Choosing Coursebooks is one of the primary functions of educational management and leadership. A plethora of publishing materials are brought out every year and publishers organise school visits and training sessions to showcase the unique methodological aspects of each coursebook and to attract a larger market share. Exhibitions and conferences are organised for the same reason. Despite all this investment and the intellectual effort behind it, it is possible that schools may make the wrong choice and then a number of issue emerge. In this article I am planning to discuss some of the root causes of making misinformed coursebook (CB) choices. Mention will be made of the impact of this choice on the school focusing on education, operational and practical reasons, while also suggesting a course of action.
How could we have chosen the wrong coursebook?
There are many reasons behind unsuccessful choices, each of which could be an article. Some of them are:
It was the offer that we chose, not the coursebook per se.
Choosing CBs is a time-consuming, deeply academic process which has little to do with having coffee with the representative of the publishing house. The former is an internal process in which requires the engagement of several members of staff over a period of time, while the latter is just a function of public relations and marketing. Sadly, in many cases the choice is made over a cup of coffee. School owners are lured by offers made by publishers, especially if the adoption of coursebooks is top down across different levels and classes. The notion of introducing CBs by a single publisher from the lowest CEFR levels to the highest ones, ought to raise some eyebrows, but we have become accustomed to it.
The process of CB evaluation is not followed
The deeply academic process mentioned above is a mini teacher-training course that requires patience and investment three times a year, every year. Therefore, it is much easier to make hasty choices, putting our faith in what the reps tell us and not actually examining if the CB works in our context. McGrath (2016), Tomlinson and Masuhara (2018) and several other academics have provided detailed steps for ELT managers and teachers to follow when choosing coursebooks. According to these, the school year ends with a thorough post-use evaluation of the previous coursebook so that its flows can be highlighted. This stage is followed by a detailed needs’ analysis and some profiling of the learners. Finally, teachers discuss their theoretical beliefs and turn these into criteria for coursebook evaluation (Tomlinson & Masuhara, 2018), creating a commonly agreed-upon checklist to review different coursebook packages. A distinction needs to be made between impressionistic or first glance evaluation (McGrath 2016) which targets a large number of coursebook packages and aims to identify the ones that clearly do not work for our particular context. The second type focuses on specific coursebooks (more like a case study) and engages teachers in an in-depth analysis of their characteristics and unique features.
Everybody was going for this coursebook, so I did too!
Falling victims of trends, may spell disaster in the case of materials’ choice. Choosing CB cannot be done across schools as each school has its own identity and teaching biography. When school owners are influenced by marketing gimmicks or by what other schools will be working on (either to copy or to avoid the choice) or when they consider one publisher as their main and constant supplier, then it is no wonder how the wrong CBs are chosen.
What is the impact of this unsuccessful choice?
The impact of choosing the wrong coursebook can be observed in three different dimensions: educational, operational and practical.
Educational
When we have a CB that is not suitable for our learners, it is clear from the first week that the CB cannot function in our teaching context. The material might be too hard or too easy. Learners may be getting demotivated in either case. In the case of material that is harder, teachers may have to slow down dangerously. In the opposite one, they may need to add material that creates costs in terms of their investment in time and effort and in terms of school’s materials and resources.
Keith Jonhson has written (2008, p. 26) that in the field of applied linguistics nothing happens in vacuum. This is true of coursebook choices. Syllabus design is based on the CB chosen, assessment reflects the CB and its assessment ideology, material coverage and learning outcomes are affected by the number of units successfully covered. This needs to be noted. Despite the fact that omission of material from coursebooks is a perfectly acceptable choice (Harmer 2007, p. 146) we can hardly claim that level B1 has been covered when all we have to show is three units done out of twelve. Another negative aspect of such extensive omission is the loss of cohesion and coherence of the material. In the opposite case, when we cover the material in a sluggish way as it is too hard for the learners, we may reach May and find that we are in unit 8 out of ten or twelve. If that material gets transferred to the next school year, students will have conquered level B1 by December of the following year. The idea of adding June classes to cover the material only makes things worse from a financial aspect creating a variety of losses on multiple levels.
Operational
When the coursebook seems not to be working, it is important to establish who makes the complaint. It is different when the learners or their parents raise issues and it is entirely different when the teachers complain. In all these cases, management needs to listen. Even if teachers like the coursebook, the fact that learners have issues with it needs to be taken into consideration and addressed. In fact, getting learner feedback is an important component of coursebook evaluation (Tomlinson & Masuhara, 2018).
Realistically there is little chance that teachers will enjoy teaching a coursebook learners dislike. If learners dislike a coursebook, they nag to their parents or they resort to their parents for help, which will bring the parents to the school owner’s office for complaints. Last but not least, teachers when asked to devote time to create the material instead of being able to rely on what they have been given will naturally complain. Despite the fact that all ELT managers expect teachers to use their coursebooks creatively (Harmer 2007, p.147), we do need to be mindful of the fact that not all teachers are capable material designers (and not all material designers would make good teachers), neither is the hourly compensation for teaching enough to ask teachers to redesign coursebooks.
Practical
The coursebook is an investment made by the school in terms of the time devoted on lesson planning, assessment planning and activities. It is also an investment on the part of the families of our students. Therefore, simply telling learners to forget about this coursebook and buy another one is not an option. The most serious practical problem is that with every wrong choice, we undermine our clients’ faith in us and our work.
Is there an easy way out of the wrong choice of coursebook?
In a nutshell, no! But there is still hope and this is adaptation. The plan I am suggesting is based on the adaptation process suggested by Tomlinson and Masuhara (2018, p. 104). Their steps, when the terms differ, appear in brackets.
Step 1 Map the problem (Profiling Teaching Context – Identify Reasons for adaptation)
This is a process that requires meetings with the teachers to identify the specific issues to be addressed. During these meetings, a detailed needs analysis and profiling of the learners will take place to ensure that the material will target their needs.
Step 2: See what can be used of the material we have (Evaluate existing material)
This is again a meeting in which teachers and management identify parts of each unit which can be used. For example, while the texts are effective the reading tasks might be too few or too easy. Therefore, we can keep the texts and re-design the reading tasks. In the opposite case, if the coursebook features an overloaded grammatical syllabus simplification needs to take place guided by a comparing of the material against the CEFR or the Cambridge ESOL handbooks for the relevant level exams to see which target structures we need to teach.
Step 3 Discuss the book with the Learners (List objectives for adaptation)
Getting only our items on the agenda will not take us very far. Onboarding the learners and listening to their side may change the picture entirely. We need to be cautious, though, as we do not want to undermine the book, the writers or the publisher in the eyes of the students. We need to remember that teachers’ views and criticism of the CB can affect the students’ faith in the material (Tomlinson & Masuhara, 2018).
Step 4 Adaptation
During this stage teachers are given instructions and each of them undertakes one or two units on which to work. They will each create sharable materials. Editing needs to take place with one teacher editing the work produced by the other. At this point the major ethical issue of how the teachers will be paid for this work crops up, but as this is not part of this article I will discuss it in a future one.
Step 5 Revision
Tomlison and Masuhara advise that the cycle of evaluation be repeated for the adapted material. This is needed as a safety precaution but it may seem a bit exaggerated. One aim we need to set is to safeguard, as much as possible, the coherence of the new material and to integrate it smoothly with the existing coursebook material.
Before starting the adaptation process, it is important to reach out to the publisher and share your thoughts and fears. They will be able to provide tools, help and even training to support the teachers. Additionally, to that, school owners can talk to colleagues who teach the same coursebook to see how they feel and get an understanding whether their situation is their only or inherent with this coursebook.
Closing thoughts
Adaptation is inevitable. Large scale adaptation, though, may end up “axing” the unique features of the coursebook to the point of rendering it unrecongisable to its authors as it harms in coherence (McGrath, 2016). Instead of struggling to make the wrong coursebook work, let us invest time and effort to choose the correct one.