Theresa Clement was our first guest speaker on the course. Theresa is professional teacher and author of materials, with around two decades worth of experience. She currently works on pre-sessional teaching programmes and completes teacher training too. Theresa has an impressive CV and has previously worked on the Face-to-Face Cambridge series of books. Her first piece of published work was more in an editorial capacity. While working on that project she was given the opportunity to write the support books for the reading and writing skills in an Oxford University Press book called Natural English.
Around 18 months ago, she finished authoring and editing the English Unlimited series of course books. Her task for this session was to talk about the process, principles and practice of writing published materials.
It was interesting for Theresa to mention that she hoped the materials produced in the ‘English Unlimited’ actually reflect her beliefs of teaching and learning. Time is something that helps her to reflect on this kind of question. This makes sense because I suppose when you are in the thick of the process it is hard to see the wood for the trees. I guess that is why it is imperative to have your principles and frameworks in place from the start. The longer the time between completion and publication (around 18 months) does allow her the necessary time to reflect and ask herself, personal and pertinent questions about the work she has produced.
For the latest book (English Unlimited) Theresa was asked to collaborate with complete strangers. They had never met in person and they mainly communicated via SKYPE for hours on end. When you collaborate in such a way the differing personalities, principles and experiences really must throw up questions of personalisation and how much of the materials are really your beliefs and strategies? The writers starting point was to outline their principles that would be applied to the book. This was comforting to hear because that is what has become apparent from my background reading over the past month. Principles need to be the backbone of authoring any materials. However, at this point there was no mention of needs of the intended audience. The ideas of authoring a global coursebook must imply a more generalised and all encompassing view of learning needs.
Overall, there was a six-month period of planning before anyone had started writing materials. During this time they talked and debated about methods and approaches to ELT. That amount of time really illustrated to me the demands that collaborative approaches must take. There are main stakeholders all with differing viewpoints. I guess this is where the established research perspectives that are agreed upon in the main will thread everyone’s interests together.
Upon reflection Theresa has asked herself some questions about the materials that were eventually published:
- How much of the principles and practices of my teaching are being presented in the materials?
- How much of my views about language learning are reflected in the pages in English Unlimited?
- Do the principles that we as a collective have given actual apply to the activities that actually happen in the book?
It was slightly disappointing to hear that the publishing company had veto power over some of the ELT approaches that were proposed. Theresa strongly believes in memorisation activities and their value to learning. Yet the publishers were against this style of approach and hence it was not used at all in the coursebook.
To clarify Theresa stipulated that her own views of ELT are based around two main areas of focus:
- Affective engagement
- Appropriate cognitive challenge
Theresa supported these beliefs with quotes from Tomlinson and Thornbury and essentially spoke of the importance of affective engagement. Learners need to have an emotional attachment and this enables learning. The cognitive challenges can come in many different forms and is flexible in the sense that teaching beliefs and strategies can accommodate these types of activities (eliciting, inductive approach integrated skills etc). Theresa stands by the perspective of lowering stress. She feels this is an important factor for students to engage. This is really context dependent and based on the motivations of the learners for being in the classroom.
A key practicality when planning and designing materials for a coursebook is space. Through our discussions in class and from my reading about materials the term ‘white space’ has cropped up again, and again. Personally, I feel that in general coursebook pages are too busy. It is apparent this type of design is to combat the rule of thumb flick tests that coursebook under go in pre-use evaluations. Theresa did not address this point during the talk and hindsight I wish I had asked more about it.
Theresa and her co-designers were set the brief by the publishers of English Unlimited promising:
“English Unlimited is a goals-based course for adults. Centred on purposeful, real-life objectives, it prepares learners to use English independently for global communication.”
Theresa highlighted the following key words as the main considerations in their planning and execution.
- Goal-driven
- Purposeful
- Real-life objectives
- Independent
- Global communication
As part of the principles of the book the authors had to work within the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). This is based on research that aims to provide a transparent, coherent and comprehensive framework so titles do exactly what they say they are going to do; by stating clear definitions of syllabi, curriculum guidelines and the design of teaching etc. Theresa made an interesting point about the competence levels assigned to these coursebooks “you can’t be a level; you need to work through it”. The CEFR is not something that has been on my radar before and maybe this is a glowing indictment of the value given to coursebook evaluation training.
The really interesting aspect of what Theresa presented was the brief that her and the team were given to author the English Unlimited series. The publishers wanted an approach that uses real natural English. This asks questions about what ‘real’ means and the real authentic vs pragmatic issues that would then ensue with the design and implementation of the material.
The coursebook uses vocabulary from the Cambridge International Corpus (CIC). The information from the corpora was then used as the starting point for everything that went into the particular chapters. Corpora lead to discovery of common features which fed into the choice of the topic. This novel (it seems to me) and evidence- based method of language informing decisions of topics and contexts are a breath of fresh air. Commonly, the impression I get from coursebooks is that topics are decided first and then language is crowbarred into those chapters. It is difficult for me to say that the book uses corpora well, based on a pre-use evaluation of one unit. Theresa did give a message of warning that this was not a simple process, but it does match the brief extremely well.
A second factor that really worked well with the brief that they were given was the removal of the Anglo-centric approach to delivery of input. The coursebook is very international in its visual elements and the language input. There are few examples of cultural bias by using westernised icons in ‘celebrity’ world. The ability to do this has been easier by the internet. Searches into different cultures icons are simple these days and when used in the book it gives a more inclusive feel, which again I thought was well considered and valuable.
The images were not the only more ‘natural’ English aspect that was employed. The recordings used for listening activities were recorded by Non-native speakers. This is in tune with the debates and discussions about teaching as a lingua franca, therefore, meeting the needs of the majority of learners whom will be using this coursebook. Exposure to a range of different voices from around the world helps cross-cultural conflicts, by enhancing ability to use English in international contexts. There are of course those who would question the natural errors that may arise and that were kept in the input. Theresa countered these claims by suggesting that it makes the experience more ‘real and in addition it gives examples of competent and motivating role models that can help to motivate and build confidence.
Hearing the process that Theresa and her team went through to design the materials of the coursebook has gone some way to restoring some faith in the pedagogical intent in the design of coursebooks. The use of evidence based information to inform decisions is something that resonates strongly with me.
What did strike me though was through the reflection that Theresa has gone through and the actual struggles she encountered through the ‘publishing machine’ it does seem like an author needs to potentially sacrifice part of their beliefs and practice. This has lead some authors to feel ashamed of their writing by being pushed to publish something that they did not believe in. So the hope is that if you do design materials based on your principles and beliefs through the publishing machine, there are no guarantee you are going to recognise what comes out the other side and even worse is that you don’t like it.
http://bit.ly/1GET8Pp
