate. Whit Plains, NY: Pearson Education. Littlejohn, A. (1998) . The analysis of language teaching materials: inside the Trojan Horse . In Development in language teaching (pp. 190-216) . New York: Cambridge University Press.