ELT Publishing Trendspotter 2010 Part One
Flicking through the 2010 Pearson Longman was quite interesting (interesting for TEFL okakus), and here is what I noticed:
- More books bought off of smaller publishers by big publishers to fill a hole in their catalogue, this time off of the Victorian textbook workhouse that is Express Publishing. I wonder if Pearson even know that the only parts “Virginia Evans” and “Jenny Dooley” write of their books is their names on the cover??
- There are no, that is zero, new methodology books due in 2010. Instead, there are two more installments to Teacher Development Interactive, an “online course for ELT professionals”. Upon successfully completing any four modules you will receive the First TEFL Certificate (My First TEFL Certificate?) from Hunter College, City University of New York. I’ll leave aside questions of whether it really is “internationally recognised” because Pearson probably has the power to make it so if they really go for it, which makes the interesting question of whether a publisher being behind a TEFL Cert is healthy competition for Cambridge and Trinity or just more unhealthy power for the publishers. Over to you…
- The other possible thought for Methodology is that if it makes so little money you may as well offer it for free on your shiny new www.pearsonlongman.com. Predictably this will include a chance to upload and share your own resources (The TEFL YouTube? Isn’t www.eslprintables.com already that?) along with other “teacher community” stuff like blogs and wikis. Less predictably, they will sell stuff online directly, which I believe is a first for the big four, and in fact unusual even with the small 1000
- The other online thing is MyEnglishLab, which is an attempt to do what you might be thinking of doing with school websites, wikis and other stuff I don’t understand, no doubt aimed at people like me who don’t understand- or at least people who are like me but have the money to pay for such things
- The CD ROM that has been coming with most catalogues for a while now comes with author talks and “teaching resources”, in I imagine an attempt to get people who think they aren’t interested in buying anything still to have a look. I didn’t, so I can’t say whether you should or not
- IWB software, DVD ROMs, online dictionary on your smart phone, blah dee blah, so 2009 man!
Should you want to check out these or other new stuff from Pearson (there are books too!) and others in 2010, jump on the TEFL.net free TEFL resources bandwagon here.
December 7th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
It’s a business. They do what they want. Don’t believe the hype.
December 12th, 2009 at 9:03 am
Interesting post and a keen eye for certain trends there Alex. You’re always on the ball. One thing I have also noticed is the alarming drop in Teacher Methodology books. OUP’s series has stopped, they are starting another one but it seems to have less of a profile. Macmillan’s series for teachers is slowing down, and in general I think there are less around.
This is largely because teachers aren’t buying. Delta publishing is still bringing out methodology books, which are pretty good (even if I do say so myself as the series editor
but gone are the days of lots and lots of new methodology books for teachers. Photocopiable books, too. Remember those? Good luck in finding more than a couple new ones on the market now.
Someone has suggested this gap might be filled by the blogosphere, and teachers can get it and give it all free. As you are one of the great-granddaddys of this medium in ELT what are your thoughts Alex?
December 12th, 2009 at 10:11 am
My thought is what I tried to explain in the post, that the publishers are thinking not so much that we will fill in the gaps for free but if they aren’t going to make much money out of methodology books and the cost of them will make them inaccessible to most teachers, they may as well just offer that stuff for free online to get teachers on their websites to buy their coursebooks. Alternatively, they may be thinking of moving more of that kind of stuff into teachers’ books, e.g. the methodology bits at the back of Natural English.
PS, if I’m the great-granddaddy, what does that make http://eflgeek.com/ ??
January 3rd, 2010 at 10:37 am
I was wrong about publishers selling directly online being new, seems OUP does it as well, e.g. the button on this page (except France and Morocco, for some reason):
http://www.oup.com/elt/catalogue/isbn/0-19-442594-0?cc=global#sample_pdf
January 6th, 2010 at 1:03 am
I’m coming a bit late to the comment board on this one but could you elaborate on the bit where you wrote “I wonder if Pearson even know that the only parts “Virginia Evans” and “Jenny Dooley” write of their books is their names on the cover??”
Do they use ghost writers and how do you know?
January 6th, 2010 at 2:18 am
When I was last there (in the Express Publishing offices) they had a team of about 20 full time writers in their office plus a few outside freelancers, none of whom get their names mentioned anywhere in the books that they write. Virginia Evans and Jenny Dooley are the totally made up “English names” of the Greek owner and her daughter
April 1st, 2010 at 3:12 pm
I’m not sure if I’ve ever taught a Pearson Longman. I teach English in southern Italy, and we usually use Eli (Italianized), Oxford or MacMillan (sp?). What’s their best-selling core text for students? Great info, by the way- makes me feel caught up- though I’m so used to teaching “bookless”.