Application of Information and Communication Technology in English Coursebooks

Piotr J. Malinowski

University of Białystok, Poland

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss the integration of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) into current English Language Teaching coursebooks in the seventh grade of the new Polish primary school (in line with the new core curriculum). The theoretical underpinnings of ICT application into language learning along with enumerating the requirements regarding ICT tools in the new core curriculum are followed by a description of the research carried out in order to establish which ICT tools are integrated or ignored in the current ELT textbooks. Six of the eight student’s books available on the market were selected for this purpose. The quantitative analysis covered the ICT content in these textbooks. The essence of the research was to establish which coursebook contains the biggest number of references to ICT, what types of references they are (explicit or implicit ones), and, finally, to discover to what extent information society is portrayed in them. The results prompted demands for supplementing the criteria for the evaluation of textbooks with the intensity of references to ICT.

Keywords:

ICT, ELT, coursebook, textbook