Running Head: TEXT ANALYSIS

Text Analysis

Gaby Montes

Lehigh University
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Introduction
Elementary school teachers today often utilize coursebooks rather than

sourcebooks, thus the quality of the sole text they are using impacts the effectiveness of course

instruction for learners within the classroom to a greater extent. Due to this, it is important to

analyze and evaluate the texts being utilized to guide classroom instruction to ensure they meet

the needs of the learners, fit well into the contextual environment where they will be

implemented, align with the set learning goals, and highlight the suitable principles of language

teaching based on such goals. This analysis will focus on the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,

Journey’s Common Core text – specifically unit five. This text was created for use in the first-

grade general classroom to guide the teaching of integrated language arts. I chose this text

because I plan to become a first-grade general education teacher who advocates for and

accommodates the curriculum to best meet the needs of English Language Learners within the

classroom. In that role I will need to critically analyze the course text provided to me by the

school to ensure the text aligns with the aforementioned needs and goals in the context of that

particular school environment.

Nation and Macalister’s (2010) text Language Curriculum Design highlights the most

important aspects of curriculum design that play the largest role in determining whether the

curriculum will lead to successful learning. These aspects include conducting environmental and

needs analyses, identifying the major goals of learning and their aligning principles, sequencing

a course intentionally based on such analysis, and utilizing assessments in a way that best

supports and evaluates learning. All of these aspects are vital to curriculum design, yet in my

analysis of the Journey’s Common Core text, I will focus on the environmental analysis, needs

analysis, and principles highlighted. The major principles of focus based on the context are
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strategies and autonomy, language system, learning burden, motivation, four strands, integrative

motivation, and learning style.

Nation and Macalister (2010) begin the process of curriculum design with an

environmental analysis. This aspect of the process involves analysis of the factors that will have

a large impact on the course decisions regarding the way it should be taught or assessed. Such

factors can revolve around learners, teachers, and the teaching and learning situation. Nation and

Macalister (2010) refer to the importance of this aspect of the curriculum design process as being

what ensures the course will be useable and effective for learning. In environmental analysis, one

must determine which factors within the context are most important in reference to their impact

on the usefulness of the course. The steps for accurately completing an environmental analysis of

a course include systematically considering all of the possible environmental factors that may

impact the course, ranking the factors based on importance to the course’s success, determining

what research must be done to fully consider each factor, and considering each factor on the

course design. To illustrate, examples of such factors include the constraint of time, teachers’

degree of training, age of the learners, available resources, among many others.

According to Nation and Macalister (2010), needs analysis consists of an identification of

the necessities, lacks, and wants of the learners. To identify the necessities of the learners, one

must detect the demands of the targeted tasks and work backwards to pinpoint what knowledge

is needed by learners to complete the task and how to best teach it to them. Identification of the

lacks learners have consists of locating where the learners are at through their competence in and

interpretation of the current tasks. Further, while identifying the lacks of the learner, the teacher

must locate the learners’ current competence in both their L1 and L2, as the learner may already

have the knowledge and simply require help with the transfer of that knowledge. The wants of
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the learners can be determined through conversation with learners of their goals or the filling out

of questionnaires. This knowledge helps ensure the views of the learner and those compiled

through the needs analysis align.

The next vital aspect of curriculum design per Nation and Macalister (2010) includes

identifying the major goals of learning and their aligning principles. In the book, twenty major

principles of language teaching are identified. These principles are organized into three groups:

content and sequencing, format and presentation, and monitoring and assessment.

The objective of the principles of content and sequencing is to ensure that learners are

getting useful things from a course. These principles refer to what goes into a language course, as

well as the order of such items in the course. These principles include: frequency, strategies and

autonomy, spaced retrieval, language system, keep moving forward, teachability, learning

burden, and inference. Of these, my text analysis will focus on strategies and autonomy,

language system, and learning burden. Strategies and autonomy includes training learners in how

to learn a language, as well as monitor and be aware of their learning such that they can evolve

into independent and effective language learners. The language system principle promotes that a

course’s language focus should be on the more generalizable aspects of the language. Learning

burden is a principle that states the course should capitalize on the pre-existing knowledge of the

learners.

Format and presentation principles focus on the specific forms of activities utilized in the

classroom and the way such activities are utilized to help learners process course material. This

aspect of what happens in the classroom itself is described to be where teachers may have their

greatest impact on the course and its effectiveness. The principles categorized into format and

presentation include: motivation, four strands, comprehensible input, fluency, output, deliberate
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learning, time on task, depth of processing, integrative motivation, and learning style. My text

analysis will highlight motivation, four strands, integrative motivation, and learning style.

Motivation emphasizes ensuring learners are interested in and excited about learning, such that

they value and prioritize learning the language. The four strands principle focuses on the idea

that courses must have an equal amount of activities that highlight meaning-focused input,

language-focused learning, meaning-focused output, and fluency. Integrative motivation refers to

the presentation of the course such that learners have the most favorable attitudes to all aspects of

it – including the language, those who use the language, the teacher, and their ability to learn the

language. The principle of learning style emphasizes the presence of opportunities for learners to

engage in learning activities that best match their own personal learning style.

Motivation and assessment principles aim to ensure that the selection of and presentation

of assessments within the course are based on the context around and needs of the learners. They

also promote the idea of learners receiving timely, helpful feedback on their progress of language

learning that enable them to improve their language usage.

Context
Before any curriculum or course material can be evaluated, the context must be

thoroughly examined to provide a greater framework that guides decisions regarding the

importance of various factors on the effectiveness of the course. This framework that the

curriculum and lessons plans are based upon is determined through environmental and needs

analyses.

The Environment
In the environmental analysis of the context – the learners, teachers, and the learning and

teaching situation are all factors that must be taken into account.
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The learners in the current classroom environment are composed of twenty first grade

students who are all ages six and seven. Majority of the class is composed of English language

learners, as twelve of the twenty students identify as such. The class contains a diverse amount of

WIDA levels: three students are beginning, six students are developing, and three students are

expanding. Of these language learner students, the L1 of nine students is Spanish and that of the

other three is French. The families of ten of these students solely speak in the L1 at home, as

they have not learned English. Two students within the class are special needs learners with

Dyslexia. Ten of the learners have visual learning styles, four have aural, two have verbal, and

four have physical. Eighty-nine percent of the students receive free or reduced lunch in the

school. There are eleven males and nine females within the classroom.

I am the teacher and am well-trained and have a Masters of Elementary Education, K-4

teaching certification, and a certification in English as a Second Language. Though I have a large

level of certification to teach, it is only my second year with my own classroom. I am confident

in my use of English and am also fluent in Spanish. I both grew up speaking Spanish and studied

it at the university level.

The learning and teaching situation is at a local elementary school in Bethlehem, PA.

This school has about five hundred students and the student to teacher ratio is twelve to one. The

school does not have a large amount of resources available for lessons due to a lack of funding. It

is one of the most diverse schools in Pennsylvania and has one of the highest percentages of

students eligible for free or reduced lunch. The school is in a country where the target language

is recognized as the major official language of the country. The class is taught as a whole group

instruction with one main general education content teacher. The learners get one fifty-minute

period of integrated language arts each day, thus time is limited.

The range of environmental constraints that could impact the course include learner

English proficiency, learner interest in learning, home usage of language, available resources,

time allotted for learning, learners’ preferred learning styles, the size of the classroom, and

learners’ ability to get the resources they need for class. Based on the context, the most important

environmental constraints that will influence learning in their order of importance include

learners’ varied English proficiency levels, learners’ ability to get the resources they need,

learners’ sole use of the first language outside of the classroom context, limited time, learner lack

of interest in learning the target language, and inadequate resource availability. To fully take

account of each environmental constraint, we must learn more about what their use of their L1

looks like, as well as the level of knowledge held in it. We must additionally ensure that learners’

true English proficiency matches their listed WIDA levels to ensure they receive the level of

scaffolding needed. We must do research on the resources learners have available to them at

home and which they lack. Such resources are vital to their ability to succeed. We must examine

the time allotted for integrated language arts, compare that time to the time it would take to carry

out the given curriculum plans, and critically consider whether there is a way to give learners

more time at another part of the day. Surveys must be conducted to understand what is causing

the learners to lack interest in learning the target language and to discover their interests,

passions, and other hidden funds of knowledge. The limited availability of resources within the

school must be considered in comparison to the resources needed to effectively carry out lessons

from the course book.

The impacts of the aforementioned constraints on curriculum design include the creation

of unique scaffolds for learners of each language learning level during activities, providing

necessary resources in class and enabling students to take them home for assignments, guiding
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parents on how to support their child’s English learning beyond the classroom with intentionally

created take home practice, allowing space for activities to carry into the next class, aligning

learning activities with learners’ hidden funds of knowledge, and adjusting curriculum activities

such that they can be done with the resources available.

Needs Analysis
Conducting a needs analysis involves three major areas of analysis: the necessities, lacks,

and wants. In the necessities aspect of the analysis, the demands of the target tasks are analyzed

to determine the forms of language required from the learner to successfully complete such

demands. It looks at the required knowledge and answers the question of “what is necessary in

the learners’ use of language?” Next, during the analysis of the lacks of the learners, the focus is

placed on observing where the learners are currently at and what their present knowledge

consists of, whether it is held in the L1 or L2. This aspect of the analysis can be conducted by

asking learners how they interpret a given assignment or through analysis of the learners’ current

assignments through the information, grammatical, and discourse perspectives. Through such

analyses, one can determine the degree of skill that is reflected in each aspect of the assignment.

Finally, the wants provide information regarding the learners’ perspective on what they believe is

best for them. These are the learners’ subjective needs and makes the teacher aware of what the

learners would like to learn about. Such subjective needs are vital to maintaining learners’

motivation in learning the target language.

Analysis of the necessities involves a consideration of the course goals revolving

language, ideas, skills, and the text. This course will be used for first grade integrated language

arts and will focus on reading. The learner will take part in communicative activities that may

require them to read, answer reading comprehension questions, learn new vocabulary, and

identify the different parts of the story. The user will be provided scaffolds based upon their
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proficiency, thus they can be of any proficiency level. The learner will be working with topics,

themes, stories, and vocabulary. The learner will use language through reading text, listening,

speaking, and writing. The learners will use the language with their classmates and the teacher.

The language will be utilized to comprehend, sort, analyze, and apply.

Learners in this class will need to read stories, listen to stories and questions, describe the

main story elements, identify the characters, understand new vocabulary words, and complete

provided sentence frames. Specifically, for this lesson, learners will have to listen to read aloud

stories, retell the story, practice oral vocabulary, model fluency, practice spelling words, and

substitute vowel sounds aloud. To do these tasks, learners will need to know story elements, how

to read, ways to use context clues to answer questions or to connect old and new vocabulary

word meanings, how to write answers to questions, and how to utilize sentence starters and

sentence frames to retell a story. Depending on each learners’ particular WIDA level, they may

need a large level of scaffolding to assist in bridging the knowledge between their L1 and the

target language. The teacher can have the student read them a short story and answer a few

questions to analyze their current knowledge. This should be examined from the discourse,

information, and grammatical perspectives. The teacher can also have students share their

interpretation of reading comprehension questions, such as those asking for the story elements.

To ensure a completely accurate analysis of the learners skills in both the L1 and L2, the teacher

should administer the same test in their L1. After doing this, the teacher will have an accurate

perspective on each learners’ lacks and can be mindful of those as the curriculum and activities

are planned. The teacher will also have information regarding the knowledge that exists in the L1

that needs to be transferred over. To learn about the wants, the teacher can hold one-on-one

lunches with students in the beginning of the year to learn what learners are interested in learning
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and become aware of their views on what learning is most important. If time is limited, the

teacher could have them fill out short surveys or do an all about me project.

Text Analysis
Main goals when evaluating a course book include considerations as to whether it fits the

environment, it meets the needs of the learners, applies the principles of focus, have goals that

match the course goals, suit the learner proficiency level, have applications beyond the

classroom, include activities that could be used for home self-study, and include activities that

increase motivation.

Environment & Needs

varied English proficiency levels, learners’ ability to get the resources they need, learners’ sole

use of the first language outside of the classroom context, limited time, learner lack of interest in

learning the target language, and inadequate resource availability.

The course text did a great job of considering the constraints of varied proficiency levels,

potential lack of interest in the target language, and inadequate resource availability in the

school. In consideration of the diversity of the proficiency levels within the class, this text

provided a strand for English Language Learners on the left side of every page. This strand broke

down the specific ways to scaffold each level of language learning: beginning, low intermediate,

high intermediate, and proficient. To illustrate, for the post reading activity on a book about a

toad: the strand had beginners simply repeat the vocabulary words as the teacher completed the

sentence frame, low intermediate students use the two vocabulary words to complete the

sentence frame, high intermediate students use action words of their choice to complete two

sentence frames, and proficient students use the two vocabulary words to retell what occurs in

the book. The frequency of these strands throughout the text help accommodate for the constraint
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of the large variety of language levels within the classroom, which can become challenging for

teachers to navigate during lessons. Further, the text identifies the constraint of learner’s lack of

interest in learning the target language through the inclusion of many activities that increase

motivation. Specific examples include introducing the lesson on substituting vowel sounds with

a funny riddle, taking the students on a walk around the school to look at the plants and apply

their learnings from the book about plants, having students draw their own pictures of plants to

label, and by having students discuss with friends. These tactics touch on all of the various

learning styles, which enables all types of learners to engage more with the learning in their own

way – increasing their motivation to learn. Though there could have been more of these

interactive activities throughout the lesson, it is evident that they tried to include some activities

to increase motivation. The text also well accounted for the lack of school resources by utilizing

activities that do not require a large amount of purchase resources. For example, the

aforementioned activities solely require the teaching finding a riddle online to say in class,

walking, paper and pencils, and student discussion. Thus, these activities, though highly

engaging and motivational, well utilize the resources available within the classroom and school

context.

The course text did not do a good job of accounting for the constraints of learners’ sole

use of the first language outside of the classroom context, learners’ ability to get the resources

they need, and the limited time available for learning. The text did a subpar job of accounting for

learners’ sole use of the first language beyond the classroom context. Though the course text

included many strands that provided scaffolds for English Language Learners, it did not

incorporate the first language at all throughout the book. Since this constraint means learners are

mainly utilizing the first language beyond the classroom, it would have been best to utilize the
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L1 within the classroom to assist students in transferring their knowledge from the L1 to the L2.

In addition, since learners are only using the L1 at home, the coursebook should have provided

take home practice materials that guide parents on how to have their child practice in the target

language at home even if they do not speak it. Beyond this, the coursebook in no way considers

the constraint of learners’ inability to get the resources they need to complete activities at home

or to practice with the language at home. If learners are lacking pencils or paper, they simply

would not be able to complete the activity at home. Also, though the book provides scaffolds, it

does not mention versions of the scaffolds for language learners that they can take home when

they do their homework. Finally, the coursebook does an awful job of accounting for the

constraint of limited time. What is provided as the plan for one singular lesson would truly have

to be done in five separate classes. Each lesson is extremely long to the point that to not fall

behind, the teacher would have to choose one or two of the five mini lessons within the lesson

plan for one day. The problem with this is that if the teacher is doing this, they are no longer

utilizing the lesson the way the curriculum designer intended it to be used, which could lead to

less effective or successful learning.

Principles of Focus
The principles of focus for this context have been identified as strategies and autonomy,

language system, learning burden, motivation, four strands, integrative motivation, and learning

style.

The coursebook shows strength in its ability to apply the majority of the principles of

focus for the class. It shows strength in its application of the principles of strategies and

autonomy, language system, motivation, four strands, and learning style. It promotes learner

autonomy by providing checkboxes that are specifically for RTI, but that can be generalized to

all students. In these boxes it breaks down how to best provide corrective feedback for various
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things on the page to the teachers. These steps of corrective feedback include identifying the

error, correcting the error, guiding why it was an error, and checking their understanding.

Through these steps, teachers are identifying the error so learners are aware, as well as

explaining what made it an error and having them self-correct it. Learners can utilize these

strategies to check their own language errors and to commit less errors through the knowledge of

what was incorrect. In addition to this, learner autonomy is promoted by having learners predict

what each story is about and having the students set their own reading purposes prior to reading

each story. Language system is well promoted through the use of strategies such as practicing

high frequency words daily, teaching general vowel sound substitution rather than particular

words, practicing the strategy of grouping words in sentences to understand how they go

together, and having children walk around the school and connect what they learned about plants

in the book to the context of the plants around their school. Further, the vocabulary in context

cards do a great job of promoting the principle of language system by showing the word, its

picture, asking what it means, asking how to use it, and then having the student talk it over. To

illustrate, the card for “few” asked students to think about their classroom and whether it had

“few” or many of each item listed. Student motivation is promoted through the strategies of

using a fun riddle to introduce the lesson, enabling students to walk around the school to connect

their learning, and allowing students to draw pictures of plants to label. To list another strength,

all four strands are utilized equally in the text and are even combined for the best learning

experience at times. Meaning-focused input is utilized through having students read the story,

listen to a story be read by the teacher, and listen to their partner’s retell of the story. Language-

focused learning is utilized through the repetition systems for practice, the sound and spelling

cards, the phonemic awareness warm-ups, and having students identify words with similar
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endings. Meaning-focused input is included by having students practice repetition and blending

out loud and having them retell the story to a partner. There is a fluency model section in each

mini lesson within the larger lesson. To illustrate a guided practice activity connecting sounds to

writing: the text had students say each word aloud to the teacher, then identify each of the

sounds, and finally write the letters that stand for each sound. This activity connected all of the

four strands at once. Finally, the text truly incorporates all of the learning styles students may

have through its various activities and simply the way the text was written. For visual learners

there are highlighted vocabulary words, pictures on the vocabulary context cards, and an activity

that guides children to draw a plant on paper and then label its parts. For the aural learners, they

can listen to the teacher read the story, listen to classmates retell the story, or listen as the sounds

are broken down for a word. Verbal learners can engage in the repetition activities, retell the

story to a friend, and split up the sounds in a word. The physical learners have the opportunity to

walk around the school to analyze plants.

The coursebook demonstrated weakness in its application of the principles of learning

burden and integrative motivation. Though the text included questions that asked children to

describe gardens they had seen or helped plant as a way of integrating previous knowledge, it

only did so once. Also, the text did not provide any way for language learners to transfer their

knowledge from their L1 to their L2 prior to a new lesson. In addition, the coursebook in no way

attempts to ensure learner integrative motivation. There are no activities built in that would

reinforce and ensure that learners have favorable attitudes to the target language, users of the

language, the teacher’s skill in teaching it, and their chance of success in it.

Conclusion & Implications

My overall evaluation of the Journey Integrated Language Arts text for first grade is that

it has many strong features and qualities within it that satisfy the potential constraints identified

through the environmental analysis, meet the learner needs pinpointed in the needs analysis, and

apply the majority of the principles that align best with the goals for the course. This text is

useful for classroom contexts with a large variety of language learners of different levels,

increasing motivation to learn the target language, and operating in a context with limited

resources. The text is also useful to satisfy the needs of all types of learning styles, to incorporate

all four strands, and to focus on generalizable features of the language and mold independent

language learners. This text would play a large role as a coursebook because it provides too

many activities for the time period of a lesson, enabling the teacher to choose which aspects of

the lesson best meet the needs of their students in the moment. It would also be especially helpful

in a context with a newer teacher because the text breaks down scaffolding certain learners,

activities, and what to say during the lesson in a step by step format.

It would be best for teachers to utilize this as a sourcebook, alongside external activities

from other sources due to the limitations of the text. Teachers would need to find other activities

to introduce lessons in a way that ties in language learners’ L1 and helps them to access the

background knowledge they have on the subject in both the L1 and target language. The few

times the book does this, it simply focuses on background knowledge in the target language, but

does nothing to scaffold the transfer of information from the L1 to the L2. Other activities would

need to promote a positive view of the teacher’s skills, the users of the target language, the

learners’ ability to succeed in the target language, and the language itself. This is a more specific,

yet vital form of learner motivation that must be promoted. The teachers will have to think

critically about the needs of their class, as found in the needs analysis, to determine which
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aspects of the lesson to keep and which to skip. Each lesson is much too long and it is not

possible for a teacher to do all of the stories or activities in a singular learning session. Further

the teacher must make adaptations for learners to utilize when they go home. This includes the

creation of materials that learners can take home with them that guide parents through assisting

them in practicing the target language or enable learners to do so independently at home. The

teacher should also conduct a survey to identify which learners do not have the proper materials

at home to complete their work and allow them to sign out classroom materials for the evening

accordingly.

The implications of this text are that this content level text, among many other course

texts for this subject area, often do not include a way for teachers to incorporate learners’ L1,

making it difficult for learners to transfer knowledge from their first language to the target

language. Further, the limitations of this text in satisfying certain constraints emphasizes the

need for texts to consider the resources and access students may lack at home which can

negatively impact their ability to succeed academically. Texts should provide materials that

teachers can give students to take home and practice either independently or with guardians.

They should provide specific guidance so guardians can work with the student at home, whether

or not they speak the target language. Schools should have systems in place that allow students

to borrow simple academic materials overnight so they can complete their assignments at home.

These implications will be implemented into my curriculum design, as well as a larger

consideration of the time available for each lesson.

References
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. (2014). Journeys Common Core: Teachers Edition (Grade 1, Unit

5).

Macalister, J., & Nation, I. S. P. (2009). Language curriculum design. Routledge.