IMPORTANCE OF TEXTBOOK IN TEACHING AND LEARNING LANGUAGE

Sruthy S Prakash

      The textbook is a very important instrument of education. To the student it represents the subject content and to the teacher it provides an operational definition of his duties. The textbook in language teaching, takes on an even wider responsibility, for it has to provide along with information, the basic skills required to use the language for purposes other than mastery of the textbook alone. The importance of textbook in language teaching has been recognised. Michael West has emphasised the use of textbook, a textbook is the teacher’s tool. It is to the teacher what the spade is to the gardener, the chisel and saw and screwdriver to the wood worker, the typewriter to the typist. It opens new avenues of thought and study and widens experience. According to Billows, In opening up the textbook, the teacher opens windows on the world, which both show the world and let light into the home. The textbook has always been regarded in India as an integral part of learning process and it is worshipped during the national festival "Pooja".A survey completed by the National Opinion Research Council  reported in 1966 that the textbook is still the dominant teaching tool in the colleges it is in the secondary school.  

                         Teachers of English in our schools whose command of English is poor, need lists of teaching points - structures, vocabulary etc. - with advice as how to present, identify and drill each, and with reading passages and composition exercises introduced at appropriate points. Besides, a structural syllabus cannot work without being embodied in good books. The more planned the textbook, the easier the task of the teacher. In making his pupils learn the language. Several purposes are served by the textbooks. It is at once a guide to the teacher, a memory aid for the pupils, a means of reviewing and reorganising his knowledge. In the class room, the textbook becomes an effective tool of learning, by generating educative interaction between the teacher and the learner and between the learner and other co-workers. At home it not only helps the learner in revising and reinforcing his previous learning, but also stimulates his interest and enriches his learning experience. In a wider sense, the textbook is a generalisation, a 'uniting factor in language teaching, means of extending linguistic experience beyond the' local scene and limited experience of pupil. At the same time .It has to be admitted that this is not the only means of learning, or reading the textbook the only method of organising mastery of a language. The invention and development of a large number and variety of alternative means and materials for learning languages has limited the role of the textbook and at the same time helped to overcome its limitation.

                      Obviously, the textbook should aim at teaching the materials that have to be taught to the class. If our aim is to teach our pupils to read and write English, a book which has been written for an aural oral approach will not be suitable. Adaptation will not help. Even if the pupil reads the dialogues out of the book and copies them a hundred times on paper, he will never learn the correct forms of written English.We shall be very happy, if we find a book whose objectives are exactly the same as our own, but some materials will be better than others. This means that the amount of adaptation and extra material to be provided by the teacher will be highly valuable.