Shall we have a Textbook Teaching English as a Foreign Language

Juan José Varela Tembra

Juan José Varela Tembra is based at Instituto Teológico Compostelano, Facultad de Teología de la Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
E-mail: tembrajuan@hotmail.com

A textbook for teaching a language is a description of part of that language. It is basically a selection from the language according to what the author believes as the most essential for teaching students a certain level of English. In a sense it is inflexible because it appears in printed form and there is an obvious danger of assuming that it is universally valid and right in its methodology. But on the other hand most textbooks are designed to allow adaptation to the teacher's circumstances if the teacher has sufficient confidence to derivate or to expand from the textbook where necessary.

Firstly, the accessibility of the textbook. Books are often advertised long before they are published and even though Book 1 of a series appears in time for a course, it may not be accompanied by the Teacher's Book or whatever other material is integral to it. Book 2 is expected the following year but we don't know if it will be an effective continuation of Book 1 or a complete new one.

Secondly, can the material presented be covered in the time available? This is a difficult question to answer until one has tried to use the book, but it will undoubtedly help if the author has made an attempt to indicate how much time should be devoted to units or lessons, even if this can never be more than an approximation in terms of a given class.

Thirdly, is the book readable? The word "readable" is relevant in two senses because there are still books on the market published by reputable publishers with as many as 50 lines on a page and 20 words to a line. The maximum readable norm for native speakers according to British typographers is of the order of 45 x 13 = 585 words per page in continuous prose. We can hardly expect students of a foreign language to read print more easily than native speakers. Considering the fact that, if texts are long and boring, the students will not read them and learn from them and they cannot be handled in a single class. A good rough guide to apply here would be that the student's year of English x 150 is the number of words one could reasonably expect him to cope with at a time in continuous prose. Both in terms of physical readability and length it is reasonable that dialogue can be allowed rather than continuous prose.

Presumably it must be considered an advantage if the textbook is illustrated. Illustrations are the simplest and most useful visual aid obtainable. But do the illustrations illustrate or decorate? How much use will we gain out of these illustrations? These are items to take into account when selecting a textbook.

Most books these days are accompanied by a Teacher's Book, by tapes or cassettes, and perhaps by other extras such as a Practice Book, videotapes, etc. The most important question to be decided is not whether these additional items form an integral part of the course but whether the course is flexible enough to be used without one or all of them because of the lack of time or resources.

Finally, we come to the most difficult question of all, how good is the material? How logical is its presentation? How well organised is it? In short, will it work? I cannot help being suspicious of books where the author has not made any attempt to indicate the organisation of the course by means of an Introduction, notes, tables, indexes and so on. While many teachers resent being told what to do at every step, it is at least useful to know what the author intended before deciding to modify his suggestions or instructions due to one's own experience or circumstances.

Even if there appears to be an order, it is worth examining two or three units in depth and, if possible, trying them out in order to see how they work and what is our students' opinion about.

The quality of the English employed in a textbook is the hardest feature to assess, particularly if the teacher is not a native speaker of the language. The only advice I can offer here involves a continuous and periodical recycling.

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