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Why use textbooks?Robert O'Neill

This paper, though stimulated by Allwright's article "What do we wantteaching materials for?' in the last issue of ELT Journal, does notattempt a point-by-point rebuttal. Instead it offers arguments for theuse of published textbook materials as a basis on which to mould theunpredictable interaction which is necessary to classroom languagelearning. It is also suggested that learners who do not work fromtext-books may be being deprived of a useful medium of orientation andstudy outside the classroom. Finally, the author considers the gradualprocess of replacement by which new textbook materials evolve.This ar t ic le is not des igned as a direc t reply to Dick Al lwr igh t ' s pape r 'W ha td o we w a n t t e a c h i n g m a t e r i a l s f o r ? ' , p u b l i s h e d m^ELTJournal Vol. 36.1( O c t o b e r 1 9 81 ). T h e r e are two bas i c r ea sons why it is not. First , I t h i n k itpe r fecdy poss ib l e to agree wi th many of h i s a s s u m p t i o n s and still believe ind ie use of t e x t b o o k s for a var ie ty of p u r p o s e s . For e x a m p l e , I a g r e e t h a t wes h o u l d not a t t e m p t to p r e d i c t die l e a r n i n g p r o c e s s of d i e l e a r n e r in die w ayd i a t s o m e t e x t b o o k s a p p e a r to d o . But I shal l a rgue d ia t th is is by no m e a n stypica l of a l l textbooks . I can a l so a g r e e d i a t s o m e t e x t b o o k s p r o m o t e o v e r -i n v o l v e m e n t of the t e ache r and u n d e r - i n v o l v e m e n t of t he l ea rne r . But thisd o e s not m e a n I t h ink it is i m p o s s i b l e for t e x t b o o k s to be d e s i g n e d top r o m o t e l o o s e l y c o - o p e r a u v e s t y l e s of l e a r n i n g in w h i c h the l e a rne r o f t entakes die i n i t i adve in d e c i d i n g w h a t is die bes t s t ep fo rward . Indeed , Ibe l i eve tha t a n u m b e r of c o n t e m p o r a r y t e x t b o o k s are des igned in di is way.I can a l so ag ree t ha t in some cases it may well be bes t to beg in wid i a cleanslate and re ly only on mate r i a l s des igned a f t e r con tac t w i th a p a r t i c u l a rg r o u p and close analys is of d ie i r needs . However , I d i ink die s i t ua t ions inwhich th i s is poss ib l e are far le ss co m m on d i an D ick Al lwr igh t ap pe a r s tobel ieve . Cer ta in ly d iey are far le ss c o m m o n t h a n die p a r t i c u l a r c i r c u m -s t ances he argues f rom. Rela t ive ly few g r o u p s are s p o n s o r e d by o r g a n i z a -t ions l ike the Pol i sh Academy of Sciences , or h a v e die f avour of a Brit ishCounc i l subs idy . Teache r s and classes are o f t e n d i r o w n t o g e t h e r in s c h o o l so r i n s t i t u d o n s in which the re is re la t ive ly l i tde t ime for careful analys is ofe a c h g r o u p ' s n e e d s . In such cases it is of ten far m o r e p r a c t i c a l to c h o o s ef rom the c o n s i d e r a b l e and growing va r i e ty of p u b l i s h e d t e x d j o o k s . I shal la r g u e in any case d ia t of ten d iere is far more s imi l a r i t y be tween the n e e d sof ap pa r en t ly d if f er en t g rou ps than we rea l ize .

M y second bas i c r ea son for not des ign ing d i i s a r t i c le as a d i r ec t r ep ly toDick Al lwr igh t ' s ques t ion 'W ha t do we w a n t t e a c h i n g m a t e r i a l s f o r ? ' (andby t each ing ma te r i a l s he m e a n s t e x t b o o k s ) is d i a t I d i ink it is far b e t t e r toset out die pos i t i ve advan tages of u s i n g t e x t b o o k s , as I see d i e m , and toa l l o w r e a d e r s t o j u d g e for d iemse lves be tween our t w o a r g u m e n t s .A b o u t two yea r s ago I h a p p e n e d to be t e ach ing Eng l i sh in a G e r m a n s h i p -y a r d . It was an i n t ensive cour s e of a b o u t six h o u r s a day, o v e r six m o n d i s ,fo r a s m a l l g r o u p of G e r m a n t e c h n i c i a n s who w e r e e x p e c t i n g to t ra in a

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contingent of Iranians how to maintain and repair six submarines under-going construction in the yard. The Iranian g overnm ent had stipulated thatall this instruction between the Germans and the Iranians was to be done inEnglish. (This was a few months before the downfall of the Shah.) I wasonly one of the teachers; each of us did an intensive three-week stint andthen handed over to another teacher. When my turn to hand over came, Iwent over with my replacement what I had done. He was a young, intel-ligent teacher who had just finished a course in applied linguistics at aBritish university. 'My God, you haven't been using a textbook, have you?'he said when he saw my notes. It was as if one doctor trained in the latestmedical techniques had discovered that a colleague had been bleeding oneof his patients with leeches. Indeed, I had been using a textbook for onecentral part of the course. My replacement believed th at this was inherentlywrong. His objections boiled down to the fact that he didn't want thepeople he was teaching to know what he was going to do the next day. 'Ittakes away the element of suspense. Besides, I don't like using otherpeople's material. It 's so uncreative!' he exclaimed. His attitude, althoughextreme, was not untypical. There are many teachers who share his viewsalmost as an article of faith. A great deal of their training reinforces thisattitude. For example, it seems to be widely believed by candidates takingthe RSA Certificate for Teachers of English as a Foreign Language that theydare n ot teach from a textbook in the practical lessons they are required togive before an examiner. If they do, they will almost automatically befailed. Textbooks are 'ou t ' , hom e-prod uced materials are ' in ' .

I began to think about my own reasons for using textbooks on thatcourse in G erm any and on o thers. I was, in fact, using m ore than on e.There was a technology-oriented textbook consisting mainly of short textsdescribing basic workshop procedures and practices. There was another'general coursebook' at about intermediate level, which I used for teachingor re-teaching the basic grammar almost everyone in the group needed(even though some described themselves as 'advanced'). What were myreasons ?1 A great deal of the material, although not specifically designed for thisgro up , was very suitable for their needs.2 The two textbooks made it possible for the group to look ahead to whatwe were going to do o r to look back at what we had d on e.3 The textbooks provided materials which were well-presented, whichcould be replaced by me or by someone else only at great cost in termsboth of mon ey and of my own time.4 The textbo oks allowed me to adapt and im provise while I was teaching.Each reason, however banal, needs some additional clarification. Let mego through them again and enlarge upon them.My replacem ent at the shipyard believed alm ost as an article of faith thatany materials that were commercially available, as these were, could notpossibly be suitable for this particular group since they had not beenspecifically designed for it. 'Only materials arising out of experienceteaching the particular group can be valid for it, ' he stated dogmatically.'Whoever wrote these books has never seen this group or the inside of ashipyard. This group has its own needs and we must provide materialsspecifically designed for those needs.' But I and the teacher who hadpreceded me had not selected any old materials. We had spent several daysscouring bookshops in London, looking for things we thought might besuitable. After all, there are a number of things almost any group studyingWhy use textbooks? 105

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technical English will have in common. Although one group's needsdiverge at various points from another's, there is often a common core ofneeds shared by a variety of groups in different places studying underdifferent conditions at different times. For example, the technical pro-cesses described in the textbook on workshop practices introduced a greatdeal of basic technical vocabulary describing many of the machines andtools shipyard technicians use. More importantly, we did not expect thebook to provide us with the exact instructions our technicians would latergive to their Iranian apprentices. It is a dangerous delusion to suppose thattextbooks can do this and it is quite false to believe it is necessary for text-books to do so in order to be useful. What this particular textbook couldand did provide us with were examples of instructions which our learnerscould adapt and transfer to their particular uses. In other words, it pro-vided us with a grammatical and functional framework within which wecould work. It is nonsense to argue that this framework is never the samefrom one group to another even though the ultimate, specific uses twogro up s may m ake of the lang uage m ay differ. T he framework is as mu ch aresult of the language itself as it is of the learner's needs. Are there manylearners, for example, who do not need to learn how to explain cause andeffect, to make requests, to suggest things, to ask for other people'sopinions about things and to give their own, or to make basic tense distinc-tions such as past and present? Is there any significant use of English whichescapes the need to express m oda l distinctions such as 'You can do it', 'Youshould do it' and 'You must do it'? In other words, do not almost alllearners at elementary, intermediate, and even many advanced levels haveto learn the same basic grammatical and functional framework in order tomake use of the language in their own particular ways ? Of course thereare many ways of illustrating and exemplifying this framework so thatdifferent learners will see its relevance to dieir purposes, but this hardlymeans that the same textbook cannot be used successfully for a wide rangeof different groups. Almost always a textbook can be found which willprovide the core language which is necessary and useful for a group whoseneeds may at first sight seem unique. Groups vary enormously in theircomposition and level. They vary even more, perhaps, in what will interestthem and sustain their motivation. But there is an immense variety of text-books to draw upon .

The second basic reason for using the particular textbooks we hadchosen was that the books made it possible for learners who, for variousreasons, had missed lessons to catch up. They also made it possible for theclass to prepare in advance for lessons. There is a curious, sometimes sub-merged, but still formidable school of thought in the language teachingprofession that would if possible discourage learners from do ing this. Asmy replacement said, he did n't w ant the group to know what he was goingto do because it removed the element of surprise. I sympathize with thedesire to provide surprises in his lessons: surprise is useful and necessary inall aspects of life. But I do not sympathize widi his desire to preventlearners from making the fullest possible use of their resources for stayingin touch with the language. The chance to look ahead to future lessons andspend time prepa ring o neself for them is welcome to m any learners. This isparticularly so when the learner is having trouble staying in touch with theaverage level of the group he or she is in. In any case, if textbooks are usedfor die purpose for which they are best suitedmat of providing a coreframework, but not everything that happens widiin itthere are many

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other ways of providing the useful element of surprise and suspense. This isnot to argue that textbooks themselves cannot and should not be designedso that at least one part of the book relies on 'unseen' material. Forexample, in a book of twenty six-page units, one page could be devoted toa continuous story running through the book. This text could be designedto reinforce the language presented in the other five pages of the unit.However, the story need not actually appear on the sixth page. That pagecould instead be used for questions and exercises based on material pro-vided only in the teacher's book. The teacher could read out or play a tapeof the story when and as necessary, and the class would never see the fulltext of the story in their books.The third reason for using the textbooks we had selected for the coursewas their appearance and the quality of their presentation. This is still oneof the least discussed reasons for using textbooks. I do not mean that text-books should be glossy, glittering products in full colour, packaged andsold like deodorants or American automobiles. But neither should they,simply because they must be functional in several senses of the word, looklike one of those catalogues you sometimes see in funeral parlours adver-tising coHins or cremation urns. Home-made materials tend to get shabbyvery quickly and, even in these days of high-quality photocopiers andword-processors, cause enormous production and storage problems. Eventhough we had access at the shipyard to excellent photocopying andduplication facilities, we found we could not use them as often as weneeded to without causing problems and tension with other people in theyard who needed the same facilities for purposes which they saw as farmore pressing and immediate than ours. Even after a certain time had beenset aside each day for us, we ran into the simple problem of expense. Itcosts far more to photocopy 100 pages of your own material than it does tobuy 200 pages bo un d together in a book. This has been discovered not onlyin places where such copying facilities are scarce or under great pressurefrom other users, but in language schools on the south coast of England forexample, which have generously provided such facilities and practically un-limited access to them for teachers. The cost has often turned out to bestaggering, not only in paper and other direct copying costs but in servicecalls each time the copier breaks down. Books are good value for moneysimply in terms of pape r alone . The fact that they are bo und mea ns they areeasy to carry and to look at where and when the learner wants to, on buses,at meal times, in parks, while waiting for appointments, etc. No otherm edi um is as easy to use as a b ook .There is beyond this something enormously valuable and importantabout the feel and size and shape of a book. It can be argued that my senti-men ts here are hardly objective, since I depe nd largely for my incom e up onother people sharing my views. But I had these sentiments about bookslong before I got involved in writing or producing them. Sheets of paper,particularly A4 paper, issued in batches to learners throughout a coursehave a terrible habit of getting lost and confused, and are difficult to carryabout .The fourth and final reason has been hinted at earlier. But it needsgreater elaboration. In my opinion it is important that textbooks should be

so designed and organized that a great deal of improvisation and adapta-tion by both teacher and class is possible. Below I shall give an example ofsuch improvisation and adaptation, and I shall try to explain why it isnecessary. But before I do so, I want to consider why such a statement, onWhy use textbooks? 107

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the surface unsurprising and unexceptional, runs counter to at least oneconcept of language teaching that is still dominant and informs bothteacher-training and coursebook-design in various places. I shall call diisconcept or view of language-teaching and coursebook-design the 'grand-master' school of thought. According to this view the teacher must knowexactly what will happen in the lesson and have planned for it. Anythingmat occurs in die lesson does so because it is part of die teacher's plan (orperhaps die plan of some odier person or body, such as a textbook audioror the teacher's employer). Objectives are clearly stated and adhered to.Aldiough certain alternative possibilities of attaining diem may have beenenvisaged in the 'plan', they are still foreseen an d calculated.There are many examples of diis school of diought, aldiough it is notalways articulated so explicitly. There are concepts of teacher-trainingwhich begin with an idealized model of the 'good teacher' (the teacher diatwill carry out the aims of a particular mediodology, organization, or text-book), and dien attempt to mould all trainees to diis model. There are

language institutes, some of diem very prestigious, which issue elaboratematerials to their teachers with carefully detailed goals and sub-goals foreach lesson. Each lesson moves from carefully planned 'input' stages toequally carefully planned 'output' phases (the computer terms are noaccident), such as pre-planned drill or exercise. Such lesson plans mayeven allow for 'free' stages, but usually strict time limits are set and these'outputs' are 'free' only in the sense that they are slightly less pre-plannedthan the other phases of die lesson.What, however, do I propose as an alternative model of coursebook-design, teacher-training, and language-teaching? Put briefly, perhaps evensimplistically, die alternative view begins with the simple belief diat there

can be no model of an ideal teacher, or lesson, or learner (or textbook).Since people are diverse in their personalities, inherent learning strategiesand rhythms, such a diing as a teacher-training programme must seek notto mould all teachers according to a preconceived nodon of what teachersshould be, but must try to build on the individual and differing strengths ofeach teacher so as to make die maximum effective use of that teacher'squalities. This clearly has implications for both textbook-design and teach-ing mediodology. No textbook can expect to appeal to all teachers orlearners at a particular level. There is a basic need for choice and variety,not only in teaching-style and learning opportunity but also in the styleand approach of materials available. Teachers have not 'failed' becausethey get on well with one g ro up o f learners bu t not ano die r. N either is atextb ook necessarily unsuccessful if its style an d con ten t do no t pleasesome learners a t die level at which it is aim ed.However, there are many ways of designing textbooks so diat they can beused by a variety of learners widi a variety of ultim ate goa ls, and so diey canbe taught by a variety of teachers widi a variety of teaching styles. Forexample, units of material can be designed so diat diey allow a choice ofbasic objectives. There might be for instance a choice of at least diree suchobjectives for the unit. Aldioug h different, diey can be related.1 Eliciting opin ions di rou gh ques tions like "What do you diink we sho uldd o ? ' 'Ho w do you diink we can do it ?' 'What do you think will hap pen ifwe do it this way?'2 Analysis of indirect questio ns in oth er con texts: 'D o you know if wecan . . . ?' 'Can you tell m e what is the best way to . . . ?' etc.3 M eaning and use of contrasting stress patterns as in 'What do YOU think

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we should do ?' and 'What do you think we should DO ?'The unit designed around these objectives might include, for example, ashort dialogue, a text, and a series of structure and intonation exercises. Inthe dialogue two people might propose and discuss solutions to problems.The strongly functional element of the materialseliciting someone else'sopinionoccurs in the dialogue. The text narrates the results of theirdecision and what they did, as well as an altern ative p rob lem for the class todiscuss and try to solve. These first two components would contain otherpoints of focus and activity as well as those mentioned above. For example,the dialogue would not only present the kinds of questions used to elicitother people's opinions; it would also be suitable for stylistic trans-formation: a very informal style may be used by the speakers (who seem tobe very friendly with each oth er); then change s can be m ade to introduce amore formal style (such as the style one would use at an official meeting orwith on e's su perior at work). The short text could be used for reading c om -prehension as well as for discussion. The exercises in intonation and intransforming direct into indirect questions would serve two functions:besides practising features of intonation and grammar, they could be doneindependently by the class while the teacher reflected during the lesson onhow best to continue and perhaps found other material, either in the text-book or from some other source, which would be a relevant continuation.There are objectives in the lesson. The teacher's notes would suggestvarious ways of using the material. But it would be recognized from theoutset that the lesson might develop in a number of ways which could notbe predicted exactly beforehand.

Such ideas are by no means novel or original. It is possible to executethem even with many conventional textbooks. Indeed, the very form of abook makes this possible. No other medium is quite as easily handled inthis way as is a book. You can jump from one part of a book to another,glancing first at one page then at another as you remind yourself of what isin it (assuming you are familiar with it, as teachers should be with the text-books they use) in a way you cannot widi a video cassette or with a set ofloose materials given out in dribs and drabs but never fully surveyed by theclass. What is more, if the group using die book is introduced to it inou tline a nd briefly taken dirou gh it before th e materia l is formally taugh t,diey can influence selection and development of the material far more thanthey can with heavily media-dependent materials. Certainly, whatever theother advantages of more modern ways of presenting material, such asvideo, it is impossible to carry them around in your pocket, look at them asyou go home or to work in a bus or train, and difficult to leaf backwardsand forwards in them to see what has been or will be done.This is not an argument against using such modern aids as video oraudio recordings. It is an argument for die textbook, which may be sup-plemented by these modern aids but not supplanted by diem. If thathappens, I suspect it will not be long before the textbook is re-invented. Weneed such creative tools because language learning itself is nodiing if it isnot creative. Unless learners learn how to say what only diey want to say inlessons, unless diey begin to acquire die generative tools of language to dodiis, and unless teachers are able to deal with the unexpected, the un-predictable, and die at times irrelevant turns of spontaneous interaction indie classroom, what is taught will be not language but language-likebehaviour.1 We need objectives in our lessons and materials, and we alsoneed flexibility and improvisation so that we can use the creative accidents

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that occur regularly in lessons and not smother them widi exhaustive (andexhausting) pre-determined plans.It might also seem from what I have said that those materials puttogether by teachers or audiors outside the commercial process of pub-lication have n o place in teaching. I am thinking of all the different kinds ofmaterials teachers write or assemble in direct response to the needs of aclass. My argument is not that these have no place. On the contrary, theyare an essential part of the process through which new textbooks and pub-lished materials get written. It is a process that often begins with a nibble,which becomes a bite and dien a gulp. At first the user of a textbooktheteacherbecomes dissatisfied widi some aspect of it and replaces parts of itwith his or her own material. It may be one or two reading texts, or thequestions in die book about a text, or some of the drills. Gradually,however, m ore and mor e of the published textbook is aba ndo ned andreplaced by materials the teacher devises or finds elsewhere and regards asmore suitable or relevant. This is how I started writing textbooks. Some-times, of course, die process is m ore radical an d less gra dua l. A teache r or agroup of teachers set out to create what is in essence a new textbookbecause nodiing on the market seems suitable. In both cases what oneusually ends up w ith is a new tex tbook . It is the classic process described byKuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the paradigmatic processthrough which one theory or concept replaces another.

My colleague in the German shipyard was scornful of any materials notwritten directly for a group by someone with direct knowledge of thatgro up . The assump tion is that each gr oup is so unique that its needs canno tpossibly be met by material developed to meet die needs of ano ther gro up .I believe diis is a false assumption for two major reasons. First, the differ-ences tend to obscure the similarities, which are great. These similaritiesinclude such diings as the common need to possess enough of die genera-tive equipment of a language to use that language as an independent,creative tool and the faa that the basic functional needs of one group oftendiffer from those of anodier only in their specific applications, and thesecan hardly ever be foreseen or predicted by anyone. They arise spon-taneously and must be met spontaneously by die learner and die learneralone. By diis I mean diat although we can predict diat a learner will haveto request things, explain how diings work, make time and tense distinc-tions, offer and refuse to do things, understand deictic meaning, etc., wecannot predict die exact utterances the learner will have to generate, andwe should never pretend diat we can, except in certain very limited cases.2The second reason is diat, particularly today, widi the great and growingvariety of materials devised all over the world to teach English to differentgroups, there is usually something we can find to provide die core teachingm aterial for the gro up we rega rd as so un iqu e and utterly different fromany other. I have referred to bodi diese things earlier and I shall end byrepeating diem. Textbooks can at best provide only a base or a core ofma terials. They are the jum ping-off poin t for teacher and class. Theyshould not aim to be m ore than diat. A great deal of die most im porta ntwork in a class may start with the textbook but end outside it, in improvisa-tion and adaptation, in spontaneous interaction in die class, and develop-ment from diat interaction. Textbooks, if they are to provide anydiing atall, can only provide the prop or framework within which much of diisactivity occurs. Textbooks, like any odier medium, have inherent limita-tions. The aud iors of textbooks mu st make it clear what diose limitations

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are ; for example, whether or not the textbook is intended as a self-studytool or aid , or for classroom use by a teacher and a gro up of learners. Mostof all, the authors and creators of textbooks must abandon any claim thattheir products are anything more than the basic tools I have spoken of.Since language is an instrument for generating what people need and wantto say spontaneously, a great deal must depend on spontaneous, creativeinteraction in the classroom. Textbooks can help to bring this about, and agreat deal in their design can be improved in order to do this. If thatcreative interaction does not occur, textbooks are simply pages of dead,inert written symbols and teaching is no more than a symbolic ritual,devoid of any real significance for what is going on outside theclassroom. \3Receivedjuly 1981Notes The author1 The term 'language-like beha viour' has been used Robert O'Neill is the auth or of many textbooks,

by David Wilkins and othe rs to describe what occurs includin g Kernel Lessons Intermediate, Kernel Lessons Plus,when the learner of a language never acquires the Viewpoints, Interaction, Kernel One, and Business News. H ebasic tools of gram ma r. worke d first as a teacher and then in the Research and2 There are of course examples of very stereotyped Development Unit of the Europ ean Language andlanguag e, such as that used by Air Traffic Con- Edu cational Centre in Bo urn em ou th. Since then hetrollers or com pute r instruction s. has taug ht extensively in variou s parts of Euro pe, andhas recendy been involved in various intensive coursesfor industry, such as the course in English for ship-yard technicians at Howalds Deutsche Werft in Kiel,and with MBB in Mu nich.

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ELT J-1982-O'Neill-104-11