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

Abstract

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.

Theorising Textbook Adaptation in English Language Teaching

“…The significance of textbooks as the main medium in English language teaching (ELT) (Mishan, 2021;Tomlinson & Masuhara, 2018) as well as in other subject areas (Smart et al, 2020) has been widely recognised. As a convenient tool, textbooks allow teachers to plan and administer their lessons by using them as a guideline and resource; they expose learners to samples of the target language and help them preview and review lesson content that is presented in a visually appealing way; moreover, they encourage administrators to base courses on the sequence given in textbooks so that they function as coursebooks (Gray, 2016;McGrath, 2013).…”

An Optimization Model of English Teaching Resources Based on Distributed SOA

“…e model judging rate and root mean square error index are used to check the modeling effect of the model. e formula for calculating the model accuracy index is shown in formula (3).…”

“…e teaching resource database provides users with convenient and quick access to resources, provides resource feedback and evaluation for teaching managers, and serves as a foundation for improving the utilization rate of teaching resources and the development of educational informatization by storing and managing all types of teaching resources. In terms of teaching resource integration and optimization, digitalization of teaching resources in an information environment is easier to integrate than written materials such as books, newspapers, and periodicals, which is bene cial for resource allocation [3]. With the rapid development of digital education, online resources are rapidly expanding and exhibiting distribution, heterogeneity, and mass characteristics [4].…”

Which model of English should we teach?

“…Kirkpatrick (2021: 252) points to the notion that the native speaker variety as the best model 'has proved remarkably resilient'. Further evidence of this disregard is that international ELT coursebooks are still formulated to native-speaker norms (Gray 2002: 152;Vettorel and Lopriore 2013:487;Gray and Block 2014:3;Mishan 2021). Modiano (2006: 224) also illustrates this aspect by pointing to publishers supplying Europeans with 'an army of Standard British English grammars, dictionaries and supplemental materials'.…”