Fifty-five years and counting: A half-century of getting it half-right?

McCarthy, Michael

doi:10.1017/s0261444820000075

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…All this did nothing to address the underlying cultural conundrum. On the contrary, ‘blocked from portraying anything but a particular version of reality by risk-averse publishers’ (McCarthy, 2020, p. 10), the PARSNIP-compliant subject matter typically presented in global coursebooks: jobs, technology, leisure, travel, the environment, entertainment (that these are all stubbornly middle-class concerns is developed below) epitomise ‘Western’ values and traits such as ambition, individualism, assertiveness and consumerism/materialism. Clutter.…”

Section: The Coursebook Under Firementioning

confidence: 99%

“…More fundamentally, despite surface level tweaks in response to criticism in this regard, coursebooks persist in portraying Britain as a homogeneous society. In terms, first of all, of class and socio-economic status, to judge by images and texts in coursebooks, this is a society that is urban, middle-class, well-educated and aspirational, ‘a world of middle-class mores and comfortable mobility […] woke and worthy dialogues and pictures of happy, shiny people with perfect teeth’ writes McCarthy (2020, p. 9), describing English File fourth edition (Oxenden, Latham-Koenig, Lambert, & Seligson, 2020) and Empower Starter (Doff, Thaine, Puchta, Stranks, & Lewis-Jones, 2020). This has been the particular hobby horse of one writer, John Gray; in, for example, ‘All middle class now?…”

Section: The Coursebook Under Firementioning

confidence: 99%

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The Global ELT coursebook: A case of Cinderella's slipper?

Mishan¹

2021

Lang. Teach.

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English language teaching (ELT) publishing as we know it today has a long and lucrative history, dating, according to Rix (2008), from the Longman publication of Michael West's New Method Readers in 1926, to the present day, where annual turnover runs to around US$194 billion (Jordan & Gray, 2019). Some of the sector's best-sellers, such as Oxford University Press's Headway series (Soars & Soars), have sold over 70 million copies (Ożóg, 2018) with OUP's English File (Latham-Koenig, Oxenden, & Lambert) selling over a million copies in China alone. Generally speaking, it is taken for granted that commercial publications in the educational sector are based on sound, accepted pedagogical principles. Early language teaching publications (from the 1950s onwards) naturally reflected practices that were thought to promote language learning at that time – such as repetition, drills and sentence-level grammar exercises. As our understanding of language learning developed, this Structural approach gave way to a Communicative one, reflecting the 1970s preoccupation with the importance of communicative competence, influenced by theorists such as Hymes (e.g. 1972) and Halliday (e.g. 1975). This approach remains the predominant one (in the West at least) 50 years later. It represents, remarkably perhaps, the last time that applied linguistics substantially influenced a language teaching approach, or at least, one that had such global reach and enduring influence. Since then, findings from the fields of applied linguistics and second language (L2) acquisition, which should have fed into language learning approaches and hence language coursebooks, have been slow to do so in any systematic or significant way. Where they have, the way in which language learning theory ‘translates’ into pedagogy in the coursebook and thence classroom, can be questionable. In parallel with this is the problem of the socio-cultural standpoint of teaching materials of an international language such as English, issuing from a particular geographic heartland, viz. England. As with applied linguistics and L2 acquisition research, developments in sociolinguistic, socio-cultural and socio-political theory have been realised in language teaching coursebooks only as a rather superficial multi-cultural gloss. The advent of ‘global’ coursebooks conceived in the 1990s, with multiple iterations, attempting to capture international appeal, still has not resolved the conundrum that language – and hence language teaching materials, that is, the combination of content and pedagogy – constitute cultural artefacts, imbued with cultural values and ideologies. All in all, as Timmis, Mukundan, and Alkhaldi laconically observe: ‘for such commonplace objects, [coursebooks] have aroused a surprising degree of controversy’ (2009, p. 11). These then, are the chief areas of contention that I will develop in this article. Opposing these issues, it will be acknowledged that coursebooks remain the default language learning resource, and that teachers and learners world-wide need, want and value them as ready-made language teaching materials.

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Section: The Coursebook Under Firementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Coursebook Under Firementioning

confidence: 99%

The Global ELT coursebook: A case of Cinderella's slipper?

Mishan¹

2021

Lang. Teach.

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Are most ELT course book writers white ‘native speakers’? A survey of 28 general English course books for adults

Kiczkowiak¹

2022

Language Teaching Research

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While numerous studies have shown how native speakerism can negatively affect the professional trajectories of those perceived as ‘non-native speaker’, little is known about the ‘native’ and ‘non-native speaker’ representation among course book authors (CBAs). Therefore, this article aims to analyse the ‘nativeness’, ethnicity and country of origin of general English CBAs to understand to what extent native speakerism affects who is recruited as a CBA. Twenty-eight general English adult course books published globally were analysed and three commissioning editors (CEs) were interviewed. The results show that out of 126 CBAs in the sample, 122 are ‘native speakers’ and 123 are white. In addition, the vast majority (79%) come from the UK. While the CEs confirmed they are committed to equality, it is clear that the current CBA recruitment policies lead to a perpetuation of native speakerism and to a situation where most general English CBAs are white ‘native speakers’ from the UK. It is suggested that greater attention is paid by CEs and publishers to recruiting more diverse CBA teams. As the interviewed CEs confirmed, such greater diversity could lead to more diversity in the content of the books.

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Who gets to be an ELT course book author? Native speakerism in English for specific purposes and business English course books

Kiczkowiak

2024

Front. Educ.

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IntroductionNative speakerism has a profound influence on many aspects of ELT, for example negatively affecting job opportunities of those perceived as ‘non-native speakers’. Nevertheless, little is known about the effect of native speakerism on the recruitment of course book authors (CBAs).MethodsTherefore, this study analysed the linguistic and ethnic representation of 161 CBAs of 77 business English business English and English for specific purposes English for Specific Purposes course books (CBs) published globally by Pearson, OUP, CUP, Macmillan and NGL.ResultsThe data clearly show that publishers tend to hire white ‘native speakers’ from the UK as CBAs. More specifically, 90% of all CBA slots were taken by ‘native speakers’, 95% by white CBAs, and 78% by CBAs from the UK.DiscussionThis indicates a profound native speakerist bias among publishers against not only ‘non-native speakers’, but also those ‘native speakers’ who are not white or do not come from the UK. It is thus suggested that business English and English for Specific Purposes publishers pay greater attention to the diversity of the author teams they hire.

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Fifty-five years and counting: A half-century of getting it half-right?

Cited by 3 publications

References 27 publications

The Global ELT coursebook: A case of Cinderella's slipper?

The Global ELT coursebook: A case of Cinderella's slipper?

Are most ELT course book writers white ‘native speakers’? A survey of 28 general English course books for adults

Who gets to be an ELT course book author? Native speakerism in English for specific purposes and business English course books

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