English Language Teaching Textbooks ed. by Nigel Harwood (review)

According to the Education Sector Factbook (“Summary of Education Sector,” 2012), the global English-language-learning industry was worth over $63 billion a year and a large component of this figure is attributable to textbook publishers: top-ranking Pearson enjoyed sales of over $9 billion in 2012 (“World’s 60 Largest Book Publishers,” 2013). While Pearson’s publications are not only ELT textbooks, numbers like these reflect the importance of textbooks in the field, and Nigel Harwood’s English Language Teaching Textbooks looks deeply into an area often taken for granted or even ignored by practitioners. This book, which follows on from his earlier English Language Teaching Materials (Cambridge University Press, 2010) consists of 11 chapters, largely research-based, on the areas listed in the subtitle: Content, the material in ELT textbooks; Consumption, how these books are used (or not); and Production, which refers to aspects of the textbook publication process, from a “bright idea” to, in some cases, multiple revisions. The scope of the book is laid out in chapter 1, “Content, Consumption, and Production: Three Levels of Textbook Research,” and the present review will follow that order.

Part 1: Content

The three chapters in this section look at widely disparate types of ELT textbook content. John Gray and David Block report on changes in global ELT textbook content that, they say, reflect a homogenization of cultural values toward the neo-liberal, consumerist, and aspirational. These values, they argue, distort the learners’ worldview and ignore the existence of the working class. Following this is Diana Freeman’s analysis of reading-comprehension question types across British global ELT textbooks. Using a taxonomy of reading questions based on content, language, and affect, she found much inconsistency, both within a single series of textbooks and in different editions of the same book. A takeaway from her findings was the taxonomy itself, which she recommends as a tool for materials development and evaluation. In the final chapter in this section, L. Quentin Dixon et al. return to the topic of reading, but this time, reading-preparation textbooks used in pre-service teacher education in four countries and their coverage of eight key areas in literacy instruction: phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension, ESL instruction, spelling, and assessment. Like Freeman, they found uneven coverage in the areas under study. The authors express concern about the neglect of reading as a L2 skill in one country where the majority of students were L2 learners.

Part 2: Consumption

The three chapters in this section cover a broad range of issues. Ahlam Menkabu and Nigel Harwood researched teachers’ use of an ESP textbook and learned that decisions to adapt text materials were based on complex factors: subject knowledge, years of experience, and perception of student needs. Next, Fotini Grammatosi and Nigel Harwood describe their study of an ESL teacher’s decisions about replacing textbook materials with their own. While the focus is textbook (non)use and the discussion highlights the teacher’s beliefs about textbooks and their role, it also gives rich information on teacher decision making in situ. Third, Gregory Hadley confronts the charge that global ELT textbooks impair rather than promote learning; his six-year study reveals quite the opposite: that, under the right conditions, learners can indeed acquire a language, even in a culturally remote situation.

Part 3: Production

The final four chapters take a long, occasionally rueful, look at the process of textbook publication. Ivor Timmis’s account of writing a textbook for an overseas ministry of education was an object lesson in the need for, indeed the desirability of, compromise between “research-based principles and local realities” (p. 241). In contrast, “An Interdisciplinary Textbook Project: Charting the Paths Taken,” by Fredericka Stoller and Marin Robinson, describes how careful application of corpus-based research and committed collaboration can result in effective material. Christine Feak and John Swales compare the production stages of two different textbook revisions and emphasize the need for careful navigation among three different stakeholders: authors, publishers...