TweetYou’ve taught with a coursebook, haven’t you? How did that go for you? Did you enjoy using it? Did your learners like it? Do you think that it met their needs? While I’d be surprised if many of you said ‘no’ to the first question, I’m sure your responses to the others will be more mixed and probably less positive on the whole.
Now, I’ve asked you to do quite a bit of reading on my blog recently, so I thought I’d give you a break and make a video post. This video clip explains my thoughts on course books in general, and I make my position clear through the use of what I consider to be a perfect analogy.
I’d really like your thoughts on this issue, so please don’t be shy in commenting on this post, OK?
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Hi Adam,
I really like the video post idea, and I liked the analogy as well. I think the first problem about coursebooks is how teachers use them instead of their existence or being too general. I agree that every class has a different cultural background, needs, interests and abilities. Actually it is not every class, we must say ‘every student’ (and this takes us to the problems of education systems but it’s another topic.). You cannot use aVW Golf manual for a BMW thinking that it should be ok because both of them are cars. But this is not true for coursebooks. You can do all sorts of changes. You can leave out activities, add new ones or modify the existing content according to your students’ needs. (Here I am assuming that you made a correct choice in terms of age and language level. Otherwise making changes and adding things wouldn’t work either.) Unfortunately, when teachers (optimistically ‘some’ teachers) are given a coursebook, they just think that they have to cover everything in the book from A-Z. They think that they cannot explain to the administration or parents why they haven’t covered some parts of the book. Well, I think they can. They can, only if they come up with pedagogically sound reasons and good alternatives. Of course it might be difficult to explain if they haven’t covered 80% of the book (which I think means that book was a wrong choice).
Also when I think about the problems of our teacher education system and the profile of the teachers (at least 60% of them) I’ve seen in 12 years, I think ‘not using’ a coursebook cannot be an option. It has several reasons like not being comfortable with modern teaching methods, lack of motivation, language skills, and supplementary resources, heavy workload, etc.
I want to finish with an analogy:) I think changing the elements of a coursebook is like changing a recipe in a cookbook. We might think that the meal is going to taste better (or become healthier) if we make changes in the recipe. So why not do it? The authors & publishers give us different recipes. If we think that a particular activity will ‘taste’ better if we add some ‘group work’ in it, why not do it?
Have a good weekend!
Burcu
Hi Burcu, it’s great to have you visiting my blog and giving such a long and well considered response.
I think in terms of picking or choosing parts of a book, the analogy doesn’t fully work. I mean, you wouldn’t take a car’s engine apart and then put it back together if all you needed to do was change a tire, would you? Nevertheless, I could see a totally re-imagined way of teaching English, along this line of thinking. A ‘Manual of Teaching/Learning the English of ‘Specific Subject X” could serve as a long-term coursebook that the user delves into whenever they need it for specific aspects of language. The questions, of course, would be ‘how to teach with such a book’ and ‘how to get a student of the language to accept the idea of a non-linear program of learning’.
As far as your ‘no coursebook’ point is concerned, I agree that it’s an almighty challenge that is probably insurmountable for most people / institutions. While coursebooks are compiled using a great deal of scientific data on the language, making them accurate reflections of current use, they are sanitized to make them usable my as big a market as possible, making them a docile, flat experience for both teacher and learner.
I think your recipe book idea is quite intriguing, and where I see that being a possibility is in a vastly enhanced teacher’s book. One series I’ve seen which is doing this well is the Garnet English for Specific Purposes range. The teacher’s book is actually bigger than the student’s book, and there are many, many ‘here’s something different you could do’-type activities mentioned.
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I think the car manual analogy can be given a positive spin: Good textbooks are in fact the generic manuals. Sure, they’re not great for fine-tuning your ’73 Beetle, but the *are* a decent reference for anyone who happens to have a four-wheeled-vehicle-powered-by-an-internal-combustion-engine they want to get on the road.
After all, a piston is a piston, an axle is an axle, and a verb is a verb. It’s how we take those bits and arrange them that makes the machine–the lesson–special. We don’t need very specific manuals anyway, since students aren’t mass-produced, and the only truly perfect textbook if we follow that logic is one targeted at one single individual learner!
You have a point, Marcos. I once did a course that was an absolute beginners guide to car mechanics. It did the kind of things you suggested and was more than enough for me. I can’t say I should have been let loose on any particular car, though!
I guess we should remember that a lot of people learn English purely for the social aspect of it, both in terms of the enjoyment of being in a classroom and learning with others and the gaining of the ability to have a general chit-chat with other speakers of English. I wouldn’t therefore completely disregard the use of general course books in such situations. My concern remains, however, and that is that such books have been massively overused in situations where this isn’t the case.
A general, all-purpose book might have its place, but they have all too often been used in places which, er, aren’t their place.
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Hi Adam
I’m not sure your analogy really works in real life. While. of necessity, you would have to buy a manual which would deal with your specific model of car, to do the same with a class of students would be impractical and prohibitively expensive, and we all know that students have to balance quality of teaching with cost. After all, car manuals are designed with a specific model in mind, but published materials are not , unless they are ESP materials. Books like Headway cater for a mass market and have to be as generalised as possible to cover the market, as well as to maximise profits for the authors and publishing houses. That may sound cynical, but it’s a fact. Niche publishing, like producing car manuals, even though on a similar scale, would not really work. I personally don’t have a problem with some of the standard textbooks used in general EFL teaching; they guide and help inexperienced teachers to structure their teaching and cover most of what is required at the level they are teaching, while also providing students with a relatively inexpensive resource, though I agree, many of these published materials are of questionable value, especially as trends change over the years.
The last twenty odd years of my thirty-two-year career have been spent in ESOL teaching in FE and ACL, and the EFL type textbook is largely inappropriate. In that time I have developed numerous materials of my own, as well as made use of the Skills for Life materials produced by the then DfES for the ESOL curriculum, while also supplementing them with my own materials and materials produced and shared by others through services like http://www.talent.ac.uk and http://www.skillsworkshop.org. Being a teacher in the generally better-paid (though still underpaid) public sector has allowed me to spend more time researching and developing such materials, which can be targeted at the type of students I teach. Most teachers in the private EFL sector may not have the time or experience to develop a wide variety of suitable materials, and for this reason, textbooks may well be the best bet, imperfect though they are.
Marc Loewenthal
I totally get your point, Marc, and recognize that there are inevitable compromises to be met in getting something published. Nevertheless, in my defence, I never said that my suggest was practical or even practicable.
What I would find intriguing would be if the situation had been flipped from the start. The Haynes company clearly set out with a mandate and a really impressive one at that. They buy the model in question (and have done for every single car they’ve ever made a manual for), strip the entire vehicle down to its component parts and then put it back together again for the purpose of making each manual as useful to the customer as possible. How would things have panned out if ELT course books had started in such a way? Would anyone now accept a mass marketed all-purpose book?
I think what you’ve said about the latter part of your career is something that we would all like, to a certain extent at least. As you mention, though, developing something that really fits your context requires time, effort and, above all, the desire to do so. For that reason, I tend to agree that the conclusion I derive at the end of the video is hard if not impossible to imagine ever coming to fruition. It’s just too easy to use what we’re served up with and try to adapt it as best we can.
Thanks for the great comments so far. I have come down with flu, so will respond properly when I have a bit more energy.
Thanks again for taking an interest, I really appreciate the time and thought that went into these comments.
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Hi Adam,
I guess it all comes down to what purpose the teacher thinks the coursebook serves. If it is seen as a ‘manual’, then it will never work because, as you say in the video, one manual can not serve every ‘make’ of learner. However, if we take Burcu’s analogy of a recipe book, that means the teacher (and the learners of course) can select, adapt, chop and change.
My analogy would be a guidebook – it has plenty of informaiton about what to see and do but ultimately you choose your own route.
I also agree with Burcu’s comments about the problem lying with those teachers who just want to go through the book in order as described in the teacher’s book (perhaps that is the book that should be compared to the Haynes manual!) Or even worse, those teachers who think they have to pre-teach everything like a full on present perfect presentation just because the first line in a reading passage says ‘Many people have done something or other over the years’!!
Thanks, Dave, it’s a pleasure to have you back at my blog!
I can’t help but feel that there’s a vicious circle at work here; schools use these mass market books and test according to the contents; teachers have to teach according to the book so as to meet test requirements; Schools see that the books are, on face value, effective; schools continue to use these mass market books and test according to the contents. While it isn’t the approach for me, I can fully understand why some people ‘go by the book.’
You say that you guess it all comes down to what purpose the teacher thinks the coursebook serves. I’d suggest a ‘bigger picture’ question: what input do teachers have in choosing a book that meets their purposes? Until the people who are doing the teaching have at least some say in the primary tool they are required to use in the classroom, I can’t see there being much change.
Here’s a scenario that strikes me as typical. School gives me a book and tells me not to just go through it cover to cover as the students will be bored. I know this and only ever intended to dip in and out of it, asking (in company business) students what they wanted to focus on. A month later I’m told I have to give a test after 2 months. I’m no told what the test will contain but it will be based on the book. I now have to start covering material I had skipped because I can see it’s testable. I’m given the test the week before. It’s the Review section photocopied from the book. For students to pass I either should have covered every single part of the book or help them. Going forward I can cover every part of the book in time for the next “test” (all classes need to do the same one so it’s standardised) or do what I think the class would benefit from and help the students with the test. The latter makes sense pedagogically but I get the feeling the students think I’m a bad teacher because I’m cheating. The pick and choose, adapt the coursebook approach works when you’re free to do that but I don’t find most language schools really allow for it.
Thanks, Nicola. How may times have I been in this situation? You’re deceived into thinking the coursebook policy is a liberal one and that you’re free to take lessons in any direction you wish, only to have a nightmarish rush to cover all those little grammar McNuggets at the last minute as they’ll all be in the exam. To be honest, I’d rather be told that I have to cover the book; at least that way I’d know where I and the learners stood.
This is all part of the vicious circle I alluded to in an earlier comment; if the course book provides a test, we can assume it’s standard; if the test is standard, all the students should get the same language input; to get the same language input, we all need to cover units X, Y and Z. While this has always felt lazy and even a dereliction of duty, I can see why it happens, especially with language schools who need to keep the punters paying for that follow up course. The real shame is that many learners will never have been given the chance at studying an English course tailored to their needs, and so continue to accept the *Headwayification* of language learning as the unquestioned norm.
Thanks again for the great comments. You’re giving me plenty to think about. I’m still suffering from the flu and the medication is wearing off faster than I can – meaningfully – respond, so please bear with me!
Thanks again to everyone who has taken the time to share their thoughts on this.
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Hi Adam,
I like your analogy – it’s just brilliant. You tackled a very important problem, which I noticed myself. At my daughter’s school, in the first grade, the teacher tasked pupils with colouring homework, which usually lasts for two hours. Detailed pictures had to be coloured painstakingly, and it was English homework for 6-year old children! I talked to the teacher about any justification for such a pointless, difficult, and time-consuming homework. The response was: “because such tasks are in the course book.” That happens when you treat your course book too seriously, unquestioningly trusting the authors.
Thanks, PBET. I know exactly what you mean. My son was recently given four pages of notes and his homework was to copy them out into his own notebook. I would have been happier if he’d been told to get his own photocopy of the pages and then exercise his hand with a stress ball for an hour or two. It would have had the same result on his poor wrist, plus he could have read a book while he was exercising.
I think, as I mentioned before in a reply to another comment, if we can’t get away from the one-size-fits-all course book, then the publishers can at least go with developing teacher’s books with a much better level of guidance and wider range of alternative pathways that can be taken from the source material. Some publishers are going this way – I mentioned Garnet as being a good example – but we need to be more demanding, perhaps!
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A perfect analogy for our problems with coursebooks? http://t.co/5NVCR7oj
RT @yearinthelifeof: A perfect analogy for our problems with coursebooks? http://t.co/5NVCR7oj
A perfect analogy for our problems with coursebooks? http://t.co/sD0QyHU3
Hi, that’s a nice post.Thanks for sharing.