After looking at two different models of course design, the seminar looked at a study (presented by Ian McGrath in ELT Journal) of how teachers and learners view coursebooks.

Those teachers who viewed coursebooks as a guide used metaphors such as map, compass, and lighthouse. While those who viewed the coursebooks as a constraint used metaphors such as road block, millstone, and straitjacket. The students’ metaphors were even more varied with some likening the coursebook to God’s messenger, others the devil.

The study shows that like the teachers, some of the students saw the coursebook as a constraint, but unlike the teachers, they also used metaphors connected to themes of boredom, worthlessness, and anxiety.

This is quite an interesting revelation, as one of the main reasons teachers give for using a coursebook is student expectation. In this year’s IATEFL Scott Thornbury made the suggestion that publishers are still producing coursebooks based on teachers’ perception of student expectation, and that perhaps we should ask learners if they really do want to use a coursebook. Elsewhere we have the opinion that the coursebook deskills the teacher. I would have to confess that at times I just followed the coursebook and the structural syllabus I was told to teach, supplementing activities with published materials such as Jill Hadfield’s Communication Games or Grammar Games.

After looking at some of the literature on the topic of adapting materials, we arranged ourselves into groups. First we shared some examples of coursebooks we had adapted or supplemented, then we were asked to brainstorm ideas regarding how, why, when and what we adapted. In our group, we chose to focus on ‘why’ we adapted material. It was interesting to work with students doing an MA who worked in different contexts. Both the other two teachers were in state education and taught monolingual classes. One teacher adapted the coursebook to save time and prepare her students for exams. For example, for a listening she would translate the instructions and the answers from the L2 to the L1 to save time. In contrast, the other teacher taught in a context were any use of a student’s L1 was forbidden. This is something a colleague studying the materials module, who she supervisers, would like to see changed. I can remember reading somewhere that in SLA, there has been research suggesting metalinguistic explanation in the L1 can be beneficial for lower-levels. Both the teachers in my group adapted for large classrooms. The teacher who forbade the use of L1, adapted the coursebook to make it simpler. For example, when more than one grammar point was being presented, she would focus on just one point. With experience of teaching multilingual classes, in private language schools, my reasons to adapt were simply to help increase communication and to make lessons more fun. This is what our group came up with:

Here is a selection of what some of the other groups came up with:

Here is a record of everyone’s suggestions:

I hadn’t been in the classroom for some time. The materials I brought in had been used alongside New Cutting Edge, which is now pretty dated. Below is an example of a page I had adapted. As you can see, I changed a ranking exercise into a mingle activity. What I can see from this example and the materials I brought to the seminar, is that my presentation of materials was pretty poor. One of teachers in my group advised using Clipart to make better presented materials. It is definitely something I would like to work on.