Abstract
Decades of research have established that most English Language Teaching (ELT) contexts rely on textbooks and corresponding materials to drive the education process. Textbook analysis as a vital quality control check of these products has also become a popular trend in applied linguistics and second language (L2) research. In the main, ELT textbooks have been conceptualized in past literature as supporting target language proficiency attainment while also giving the teacher everything required to conduct a lesson. Textbook analysis has subsequently checked products’ utility and quality in relation to such proficiency development. Over time, the scope of textbook analyses has expanded to include issues such as cultural representations in these products to address how the products help students become better at English in a multicultural and globalized world. While teachers and researchers can reference numerous well-known books on these phenomena, a concise summary of how textbooks function within ELT contexts and the defining features of textbook analysis research appears to be lacking. This brief report meets this need and is useful to stakeholders in the ELT community, such as teachers and program managers, who might not have the time nor the resources to consult such extensive sources of information.
Introduction
The primacy of the textbook in English Language Teaching (ELT) is almost beyond question. In an ELT textbook analysis of products used in Hong Kong, Wong (2017) stated that “textbook selection can have a massive impact. . .as teachers often make considerable use of the textbook” (p.165), which echoed the earlier observations of Richards et al. (1992). In the same vein, Littlejohn (1998) described the ELT textbook as “the most powerful device” (p.190) for ELT professionals. The British Council (2008) likewise observed that 65% of ELT teachers worldwide reported using textbooks often (‘frequently’ + ‘always’), with only 6% reporting that they were never used. Chen (2016) also noted that Taiwanese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers widely used textbooks. Tomlinson (2010) additionally reported, in a survey of Asian teachers at a conference, that 92% of teachers reported using textbooks most of the time as well. In European settings, Nordlund (2016) and Tryhorn (2011) similarly noted the prevalence of ELT textbooks.
Given these observations, there has unsurprisingly been much research on the functions of ELT textbooks as important learning tools with textbook analysis as a vital quality check for these products. Through these inquiries, the functions of these learning materials have been delineated and such scholarship is often presented as either a published book (such as Tomlinson and Masuhara, 2017) or as an edited volume with chapters by different scholars (e.g. Harwood, 2010, 2014). Such work is invaluable to the field but there does exist a need for a more concise and streamlined account of how ELT textbooks support English as a second/foreign language (L2) learning around the globe and how textbook analysis inquiries work to ensure the quality of these products. This brief report addresses this need with the hope of providing a reference point that can be utilized by divergent stakeholders within the ELT community. This report also overtly conceptualizes the philosophical underpinnings of ELT textbook analysis, which appears to be under-considered in the existing literature on ELT material review (e.g. Tomlinson and Masuhara, 2017).
The Functions of ELT Textbooks
ELT textbooks have two chief functions. The first is to support L2 English proficiency growth; the second is to enable a complete learning experience. Each is discussed in turn.
Sheldon (1988) defined the language learning textbook as a book or coherent set of products (e.g. student book and workbook) designed to develop learners’ communicative abilities in the target language. Sheldon’s conceptualization echoed O’Neil (1982) who viewed the textbook as an instrument that supported the teaching process. More recent textbook analyses such as Gholami et al. (2017) would cite Sheldon and O’Neil in relation to the expectation that ELT products support proficiency attainment. ELT textbooks, in other words, have been viewed as professionally published materials, that support the language learning experience through (1) the language input they provide, (2) the activities that leverage this input, and (3) the curriculum planning that involves the organization of the input and corresponding activities (McGrath, 2002; Miller, 2011; Ur, 1996; Wong, 2017). A review of prominent ELT publishers’ catalogues reveals marketing and promotions along these three lines subsumed under proficiency development. Consider Pearson’s (2018) Global Scale of English (GSE) as an illustration. The GSE is presented as a granular proficiency scale. Pearson ELT products have been aligned to the GSE where overt claims are presented vis-a-vis improving students’ composite English skills with the goal of ‘moving’ up the proficiency scale. In other words, the GSE merges descriptive proficiency judgements and prescriptive curricula goals to address the three areas highlighted here, which themselves function to support English proficiency development.
This first function of supporting target language proficiency attainment has seen textbooks reviewed beyond a narrow focus on target language presentation and practice. As explained by Zhang and Su (2021), there is now an expectation that ELT materials promote linguistic and cultural diversity. Past studies in this area such as Yuen (2011) observed that ELT textbooks did not present enough diversity of cultures. Tajeddin and Pakzadian (2020) likewise observed that ELT textbooks did not do enough to present world/outer-circle English dialects. These studies were presented in the light of ELT/L2 products not optimally supporting target language proficiency development because of these issues. Consider Zhang and Su’s (2021) research as a recent example. The study reviewed ELT textbooks used in Germany and China for such diversity with the assumption that “the international status of English requires educators to promote the development of English learners’ ability to communicate ideas and cultural beliefs in a diversity of settings” (p.91). Findings that German ELT textbooks were overly focused on the target (Anglophone) culture were referenced by the researchers to make suggestions to improve future products to help students communicate better using English within a multicultural world.
Along with supporting L2 proficiency development, ELT textbooks are expected to provide everything that is required to support courses on their own (Tomlinson, 2011). This is the second function of ELT textbooks. Textbook analysis investigations such as Catalan and Francisco (2008) and Hadley (2014) have also noted ELT textbooks’ comprehensive features, especially when international publishers produce the products. These observations were not surprising as entities such as Cambridge University Press (2018) and Pearson (2018) have marketed most of their products as turnkey course design solutions to ELT programs. That is not to state that ELT programs that use textbooks do not supplement them. Lopez-Barrios and Villanueva de Debat (2014), for instance, noted that Argentinian ELT professionals often supplemented their official textbooks with outside materials.
The Features of ELT Textbook Analysis
Historically, textbook analysis has been of interest to educational researchers for most of the 20th century, with Green (1926) being one of the first to discuss how L2 textbooks could be investigated. In a seminal study, Verhave and Sherman (1968) presented a systematic process for analyzing textbooks in relation to the extent to which they presented well-organized “nodes” of new/relevant information. Verhave and Sherman’s call for principled and systematized inquiries appeared to inform later L2-centric textbook analyses. When presenting the aspects of good ELT material review, Tomlinson (2008, 2011) stressed that the questions being investigated are measurable. Tomlinson also highlighted the need for theoretically grounded principles to inform the investigation process. There have also been calls to improve the existing state of ELT textbook analysis research. Some such as Harwood (2017) have argued that Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL and thus ELT) textbook analysis research could be of a lower quality relative to those conducted in other educational domains. Harwood referenced textbook analyses from these other domains to highlight where future TESOL/ELT textbook analyses could improve.
Harwood’s (2017) call for improvement in L2-centric textbook analysis research dovetails with the extreme divergence of past ELT textbook analyses’ foci and methods. Such divergence makes a conceptualization of the nature of ELT textbook analysis difficult. Chen (2016) and Ghorbani (2011) both referenced this lack of clarity and seemed to suggest that ELT, as a research discipline, has failed to delineate the definitions and bounded scope of textbook analysis investigations. To wit, a review of past ELT/L2 textbook analyses reveals a divergent range of interests from the syntactic complexity in input texts (Miller, 2011; Roemer, 2004) to how the materials represented genders (Marefat and Marzban, 2014) and different cultures (Fitzgibbon, 2013). Even within a single edited volume of ELT textbook-focused research (Harwood, 2014), one observes chapters ranging from how the reviewed products celebrate neoliberal ideology (Chapter 2) to how they support the competencies of L2 reading (Chapter 4). This observed range of foci in ELT textbook analyses in part reflects the diverse range of stakeholders in the ELT process, which can include students, academics, program managers, and government officials (Graddol, 2006). This divergence also reflects the multifaceted nature of ELT textbooks, which includes target language, cultural representations, and graphics among other phenomena of potential investigation.
The divergent foci of past ELT/L2 textbook analyses notwithstanding, the existing body of research does point to these studies having two relevant and shared features. First, they are performed as a principled quality control check to judge the usefulness of the textbook in supporting English proficiency attainment. Second, they assume a realistic view of the ELT space and present somewhat objective observations that can have implications to the broader ELT material production process. Each is discussed in turn.
Feature 1: Principled Quality Control Check
ELT textbook analysis research references relevant theoretical frameworks to judge the utility of ELT textbooks and related materials in developing target language proficiency. When recent studies have moved beyond a strict target language focus (e.g. cultural diversity), the research still appeared to be undertaken with L2 proficiency attainment in mind (see Zhang and Su, 2021). Accordingly, textbook analyses with a strict linguistic focus (of target language) have been reviewed to unpack this feature most clearly.
Vitta (2012) observed that vocabulary lists in a Korean elementary EFL textbook (national curriculum) were almost exclusively clustered semantically (e.g. colors) when theory and empirical data have suggested this method was most ineffective (see summary by Folse, 2006). Vitta also reorganized the target vocabulary into thematically clustered vocabulary lists which Folse highlighted as being optimal. Such lists present semantically unrelated words that are organized under a theme (e.g. “frog”, “damp”, and “to fish” under the theme of “pond”). These have consistently outperformed semantically clustered lists while still being grounded in theory by activating students’ schema. Folse did note, however, that such thematically clustered lists have not consistently outperformed unrelated vocabulary lists (no relation among words) despite the weaker theoretical case for the latter. In a grammar-focused textbook analysis Roemer (2004) found that German EFL textbooks under-presented conditionals (e.g. If I eat pizza, I will be happy) in relation to authentic language use. Roemer presupposed that the quality of the textbooks were, in part, beholden to developing the learners’ ability to construct and comprehend sentences with subordination, a grammatical competency associated with L2 proficiency attainment (Martinez, 2018). Nordlund (2016) later analyzed a Swedish-EFL textbook series and found that it presented too many infrequent words, which would be too difficult for the intended learners. The theory underpinning Nordlund’s work posits that word frequency is one of the organizing principles of language learning (Crossley et al., 2013). ELT textbook analyses have also found products conforming to theory. Catalan and Francisco (2008), for instance, analyzed target vocabulary repetition among the levels of popular EFL textbook products used in Spain. The observation that texts in lower-levels books repeated the target words more than the higher ones conformed to theory positing that higher-level texts repeated words less often and were, therefore, more lexically diverse (Lu, 2012). The researchers then concluded that the textbooks were sufficient in this regard. These studies exemplify how ELT textbook analyses present findings on how well the products support language development in relation to the area(s) investigated while also having implications for the future development of these products.
The uncovered problems that past ELT/L2 textbooks analyses have reported do not point towards systemic flaws among ELT textbook publishers. Such observations, however, have illustrated that these products can sometimes be deficient in operationalizing relevant theory for their users (Wong, 2017). ELT textbooks, according to Wong, would ideally reflect the “principles of language acquisition and development recommended by scholars and educators” (p.167). In sum, the field relies on a tool that is expected to be theoretically sound but sometimes observed as imperfect in this regard. Accordingly, there has been a call to evaluate ELT textbooks in a rigorous manner as a means of ensuring quality and defining what an effective textbook is (Tomlinson, 2008). ELT/L2 textbook analysis research has been the strand of inquiry that answers this call.
Feature 2: ELT Textbook Analysis Assuming a Realistic Worldview
Graddol (2006) highlighted that L2 English proficiency has economic and social implications for the entire world, and Education First’s (2021) English Proficiency Index (EPI) report substantiates this notion every year. In each annual report, correlational data illustrate how metrics of a country’s economic strength (e.g. the Human Capital Index) are associated moderately to strongly with its citizens’ English proficiency. In other words, a country’s economic outlook tends to be better as its relative English ability increases, but one must remember that correlation does not imply causation (Al-Hoorie and Vitta, 2019).
The substantial focus of ELT textbooks and textbook analysis on proficiency attainment comes into clearer focus when reflecting on the correlations from the EPI report. Going a step further, one can see the argument for post-positivism underpinning ELT textbook analysis in the aggregate. Post-positivism, in simple terms (see Popper, 1959), implies that these analyses assume that there is an objective reality that one can measure while conceding that perfect measurements of reality are impossible and thus inferences from these measurements are imperfect. A review of the existing body of ELT/L2 textbook analyses, divergent foci of inquiries notwithstanding, suggests that they might share this philosophical underpinning. For studies such as Chen (2016) or Zarco-Tejada (2019), which both investigated how measures of linguistic complexity in ELT textbooks’ language input varied according to publisher claims of level and/or text difficulty, the notion of these studies assuming a (critical) realistic/objective philosophical underpinning is not controversial.
The post-positivist worldview can also be observed in studies that extended from a strict linguistic focus on the target language. Consider Zhang and Su (2021) as an example. Manifestations of different cultures (i.e. cultural diversity) in textbooks were counted. Like linguistic complexity textbook analyses (e.g. Zarco-Tejada, 2019), the study presented empirical data to drive a discussion on how well the reviewed materials conformed to theory which in the case of Zhang and Su called for a diverse representation of cultures in ELT materials. Wong (2017), to cite another example, presented discrete judgements of conformity and unconfirmity to assess how well Hong Kong ELT textbooks were aligned to the stated curriculum. Fitzgibbon (2013) also concluded, through mostly qualitative inquiry, that ELT textbooks used in Korea impose American and British cultural hegemony which could impede Korean learners’ acquiring English. Both Wong and Fitzgibbon followed Sheldon’s (1988) model of using checklists and schematics to substantiate their sometimes qualitative assessments (see e.g. figure 2 on p.87 in Fitzgibbon). One could argue that a post-positivist stance underpinned studies such as Wong and Fitzgibbon as tangible claims of objective truth with implications for ELT textbooks in a broader sense were presented yet both studies detailed the limitations of their observations, especially Fitzgibbon.
To sum up, ELT textbook analysis, regardless of its research design, has assumed that language learning and the tools to support it can be somewhat objectively and independently measured. The chief implication for this is that any call to improve or modify ELT textbooks should be based on empirical observations.
Conclusion
In this brief report, the functions and features of ELT textbooks and textbook analysis have been succinctly summarized. The ELT textbook functions to provide a turnkey teaching and learning tool while being comprehensive vis-a-vis the development of the underlying skills and competencies of the target language with an aim towards proficiency gains. ELT textbook analysis acts as a quality control check of these widely used products and comprises both quantitative and qualitative assessments that gauge the extent to which textbooks are “useful” in supporting English proficiency attainment.
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
