Every school year, many of us wonder how necessary it is to adopt a course book for our classes. Will students profit from having a book? Will it save me time? Will it help me set the context every time I need to present language? Will there be characters my students can identify with and grow fond of? Will the stories and songs be catchy? Will there be stickers and crafts that help motivate my kids?
To make the whole questions of whether to use a textbook or not even a tougher one, I have recently watched a really thought-provoking webinar given by Geoff Jordan, current Ph.D. Tutor in distance learning MA TESOL at Leicester University and a self-described anarchist.
To make it clear from the beginning, Jordan calls ELT coursebooks “the perfect commodity”, and he believes it’s important to expose the current ELT industry as a commercial racket that has led to poor teaching. Today’s ELT is driven by commercial companies. Geoff Jordan argues that to teach languages well, one needs to know how people learn them, and that current English Language teaching (ELT) practice largely ignores this vital question. There is actually a huge mis-match between teaching language as an object and actually involving learners in using it.
He begins with the assertion that coursebook-driven ELT, which implements a (grammar-based) synthetic syllabus is inefficacious because more than 70% of classroom time is spent on activities and instruction that aim to improve explicit knowledge about the target language. Pursuing such a syllabus and methodology is unlikely to produce students who have communicative competence in the target language.
Coursebooks treat L2 as an object of instruction. The language is cut up and presented explicitly, explained and then practised bit by bit, dealing with the whole process in a pre-determined sequence. However, each learner’s unique interlanguage is not being considered. This interlanguage is influenced by the learner’s L1, and may show variance in terms of ‘accuracy’ at different times. This means that “instruction pitched at a level for which students are not psycholinguistically ready will not help, and will not make them skip a stage in a developmental sequence” (Jordan & Long, 2022, p.51). Robust SLA research findings support the view that people learn languages by developing their own internal interlanguage through input and doing things in the target language. This is mostly a process of implicit learning. It´s implicit language learning what drives communicative competence.
He states that there are basically three problems with today’s way of teaching though coursebooks:
Problem 1 : Impoverished input, interactions and output
- Input consists of short, safe, humdrum texts with no spark and output is also short, and there are infrequent turns. This problem is based on the assumption that SLA is a process whereby declarative knowledge (learning about the language) converts to procedural knowledge (knowing how to use the language)
Problem 2: Learnability
- Coursebooks lead students through a pre-selected sequence of structural elements. However, interlanguage development is dynamic, non-linear. This problem is based o the assumption that SLA is a process of mastering one by one, accumulating structural items, when in fact all the items are inextricably interrelated.
Problem 3: Quantity and quality
- Teacher talking time takes up more than 70 percent of classroom time, so there is little oral communicative practice needed to achieve communicative competence. Implicit learning is impeded. This problem is based on the assumption that learners learn what they are taught when they are taught it, when in fact they will learn it when they are ready. There are developmental sequences that can´t be skipped, even if we try to speed up the process of language acquisition. Therefore, teachers are facilitators, not controllers, of their student’s language learning. As Pienemann (1987) puts it, “teachability is constrained by learnability.” You can’t teach learners what they’re not ready to learn, and we don’t know enough about interlanguage development to base a syllabus on the sequential presentation and practice of items of the target language.
So, you might wonder, what are the alternatives?
Jordan and Long are advocates of TBLT. “In TBLT, task is the unit of analysis, the course content consists of pedagogic tasks, and the syllabus is organized by sequencing the pedagogic tasks from simple to complex. TBLT programs start with a needs analysis aimed at identifying target tasks, and, in contrast to coursebook-driven programs, the derived pedagogic tasks entail students doing things in the L2 and discovering language by themselves through scaffolded class-based activities, rather than teachers talking about the L2. TBLT treats the language holistically, respects SLA research findings, and emphasises implicit learning” (Jordan & Long, 2022, p.160).
It’s important to stress that alternatives to coursebook-driven ELT, like TBLT and Dogme, acknowledge the important role played by explicit instruction and by materials which draw explicit attention to formal aspects of the target language play. For example, effectively timed Focus-on-Form feedback, both positive and negative, provided at the point of need is more likely to aid in noticing and therefore speed up the process of moving through certain stages. A TBLT or Dogme approach doesn’t suppose that students will just pick up the language. In the case of TBLT, we begin with a needs analysis which identifies “Target tasks” – things that the student cohort need to do in the target language. From the identified target tasks, we develop a series of pedagogic tasks which use materials containing the input necessary to do the tasks. Most of classroom time is dedicated to students working through these pedagogic tasks, getting help and feedback from the teacher as they go along. We don’t know enough about interlanguage development to base a syllabus on the sequential presentation and practice of items of the target language. Much better, surely, to have a good idea of the students’ needs and to then base the syllabus on developing a series of tasks and a corresponding bank of materials which involve the students doing things in the target language, using appropriate input-rich materials and getting on-going support and feedback from the teacher.
Lots of food for thought…
Further reading / viewing:
Blog Review by Jim Fuller about “English Language Teaching Now and How It Could Be”
Teacher as Workers Interview with Geoff Jordan Part I
Geoff Jordan´s Blog
Task-based Learning video with Geoff Jordan
A recent article from Geoff on coursebooks: https://academic.oup.com/eltj/article…
Mike Long on TBLT, Focus on Form & Philosophy of Education podcast
About ELT 