English language coursebooks are a guide … but what are they showing you?

In a recent post on LinkedIn, Katherine Bilsborough asked for opinions from English language teachers who were anti-coursebook explaining why they were against using them. As it turned out, most of the comments weren’t really anti-coursebook at all – maybe because they were from people connected to Kath, who is after all … a coursebook writer! However, I think this actually just reflects how the majority of teachers view coursebooks. While there are those who loudly rant about the evils of coursebooks and suggest that they actually impede learning, and others who follow every inch of their coursebook religiously, they are not the norm. Most English language teachers around the world use a textbook but understand that they may also need to offer something beyond those books. The question is: what is that something?

Two motives for (not) using the coursebook

In the responses to Katherine’s post, there were two broad groups recommending the partial or adaptive use of coursebooks. The first was what I would call ‘philosophical’ or theoretical: the responses referred to the coursebook as a guide, a framework, or a map pf some kind. Connected to this, at least one referred to choosing a ‘good’ coursebook. Underlying these comments are, I assume, some set of principles about learning and teaching. The second group reflected what could be dubbed a ‘learner-centred’ reason: that the book does not address the needs and interests of students and their contexts. Of course, these two groups are inter-related. They may even mean the same thing, because the commenters didn’t really state any principles regarding how the coursebook was a guide. Still, let’s look at each one in turn.

Motive 1: Principles of learning and teaching. What are yours?

At this point, I should say that I wouldn’t really have expected anybody to state what their principles were in terms of how they’re guided by coursebooks. These comments came in response to a LinkedIn thread, not a request for dissertations! I’m sure the people who commented do have principles which guide them. As individual teachers, we don’t need to be constantly stating these principles for others to see, but when it comes to training and language schools, where a book is chosen to be used as a guide, I think it’s important that principles are clearly stated. If we’re upfront about our principles, teachers can make choices to fit their beliefs or join teacher training courses being open to being challenge. Similarly, if institutions like English academies and language schools are clear about their beliefs, it helps teachers better understand how they’re expected to use the coursebook they’re given and also to enter understand criteria for, say, lesson observations.

Outcomes or aims guide us in different ways

For example, in our Lexical Lab teacher development courses, we often make a distinction between an outcomes focus and an aims focus. I associate outcomes with what you want to do in the foreign language – and in particular, the things you want to say and have conversations about. The CEFR calls this an action-oriented approach.  The approach requires students to do tasks of various types in class that reflect the kinds of things that they may do outside of class. The coursebook or the teacher might provide language to support students doing these tasks in a whole variety of ways, but the focus is primarily on successful communication and mediation between students – and not on the use of particular forms or vocabulary that the teacher (or coursebook) has pre-taught.

In contrast, an aims approach starts with the idea of teaching certain rules and forms and perhaps particular sets of vocabulary, usually related to a topic or an area of ‘lexical’ grammar – phrasal verbs being a very common example. The teacher then plans exercises to practise these forms and words.

Understanding the principles underpinning these different starting points should lead to teachers making different choices both in terms of the coursebooks they choose and how they use coursebooks as a guide.

Choosing a different focus will influence what we decide to use and what we decide to reject

If we just take the idea of cutting out sections of the coursebook because of restricted class time, we might expect different approaches from the outcomes and aims mindsets. The outcomes-oriented teacher would focus on the (open) speaking tasks that the coursebook provides and would skip language input sections – perhaps in favour of giving feedback on what students try to say when doing those tasks. The focus of that feedback is, in turn, likely to be influenced by how you view language and learning. To my mind, the goal of an outcomes-oriented focus is to deal with the whole of what students are trying to say, which will be lead by a focus on vocabulary illustrated through fully ‘grammaticalized’ reformulations of what the student wanted to say or by eliciting and supporting students to stretch themselves beyond what they initially say. Apart from outcomes, I would draw on principles derived from ‘lexical’ approaches and the CEFR concept of mediation to provide a useful framework for how I give feedback and what I give feedback on.  

In contrast, we might expect an aims-driven teacher to focus on language tasks, setting up contexts or using boardwork to illustrate particular rules and then cutting or replacing speaking tasks that don’t explicitly focus on the grammar rule. These teachers may also create tasks that lexicalise the grammar rules using  a set of taught words, irrespective of the naturalness of those combinations. Again, consistent with an aims-focused teacher, the feedback on these tasks would tend towards a focus on error and correction of the particular forms and words taught rather than learner-driven ‘emergent’ language as that was not the stated aim of the lesson.

Training and institutions often leave teachers with no guide

When I first trained as a teacher, I was told that one should adapt, supplement or reject / replace material in the coursebook. However, I don’t recall ever really being exposed to possible principles for making these choices – and at least one of the commenters on Katherine’s LinkedIn thread mentioned that she had a similar experience on her CELTA course. The problem is that many teachers don’t go beyond CELTA and may get limited training from their institutions even where there is the same expectation to adapt, supplement or reject parts of your coursebook.

I have encountered places where teachers are told they should only use a coursebook 50% of the time, or where they don’t officiallyuse a coursebook at all – only to discover that the coursebook has been replaced by photocopies from … other coursebooks! These don’t sound like particularly principled choices and I can imagine this may lead to a certain inconsistency in lessons if there are no stated principles to support teachers. Teachers may struggle or they may resort to death by photocopy, and that’s not fair on those teachers or to the institution’s advantage.

Motive 2: Students’ needs and interests

When teachers say that they adapt coursebooks to the needs and interests of their students, they are, of course, also making a philosophical, principled statement: teaching and learning is more likely to be successful if it has a personal relevance to students. I agree. However, the way that we understand students’ needs and interests can still be coloured by the underlying outcomes versus aims dichotomy described above.

Is grammar really what students need?

My encounters with needs analysis early in my career found they focused pretty much entirely on grammar. An item test was given and common errors were identified from this, after which I was encouraged to do work to iron out these errors by presenting rules and doing exercises plus some speaking. You might find something very similar in so-called ‘adaptive learning’ technologies. It’s basically an aims-focused approach. We may take into account students’ interests by lexicalising the grammar in different ways. For example, instead of getting students to compare animals ,we might have our sports-mad class compare teams and players.

Some online courses and apps offer students ‘flexibility’ to study particular topics, but in many cases this just means learning sets of single words – sometimes in sentences to recycle ‘taught’ grammar, and often disconnected from the conversations that students actually have within these topic areas.

What students need / want to do with language is a better principle

Just to be clear, I do see these attempts at personalisation of learning as better than doing exercises about things students aren’t interested in at all. However, to my mind, none of this really reflects what I would think of as addressing needs and interests. From an outcomes driven perspective, I would be thinking about needs and interests in terms of the conversations and activities students need and want to do. Rather than replacing grammar with a new context, we might need to replace the tasks within a topic.

… which may mean a whole new lesson

We can imagine a coursebook having a topic on education with a task where students describe their education system or their favourite teacher. Perhaps an ESOL teacher in the UK recognises that their students’ greater need is to be able to talk to their child’s teacher(s) about their child’s progress at school and what they can do at home to support them. It’s the same topic area and so the temptation may be to simply change the task and keep the same language support / input that the book provides. But the reality is that when we analyse the language needs for the different tasks, they will be largely different. We might need to search for appropriate material elsewhere, write things ourselves, or simply get students to do the task and to mediate meanings while we intervene when the need arises and teach accordingly.

Outcomes at lower levels

Taking an outcomes approach to needs at lower levels will inevitably lead to teaching language that goes beyond what the coursebook presents in terms of grammar because even basic conversations may require multiple forms – including ones they haven’t yet ‘mastered’ – or even seen before. Again, personally, I find insights from lexical views of language useful here.  A lexical approach suggests we can initially present new grammar as lexis in the form of chunks rather than teaching all about that new form first.

There is obviously more to say about how these two different mindsets may play out and how a lexis-driven view of language impacts how we use coursebooks and how we teach. If you are interested in knowing more, keep an eye out for future blog posts, follow us on YouTube and Instagram – and why not do one of teacher development courses?

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