Published materials are a major presence in ELT classrooms. First, teachers and students spend a lot of time with them. Second, in many places there is no formal written curriculum, and so materials such as course books constitute a de facto curriculum in themselves (Hutchinson & Torres, 1994; this, for example, was very definitely the case where I taught in Poland). Such materials, then, are a central component in classroom interaction. Furthermore, like everything else in classrooms, textbooks and other materials convey morally significant messages. It is beyond the scope of this book to provide a detailed analysis of moral meanings in textbooks in general; rather, in line with my argument that all materials carry moral meanings, I have selected for examination here one book at random from the shelves of the small library of our IEP. The book is Freeway: An Integrated Course in Communicative English, written by Cheryl Pawlik and Anna Stumpfhauser de Hernandez (1995) and published by Longman; I chose Student Book 2 to examine. I selected this book merely as an example; the kinds of comments I make about it here could be made of any published textbook. I deliberately took the first book I found from the shelf and did not look at other books there (though of course I am familiar with many of them from my own teaching experiences and those of my students). Even with just a single textbook (and, at 80 pages, a slim one at that), there is a vast array of issues that could be addressed. I focus on three things: the representation of American culture, the role of the learner, and content versus form. On page 12 of the book there is a short article, accompanied by a picture, about a “sport” called “turkey bowling,” which involves the player sliding a frozen turkey across the floor of a supermarket and trying to knock over 10 large plastic bottles of soda. The article gives the rules of turkey bowling and explains that it “is becoming a popular sport in California.” One question that occurs to me is: Should this kind of article be included? I ask this for a number of reasons. First, while some people might find this activity to be merely amusing and quirky, others will find it somewhat distasteful. Second, there is also a matter of representation (Buzzelli & Johnston, 2002; Harklau, 2000): What image of American society does this convey, and is that image accurate and fair? As someone who has lived in the United States for 11 years now, this activity strikes me as being rather an unusual one compared with the other ways in which Americans spend their time, yet it is the kind of thing that often finds its way into European newspapers (and perhaps others) and conveys the image of America as a land of the bizarre and the tacky. Do students understand this? Does it matter? At one level, I would definitely suggest that this is an improvement over generalized descriptions of “American culture” found in certain textbooks, yet on another level, it seems that its representation of American culture is questionable.
Published materials are a major presence in ELT classrooms. First, teachers and students spend a lot of time with them. Second, in many places there is no formal written curriculum, and so materials such as course books constitute a de facto curriculum in themselves (Hutchinson & Torres, 1994; this, for example, was very definitely the case where I taught in Poland). Such materials, then, are a central component in classroom interaction. Furthermore, like everything else in classrooms, textbooks and other materials convey morally significant messages. It is beyond the scope of this book to provide a detailed analysis of moral meanings in textbooks in general; rather, in line with my argument that all materials carry moral meanings, I have selected for examination here one book at random from the shelves of the small library of our IEP. The book is Freeway: An Integrated Course in Communicative English, written by Cheryl Pawlik and Anna Stumpfhauser de Hernandez (1995) and published by Longman; I chose Student Book 2 to examine. I selected this book merely as an example; the kinds of comments I make about it here could be made of any published textbook. I deliberately took the first book I found from the shelf and did not look at other books there (though of course I am familiar with many of them from my own teaching experiences and those of my students). Even with just a single textbook (and, at 80 pages, a slim one at that), there is a vast array of issues that could be addressed. I focus on three things: the representation of American culture, the role of the learner, and content versus form. On page 12 of the book there is a short article, accompanied by a picture, about a “sport” called “turkey bowling,” which involves the player sliding a frozen turkey across the floor of a supermarket and trying to knock over 10 large plastic bottles of soda. The article gives the rules of turkey bowling and explains that it “is becoming a popular sport in California.” One question that occurs to me is: Should this kind of article be included? I ask this for a number of reasons. First, while some people might find this activity to be merely amusing and quirky, others will find it somewhat distasteful. Second, there is also a matter of representation (Buzzelli & Johnston, 2002; Harklau, 2000): What image of American society does this convey, and is that image accurate and fair? As someone who has lived in the United States for 11 years now, this activity strikes me as being rather an unusual one compared with the other ways in which Americans spend their time, yet it is the kind of thing that often finds its way into European newspapers (and perhaps others) and conveys the image of America as a land of the bizarre and the tacky. Do students understand this? Does it matter? At one level, I would definitely suggest that this is an improvement over generalized descriptions of “American culture” found in certain textbooks, yet on another level, it seems that its representation of American culture is questionable.
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Please keep posting man, i love your post. ESL here is wonderful for my learning resources.