DON'T MENTION THE WAR! TABOO TOPICS AND THE ALTERNATIVE TEXTBOOK. by Scott Thornbury (first published in ITS for Teachers) Scott Thornbury. Why coursebooks - in dictating the topic agenda - are counterproductive. This article first appeared in IT's for Teachers, Feb 2002. "Don't mention the war!" I was told by my boss in Cairo when I first started teaching. He was referring to what was known as the October 6th War. Like many subjects (sex, alcohol, and politics in general) the war - and its outcomes - were off-limits. This didn't cause many problems so long as you stuck to the coursebooks. (The nearest thing to politics in Kernel Lessons was a tiny drawing of a ban-the-bomb demo). If, however, you ventured out of the cosy coursebook cocoon into the real world, it became more problematic. During some particularly bloody food riots in Egypt in the late seventies, we were again enjoined not to talk politics with the students. But the students were not to be cowed - and insisted on talking politics with us - thereby triggering some lively and language-productive discussions: a case of the learners subverting the curriculum by siezing control of the discourse agenda. A similar instance is cited by Moita Lopes (1995) when a class of fifteen-year olds in Brazil refuses to relinquish the hot topic of the day: their President's impeachment: Teacher: I want you to imagine a situation, a story whose title could be this: 'It is necessary to transform the world'. P3: something bad to transform the world into something good. Teacher: Yes but I want a situation. You P3: The Congress Inquiry Commission, a fraud. It is necessary to transform all this, Teacher: Ok. You are telling me a fact which eh . has eh has to do with this conclusion here. [] What I want is a story, i.e. a situation in which people (There follows several instances of the pupils attempting to re-introduce the impeachment issue). [] Teacher: How do you think things could change? P8: Impeaching the President. Teacher: No, let's talk in general terms about our everyday life. We are always blaming people who are far from us This transformation of the world can start with ourselves, can't it? Now, I am going to give out the texts. Should the teacher have given up, and let the students run with the ball? Or should she have stuck to her pre-planned agenda, at all costs? It may have been better if she'd relented. Ellis (1998) argues that "giving learners control of the discourse is one way of making the classroom acquisition-rich" (p. 155). This is also consistent with Slimani's (1989) claim, that topics initiated by learners are more readily recalled (i.e. are more likely to become "uptake") than topics initiated by the teacher. Moreover, giving learners some say in the content of the lesson is likely to improve motivation. Van Lier (2001) cites evidence that "intrinsic motivation is closely related to the perception of being able to choose and of being somehow in control of one's actions. Actions that are perceived as being externally controlled [on the other hand] have a tendency to reduce intrinsic motivation." It follows that topics that are "externally controlled" will have a similar de-motivating tendency. Allowing learners some say in deciding the topic agenda does not mean that teachers must relinquish their authority. Rather, they need to use their management and language skills in order to exploit to the full the learning opportunities that arise naturally in the course of the lesson, especially those that are learner-initiated. This may mean greater flexibility in planning, and the willingness, at times, to surrender the plan for the sake of increased learner participation and involvement. Van Lier (1988) notes that "it is predominantly during unplanned sequences that we can see learners employ initiative and use language creatively" (p. 215). Lessons that are so tightly planned that such opportunities do not arise may in fact be counterproductive. What is the role of coursebooks, then, in an approach that allows learners greater say in the choice and development of topics? Are coursebook topics - and the way they are dealt with - compatible with such an approach? Coursebooks have come in for a lot of criticism lately, not least for their somewhat "de-caffeinated" content. Rinvolucri (1999) identifies a bland and unengaging "EFL sub-culture" as represented in "the soft, fudgey, sub-journalistic, woman's magaziney world of EFLese course materials" (p. 14). He exhorts publishers and writers to include more topics of a "taboo" nature, such as ILLNESS, DEATH, POVERTY and CONCEPTION. But, as Gray (2002) points out, such demands are unlikely to be met when publishers aim to appeal to a globalised and heterogeneous market. It may be some time before we see overt gay content, for example, in internationally marketed ELT materials. And even the production of materials targeted at local markets is no guarantee that the topics will engage the students. Experienced teachers know that a topic that really takes off with one class may - with another class - completely bomb. Moreover, even if controversial content were to be included in coursebooks, it's unlikely that it would be any less "de-caffeinated" than is current coursebook content. As Pulverness (1999) neatly puts it, coursebook texts are not so much texts as "pre-texts" - pretexts for the introduction and/or reinforcement of pre-selected "grammar McNuggets". Anybody involved in coursebook production knows that texts and topics are selected to fit around the pre-selected grammar syllabus. "Everything is reducible to form," complains Grady (1997). "The textbook represents all types of issues and all types of discourse as not requiring much thought or action beyond the decision as to the appropriate grammatical structure" (p. 9). It doesn't really matter what you think, so long as you use the third conditional.

When grammar rules - i.e. when the grammatical agenda predominates - it is less easy for teachers to exploit and develop coursebook topics for their own sake. And it is much less likely that opportunities will be given for learners to initiate and develop their own topics. When coursebook topics take off, it's more by chance than by design. Which raises the question - why use course books at all? As Johnson (1995) points out: "Teachers must be aware that commercial materials possess no scientifically or technologically proven powers to teach second languages; more importantly, teachers must look critically at commercial materials to determine their appropriateness for a particular group of students" (p. 138). Appropriateness is the key word here. If, as Holliday (1999) claims, language classes are "small cultures", locally constituted, with local needs and local concerns, shouldn't the texts and discourses which they require also be locally generated? In practice this might mean that the learners themselves choose their topics and texts. Once upon a time this would have involved a lot of effort and organisation. Now, with most learners having easy access to the internet, this is less problematic. As an example, Kulchytska (2000) describes how an advanced class of hers in Ukraine designed and wrote what they called their "Alternative Textbook". They chose their own themes and texts. "All the creative work would be theirs, and I would just be the administrator," she writes. "Something amazing happened when I said, 'Don't pick topics for teachers--you are going to write this textbook for yourselves and for the next few generations of students.' My inert students started naming issues I had never suspected they were interested in". These are the themes they collectively chose: 1. The Individual and Society a. Alcoholism, Smoking, Drug Abuse b. AIDS 2. People's Values 3. Human Rights 4. The World after World War II 5. Careers 6. Man and Nature 7. Youth Culture 8. Women and Society 9. The Art of Love Commenting on the experience, one of the students said: "Working on the Alternative Textbook gives us the opportunity to choose themes which are more important and useful than those in the textbook. Besides, it makes us read a lot of authentic texts." Nor need such an approach be confined to advanced adult learners: Conte and Thornbury (forthcoming) describe a similar initiative in an elementary children's class in Barcelona, in which the children produced their own portfolios of work, complete with drawings and photos. Motivation and memorability are recurring themes in this account. Teachers who complain that their learners are unmotivated, and/or that they don't remember anything, might look no further than the coursebook for the source of the problem. The solution need not entail abandoning the coursebook altogether. But it may mean allowing a bit more space for learner-initiated content. In other words, if the war comes up, let them mention it. References: Conte, N., and Thornbury, S. (forthcoming). Teaching unplugged: One teacher's account. Ellis, R. (1998) Discourse control and the acquisition-rich classroom. In Renandya, W., and Jacobs, G. (eds.) Learners and language learning. Anthology series 39. Singapore:RELC. Grady, K. (1997). Critically reading an ESL text. TESOL Journal,6:4, 7-10. Gray, J. (2002). The global course book in English language teaching. In Block, D., and Cameron, D. (Eds.) Globalization and Language Teaching. London: Routledge. Holliday, A. (1999). Small Cultures. In Applied Linguistics, 20, 2, 237-264. Johnson, K.E. (1995). Understanding Communication in Second Language Classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kulchytska, O. (2000) The Alternative Textbook and teaching English in Ukraine. In The Journal of the Imagination and Language Teaching and Learning, Vol. 5. http://www.njcu.edu/CILL/vol5/index.html Moita Lopes, L. P. (1995). What is this class about? Topic formulation in an L1 reading comprehension classroom. In Cook, G., and Seidlhofer, B. (Eds.) Principle and Practice in Applied Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pulverness, A. (1999). Context or pretext? Cultural content and the coursebook. In Folio, 5, 2: 5-10 Rinvolucri, M. (1999). The UK, EFLese sub-culture and dialect. In Folio, 5, 2, 12-14. Slimani, A. (1989). The role of topicalization in classroom language learning. In System 17: 223-34. van Lier, L. (1988). The Classroom and the Language Learner. Harlow: Longman. van Lier, L. (2001). Constraints and resources in classroom talk: Issues of equality and symmetry. In Candlin, C., and Mercer, N. (Eds.) English Language Teaching in its Social Context: A Reader. London. Routledge. back to SOURCES