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Par for the Course

Speaker: Roger Hunt
Moderator: Nicky Hockly
Date: Wednesday 19 June 2002

Do you use a coursebook? Are you happy with it? Or are there things you would like to change about it? It would seem that, although most of us use coursebooks with our learners, we are never quite happy with them. Adapting, leaving out materials (“I’d never use that!”) and complaining in the staff room about our books are par for the course when we use coursebooks. Of course, coursebook writers and publishers realise that you can’t keep all of the people happy all of the time, despite the blurb on the back of coursebooks insinuating that you can.

Increasingly, there is a move away from the more global, ‘one size fits all’ coursebook to more localised coursebooks, written and produced by local writers in conjunction with international coursebook writers. In fact, it has even been declared that the global coursebook is dead.

Roger Hunt has worked for the International House World organisation for over twenty years as a teacher, teacher trainer, and educational manager. He was Director of Teacher training at International House London for six years before moving to Barcelona in October 2001. He is co-author of ´Fountain´ (Longman 1992) and has published numerous articles in professional journals. He has worked in many parts of the world and is a regular speaker at international ELT conferences.

Moderator: Welcome everyone! We are very pleased to welcome Roger Hunt tonight. He's going to lead a moderated chat for one hour on the subject of coursebooks in ELT. Hi Roger!

Roger Hunt: Hi everyone. Barcelona is hot and sunny at the minute - I hope it is where you are as well.

Maria: I like the idea of coursebooks being 'glocal'

Julia: Can Roger explain what "glocal" means?

Roger Hunt: It´s not a term I coined, but my understanding is world english for a local context. In other words - a form of english which is internationally recognisable but is related to a locality in terms of cultural reference etc.

Maria: You mean they deal with topics more appealing to the students of a certain part of the world?

Roger Hunt: Yes, that´s the idea. It´s not necessarily a correct idea. I was in China a while ago and the people I met and worked with were all very keen on anything NON Chinese. They were much more interested in the rest of the world.

Maria: I think it has to do with a more global trend.

Roger Hunt: Do you want to expand on that?

Maria: I face this problem in other aspects of teaching and education too. I have a small institute. I'm from Argentina. Owing to the economic crisis among other things, people want to do a course which is "useful" for everything. I mean, paying the same, studying the same, being able to sit for Cambridge exams, local exams, qualified enough to work here and abroad, I think we have to have in mind "the big picture" but not lose focus... I don't know if I'm clear enough.

Roger Hunt: I´m not too sure of your question, let me try... The issue is whether or not a particular coursebook is relevant and valid in different geographical and cultural contexts. Some say "yes" some say "no". Your students seem to want a ´soup´ that will satisfy all their needs.

Maria: That's it.

Roger Hunt: I´m not sure there ever will be such a soup, but we can at least provide as many flavours as possible for students and teachers to choose from.

Moderator: Thanks Roger. Julia has a question.

Julia I would like to know if Roger feels we still need course books or can we live without them?

Roger Hunt: I think this depends on a teacher´s level of experience, confidence and time available for preparation. Personally I ´grew up´ in ELT without books because there weren´t all that many around then. I got used to not using them. I´m still bad at using coursebooks because I prefer to work with the students in the classroom and what they seem to be having difficulties with. However, I spend a lot of my time training teachers who know very little about english or how to teach it without some of the very good books that are around these days they would have a very hard time teaching.

James: I wonder somethimes about the number of coursebooks that are on the market and whether we and our students are just the victims of the publishing companies. Do we need so many books?

Roger Hunt: obviously publishers want to stay in business and make money. However, maybe each new book has at least one new idea that can be useful to us in as much as we get to hear about/read these ideas which we may, or not, incorporate into our teaching

Moderator: Now a question from Miguel...

Miguel JL: Have you written any course books? If so, what was your experience?

Roger Hunt: Yes, Miguel. I´ve written 2 and am just starting on a new one, which may be more than one. Very hard work!! I had a very full time job at the time and writing took over my life to the extent that my girlfriend left me!

Moderator: An emailed question here, Roger, from Noni Gilbert Riley

Noni: I agree that "local" texts seem to be called for. I like the concept of glocal, and my thoughts are wandering through the possibility of producing a kind of skeleton text at a global level, with more specialized local content being available for a variety of countries/cultures. This doesn´t sound very practical from a publisher´s point of view, but I wonder if it would be possible to sell the framework with an option to download the local material from the internet.

Roger Hunt: Very interesting idea. Who fills in the local context though? With teams of writers in different countries it could work but very difficult I think. I once got students to write songs to a sort of skeleton that I wrote. Perhaps students could fill in the missing parts of your skeleton coursebook with projects of their own making.

Moderator: Roger, Silvia Gimenez from Argentina sent in this emailed question for you.

Silvia: I recently started working with a group of adolescents in Argentina. My problem is that I do not know what to do exactly with the students because I cannot ask them to buy a book to work in class, and I do not know what material would be better for them.

Roger Hunt: I had a very troublesome student in Budapest a few years ago. He was adolescent, elementary level and called Gabor. After some weeks of him trying to destroy the classroom (and me), I discovered he was a computer fanatic. I got him to give a talk to the group on computers which took him about 2 weeks to prepare. He found all the words he needed then found all the sentences he needed. He spoke for about 15 minutes. My point is - to Silvia´ question - that sometimes finding what adolescents are interested in and working with that can be a very good approach. Gabor was a different person for quite a while. A better person! Since then I´ve used all sorts of ´project´ type approaches working with fashion/sport etc magazines.

Harry Worth: But did Gabor revert to being a monster later?

Roger Hunt: Well, some people are just born that way. However, he made a mint out of a programme he wrote and sold to IBM. Sign of a true monster perhaps!

Moderator: We'll look at one more emailed question for Roger, from Haydee Tizon, and those of you who are here might want to ask him another... :-)

Haydee: I wonder if I could get new and exciting ideas to work with kids about 16 -17 years old. They complain because of frequent use of the text: Rising Star (a nice book for me) and besides their English level is quite good. Thanks.

Roger Hunt: Well, perhaps some of what appears above might interest you. Get them to write a quiz on Rising Star in groups then exchange. Eg: one group chooses a unit and works out the most difficult questions they can. The other groups try to answer without looking in the book. You give points for originality, grammar pronunciation etc. Can be done in writing or orally. Can also be a nice way to recap on previous material and classes.

Norman: I arrived late so don't know what's been talked about already. I was wondering if Roger knew of anywhere on the Internet where it's possible to sort of build your own course book by selecting what you want to do rather than being restricted by the structure of a traditional book.

Roger Hunt: Hi Norman... there are certainly lots of sites where you can find all sorts if you want to bulid your book from authentic stuff for YLearners. See yahooligans (yahoo). TEFL.com will take you into all sorts of interesting places with ready made (more or less) materials.

Norman: But does that mean adapting authentic material or is it ready made for teachers to use in class?

Roger Hunt: Both

Moderator: We have about 10 minutes left - would anyone like to ask Roger a final question?

Roger Hunt: Could I?

James: Yes, I get the impression that you're not very keen on coursebooks. Is that fair?

Roger Hunt: Fairly so as a teacher myself. On the other hand I´m very keen on them for teachers in training. Many people I work with gain masses from good books. I just prefer to work paper free myself (although I steal ideas from lots of books for paper free ideas!!)

James: So maybe you're saying that coursebooks are useful when you're starting out but you can move away from them at a later stage?

Roger Hunt: I would agree with that to a large extent. 15 people finished a CELTA course I´ve been running today. Next week they could be teaching 25 hours. I think, and they agreed today, that they need material to work from and guidance on how to use it. At the same time they´ve given some brilliant lessons without books, they had to spend a LONG time planning though.

Moderator: We have a few minutes left - Would you like to ask your question, Roger?

Roger Hunt: Yes, if I can remeber it now... I was wondering about the opinions of evryone else here on the notion of a global book and to what extent you all feel cultural issues are or are not relevant culture, irrelevant to some students, seems to clutter a lot of books.

Harry Worth: I think a global book is a good idea but that leaves space for teachers to introduce local themes and concepts.

Roger Hunt: Yes, I like the idea of space.

James: But what are you left with when you take away all the culture?

Roger Hunt: By culture I meant things like the semi-datached houses in UK which feature often in books, the underground railway etc. I know even these things can be of great interest but a courebook could also be like an atlas with maps of the whole world rather than just one place.

James: Don't forget the taxi cabs.

Roger Hunt: Nice one!

Harry Worth So many of the issues in today's world are global. I think the global course book will soon be regarded as local?

Hithan: I hope not.

Roger Hunt: Also a good point. Consider music and art - both very international. You can see Picasso wherever you go and buy CDs of just about anyone just about anywhere.

James: Maybe we'll soon be buying the McDonalds English takeaway course!!

park warden: Interesting idea.

Roger Hunt: we can choose to buy though or not (to buy!) sounds familiar!

Harry Worth: Thanks Roger. Food for thought.

Roger Hunt: Nice chatting with you - and with everyone else. Happy teaching.