How the future of textbooks has to be
Looking back on my 12 years of teaching English, if it is not just old age speaking I could swear that the first couple of years after I did my initial certificate (CELTA) were a golden age for EFL textbooks. It’s not that they made your lessons any easier or taught the learners the language any better than the textbooks coming out now, but there was just a feeling in the air that books like Cutting Edge and Innovations were the beginning of a new wave of books that was going to fundamentally change the way we teach forever. You could call that period the Modernist Age of Textbooks.
But modernism leads inevitably, it seems, to post-modernism. Since those optimistic days the ELT publishing industry seems to have given up that radical mission as if changing the world was just a hippy dream. Not that the world of textbooks has entirely stood still, but even the most different-looking of the new bunch (e.g. Natural English) only concentrate on what we should teach rather than how we should teach it- which is strange, because the conclusions that lead people to look for new ways to teach have been backed up by more and more research and have gone from controversial to commonly accepted during that time.
The three most fundamental parts of our newly certain knowledge are:
-What we teach is not the same as what students learn
-There is a long delay and many stages between coming across the language for the first time and mastering it
-People learn differently and so learn different things at different speeds
Until a textbook deals with the points above (and I have yet to see a teacher’s book that even mentions all three in full), whether we teach more natural English, more collocations, more international English etc. is not really a question I can get excited about. The question is how we teach any of these points.
Below are my initial ideas on how to create a textbook that takes the three factors above into account….
You can see the rest of this article on the Developingteachers website here, and then comment below:
October 30th, 2008 at 1:50 am
Very much in agreement here. (and congratulations on a very interesting and inspiring site)
I feel textbooks peaked with Inside Out and have slumped since then. I’m really starting to question the validity of basing a course on a textbook and think it is not serving students or teachers very well at all. DOS’s and book publishers seem to be the only winners.
The idea of having a whole course laid out and bound into a book seems odd when you stop to think about it. A large proportion of the material is going to be superfluous, irrelevant or sub-standard and will not be used unless there is no alternative or students/managers insist on doing everything.
I have moved towards a modular approach, finding activities/tasks that motivate students and then providing language feedback/input until diminishing returns sets in. This varies on the age/background of the students and I found Korean adults keep going with a task/activity far longer than most. Having built up resources across a wide range of topics I can then select something appropriate for the level/stage of course and run with it until the point is driven home or as far home as it can be expected to go for the time being.
Anyway - very interesting points. It’s clear practising professional teachers need a fresh approach along the lines you suggest. Sadly, I doubt the publishers will see any return if they meet this need and I foresee more rehashes of old ideas will be churned out year after year.
In discussing textbooks we mustn’t forget they are produced and marketed to make money. Not to help students learn or teachers teach. I may be cynical but still hope EFL will break out of the dark age it is now going through.
October 31st, 2008 at 2:28 am
Thanks Andy
I see your point that experienced teachers who want to experiment with a new approach are few and far between and probably those least likely to use any kind of textbook, so indeed we are unlikely to get the book we need soon as it is more work for the publishers for less financial return. Oh well…