English Language Learning Materials

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English Language LearningMaterials

A Critical Review

Edited By Brian Tomlinson

continuum

Cont inuum Internat ional Publ i sh ing GroupThe Tower Bui lding 80 Maiden Lane,1 1 York Road Suite 704London New YorkSE1 7NX NY 10038www.continuumbooks.com

© Brian Tomlinson, 2008

Brian Tomlinson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988,to be identif ied as Author of th is work.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the Brit ish Library.

ISBN: 978-0-8264-9350-7 (ha rdback)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataA catalog record for t h i s book is available from the Library of Congress.

Typeset by BookEns Ltd, Royston, Herts.Pr inted and bound in Great Br i t a in by Biddies Ltd, Kings Lynn, Norfolk

Contents

Contributors viiPreface ix

Brian TomlinsonPart 1 Introduction 1

1 Language Acquisition and Language Learning MaterialsBrian Tomlinson

Part 2 Different Types of Materials 152 Materials for General English 17

Hitomi Masuhara and Brian Tomlinson3 Materials for Teaching English to Young Learners 38

Wendy Arnold and Shelagh Rixon4 Materials for English for Science and Technology (EST) 59

Philip Skeldon5 EAP Materials in Australia and New Zealand 74

Hans Mol and Tan Bee Tin6 Multimedia Materials in Developing Countries: The Malaysian

Experience 100Jayakaran Mukundan

7 Self-Access Materials 110Lucy Cooker

8 Extensive Reading: Maid in Waiting 133Alan Maley

Part 3 Materials in Use around the World 1579 Materials Used in the UK 159

Brian Tomlinson and Hitomi Masuhara10 Materials Used in the USA 179

Julia Frazier and Patricia Juza11 Materials Used in Western Europe 193

Luke Prodromou and Freda Mishen

100

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vi Contents

12 Materials Used in Central and Eastern Europe and the FormerSoviet Union 213Rod Bolitho

13 Materials Used in Africa 223Masibo Lumala and Soufiane Trabelsi

14 Materials in Japan: Coexisting Traditions 245Jim Smiley and Michiyo Masui

15 ELT Materials Used in Southeast Asia 263Bao Dat

16 The Textbook, the Teacher and the Learner: A Middle EastPerspective 281Nahla Bacha, Irma-Kaarina Ghosn and Neil McBeath

17 Materials in Use in Argentina and the Southern Cone 300Mario López Barrios, Elba Villanueva de Debat and Gabriella Tavella

Part 4 Conclusions 31718 Conclusions about ELT Materials in Use around the World 319

Brian Tomlinsonindex 323

Contributors

Wendy Arnold, Hong KongMario Lopez Barrios, Universidad National de Cordoba, ArgentinaTan Bee Tin, University of Auckland, New ZealandNahla Bacha, Lebanese American University, LebanonRod Bolitho, Norwich Institution for Language Education, UKLucy Cooker, Kanda University of International Studies, JapanBao Dat, Monash University, AustraliaElba Villanueva de Debat, Universidad National de Cordoba, ArgentinaJulia Frazier, Hunter College, New YorkIrma-Kaarina Ghosn, Lebanese American University, LebanonPatricia Juza, Baruch College, New YorkNeil McBeath, Technical Studies Institute, Dhahran, Saudi ArabiaAlan Maley, Leeds Metropolitan University, UKHitomi Masuhara, Sultan Qaboos University, OmanMichiyo Masui, Tohuku Bunka Gakuen University, Sendai, JapanFreda Mishan, University of Limerick, EireHans Mol, Southern Cross University, AustraliaJayakaran Mukundan, Universiti Putra Malaysia, MalaysiaMasibo Lumala, University of NottinghamLuke Prodromou, Leeds Metropolitan University, UKShelagh Rixon, University of Warwick, UKPhilip Skeldon, Sohar College, OmanJim Smiley, Tohuku Bunka Gakuen University, Sendai, JapanGabriella Tavella, Universidad Nacional del Comahue, AsentamientoUniversitario San Martin de los Andes, ArgentinaSoufiane Trabelsi, University of Sfax, TunisiaBrian Tomlinson, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman

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Preface

Brian Tomlinson

This book provides a critical review of English language teaching (ELT) mate-rials currently in use throughout the world. It does so through objective analy-ses, through subjective but systematic evaluations and through presenting theinformed views of its authors. Its intentions are to inform, to stimulate and toprovide suggestions for future development.

A personal introduction by the editor is followed by a section in which expe-rienced developers and users of ELT materials review the materials currentlyused for different types of target learners (i.e. young learners (YL), learnersof General English (GE), learners of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) andlearners of English for Academic Purposes (EAP). It also reviews materials forextensive reading, materials for self-access learning and multi-media materi-als. In this section, the reviewers describe and exemplify materials typical ofthose currently used in their sub-genre, they make generalizations about thedistinctive characteristics of currently used materials, they subject a sample ofmaterials to systematic, criterion-referenced evaluation and they present theirpersonal views of developments they would like to see take place in the future.

In the second section, materials development experts review ELT materialscurrently in use in the geographical area they are most famil iar with. Some ofthem focus on the country they know best and then make reference to othercountries in the region, whilst others review materials used across a wide butconnected area. In this way ELT materials are reviewed for the UK, WesternEurope, Eastern Europe, Australia and New Zealand, East Asia, South-EastAsia, the Middle East, Africa, Central and South America and North America.In each chapter the authors describe and exemplify the distinctive characteris-tics of the materials currently in use, they say how these materials are typicallyused, they evaluate a sample of typical materials and they specify the improve-ments they would like to see in the development and use of ELT materials intheir area.

This book does not attempt to provide an objective overview of the develop-ment and use of every type of EEL material in every area of the world. Instead

x Preface

it provides an informed impression of what is happening in the KIT materialworld and in doing so hopes to s t imulate teachers, researchers, materials devel-opers and publishers to t h i n k of ways in which they can contribute to improve-ments in the development and use of ELT materials. This is the declared aim ofMATSDA (the Materials Development Association) and many of the contr ibu-tors to this book have played an important role in the development of MATSDAsince it was founded by Brian Tomlinson in 1993 (e.g. Brian Tomlinson(President) , Hitomi Masuhara (Secretary) and such frequent contributors toMATSDA events and publicat ions as Rod Bolitho, Irma-Kaarina Ghosn, AlanMaley, Freda Mishen, Jayakaran Mukundan and Luke Prodromou). For moreinformat ion about MATSDA, refer to www.matsda.org.

We hope you enjoy this book and that you might follow up your reading of itby contr ibuting an article to the MATSDA journal Folio and/or a presentationat one of our MATDSA conferences or workshops.

Parti

INTRODUCTION

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Chapter 1

Language Acquisition and LanguageLearning Materials

Brian Tomlinson

Intention

In this rather unusual Introduction to a book which reviews ELT materialsaround the world I'd like to present my personal views about:

what facilitates language learningwhat language learning materials are currently doing which helps learnersto acquire and develop Englishwhat language learning materials are currently not doing to help learnersof Englishwhat language learning materials are currently doing to prevent languageacquisition and development.

Notice that I'm deliberately using the term 'language learning materials'instead of the usual 'language teaching materials' in order to stress that one ofmy views is that many ELT materials are designed for teaching English ratherthan for learning it. Note also that I'm making a distinction between languageacquisition and language development. For me language acquisition is 'the ini-tial stage of gaining basic communicative competence in a language', whi ls tlanguage development is 'the subsequent stage of gaining the ability to use thelanguage successfully in a wide variety of media and genre for a wide variety ofpurposes' (Tomlinson 2007a: 2). One of my arguments is that many ELT mate-rials (especially global coursebooks) currently make a significant contributionto the failure of many learners of English as a second, foreign or other lan-guage to even acquire basic competence in English and to the failure of mostof them to develop the ability to use it successfully. They do so by focusing onthe teaching of linguistic items rather than on the provision of opportunitiesfor acquisition and development. And they do this because that's what teachersare expected and required to do by administrators, by parents, by publishers,and by learners too. This is a rather provocative opening to a book which muchof the time tries to be as objective as possible and I'm sure it wil l be resented bymost publishers and textbook writers. I don't think many teachers will disagreewith me though - especially those who responded to my worldwide enquiry

4 Brian Tomlinson

about why a part icular global coursebook was so popular by saying they usedit because it meant they d idn ' t have to spend time preparing their lessons butthat they felt sorry for thei r students because it was so boring. For other per-spectives on the global coursebook see Gray (2002).

My Knowledge of Language Acquisition

There is sti l l much debate about how learners can best acquire a second orforeign language but ' this should not stop us from applying what we do knowabout second and foreign language learning to the development of materialsdesigned to facil i tate that process' (Tomlinson 1998a: 6).

I know that a pre-requisite for language acquisition is a rich experience oflanguage in use. We also know that for such experience to facilitate languageacquisition:

the language experience needs to be contextualized and comprehensible(Krashen 1985, 1993, 1999)the learner needs to be motivated, relaxed, positive and engaged (Arnold1999; Tomlinson 1998b, 1998d, 2003d)the language and discourse features available for potential acquisitionneed to be salient, meaningful and frequently encountered (Maley 1994,1998; Tomlinson 1998b)the learner needs to achieve deep and multi-dimensional processing ofthe language. (Tomlinson 2000c, 200Ib)

This means that materials for learners at all levels must provide exposure toauthentic use of English through spoken and written texts with the potentialto engage the learners cognitively and affectively. If they don't provide suchtexts and they don't s t imulate the learners to th ink and feel whilst experiencingthem there is very l i t t le chance of the materials facilitating any durable lan-guage acquisition at all. There is massive evidence that one of the easiest andmost effective ways of providing such exposure is through extensive listeningand extensive reading (Elley 2000; Krashen 1993) in which the learners listento or read what they want to without any requirement to complete any tasksduring or after their experience of the texts.

It is my belief that helping learners to notice features of the authentic languagethey are exposed to can facilitate and accelerate language acquisition. It can doso by drawing the learners' attention to language and discourse features whichmight otherwise have gone unnoticed (Schmidt and Frota 1986) and it increasesthe likelihood of noticing similar features in subsequent input and of thereforeincreasing readiness for acquisition (Pienemann 1985). This is particularly trueif the learners are stimulated and guided to make discoveries for themselves(Bolitho el al, 2003; Tomlinson 1994) and to thus increase their awareness of howthe target language is tised to achieve fluency, accuracy, appropriacy and effect.

Acquisition Research and Teaching Materials 5

This means that not only should materials provide a rich exposure to lan-guage in authentic use but that they should also include activities which helplearners to notice for themselves salient features of the texts. Ideally the materi-als should follow the principles of the experiential approach in which appre-hension is followed by comprehension (Kolb 1984), and therefore the analyticalnoticing activities should follow engaging experiential activities in which theemphasis is on personal response to the meaning of the text.

It is also my belief that helping learners to participate in meaningful com-munication in which they are using language to achieve intended outcomes isessential for the development of communicative competence. This is of vitalimportance in helping the brain to monitor and modify hypotheses aboutlanguage use and to involve the learner in the sort of negotiation of mean-ing which increases opportunities for language acquisition and development(Swain 2005). Practice activities which have been designed to give the learnerfrequent opportunities to get something right make very l i t t l e contribution tolanguage acquisition because they don't add anything new and they make nocontribution at all to language development because they focus on accurateoutputs rather than successful outcomes. What the materials need to do is toprovide lots of opportunities for the learners to actually use language to achieveintentions and lots of opportunities for them to gain feedback on the effective-ness of their attempts at communication.

My Thoughts about Language Acquisition

In my experience of 42 years of English language teaching, I have arrived at thefollowing conjectures:

The majority of language learners gain very little from being given infor-mation about a language and how it is used.The majority of language learners gain very l i t t le from analytical activitieswhich require them to apply what they have been told about a languageto their attempts to use it.The majority of language learners gain very little from practice activitieswhich help them to get most things right by controll ing and s implifyingthe context in which they are asked to produce language.Many of the minority of language learners who succeed in acquiring alanguage analytically become language teachers, materials writers andexaminers, they set tip a false paradigm of the good language learner as ahard-working, analytical learner and they cause many experiential learn-ers to fail.Language acquisition is facilitated and accelerated if the learner is posi-tive about their learning environment, achieves self-esteem and is emo-tionally engaged in the learning activities (Tomlinson 1998d).Achievable challenges help learners to th ink and feel and to achieve valu-able self-esteem.

Bnan Tomlinson

Learners gain from sometimes being allowed to hide and from not alwaysbeing put under a spotl ight .Those learners who participate mentally in group activities often gainmore than those who participate vocally.Encouraging learners to make use of mental imaging whilst respond-ing to and prior to producing language facili tates comprehension andcommunicat ion and promotes language acquisition and development(Tomlinson 1996, 1998c; Tomlinson and Avila 2007a, 2007b).Encouraging learners to use L2 inner speech can have positive effects oncommunicative competence and can facilitate and accelerate acquisitionand development (Tomlinson 2000b, 2001a, 2003a; Tomlinson and Avila2007a,2007b).L2 learners can use high level skills (e.g. connecting, predicting, inter-preting, evaluating) from the very beginning of their language learningexperience. Doing so facilitates language acquisition and is essential forlanguage development (Tomlinson 2007b).L2 beginners' courses should follow the learner syllabus and should focuson meaning rather than form (Sato 1990; Tomlinson 1998b).Reading should be delayed in the L2 un t i l the learners have a sufficientlylarge vocabulary to be able to read experient ial ly rather than studially andthen extensive reading should be introduced before intensive reading(Masuhara 2007; Tomlinson 2001c).Learners should be encouraged and helped to represent language multi-dimensional ly (Masuhara 2007; Tomlinson 2000a, 2000c, 2001 b).

What ELT Materials Do to Facilitate Language Acquisitionand Development

Below I have listed some of the things which I think some ELT materials are cur-rently doing which are.likely to promote language acquisition and development:

Some of them are providing a rich experience of different genres andtext types.Some of them are providing an aesthetically positive experience throughthe use of attractive i l lustrat ion, design and i l lustrat ion.Some of them are making use of multimedia resources to provide a richand varied experience of language learning.Some of them are he lp ing the learners to make some discoveries forthemselves.Some of them are he lp ing the learners to become independent learnersof the language.Some of them are providing supplementary materials which provide thelearners with experience of extensive l istening and/or extensive reading.Some of them are he lp ing the learners to personali/.e and localize the i rlanguage l ea rn ing experience.

6

Acquisition Research and Teaching Materials 7

What ELT Materials Do to Inhibit Language Acquisition andDevelopment

My assumption is that ELT materials should be driven by principles of languageacquisition and that ideally all units of material should be principled, relevantand coherent. The reality seems to be rather different, with commercial materi-als being driven by considerations of what the buyers (i.e. administrators andteachers) are likely to want rather than of what the learners are likely to ben-efit from, and with most materials developers driven by in tu i t ions about whatis likely to 'work' rather than by their beliefs about what facilitates languageacquisition (Tomlinson 2003e; in press).

In a still confidential research project which I conducted for a major pub-lisher I found from a survey of twelve countries throughout the world thatabout 85 per cent of ELT textbooks were selected by administrators, 15 percent by teachers and 0 per cent by learners. The results of this situation areobvious to see, with colourful photographs placed in the top right-hand cornerof the right-hand page to attract potential buyers f l icking through a new book,with as many words as possible crammed on to a page to achieve optimal cover-age at an acceptable price, with each un i t being the same length and followinga uniform format to make timetabling, teacher allocation and teacher prepara-tion easier and with most tasks replicating conventional test types so as to facili-tate examination preparation. None of these characteristics are l ike ly to addpedagogic value to a textbook but all are likely to promote sales. This is not, ofcourse, an attack on commercial publishers. Many of them try to add as mucheducational value to their products as possible but for all of them the mainobjective is to make money. If only teachers were able to put the learners firstwhen selecting coursebooks and not have to do as many teachers around theworld reported doing in another confidential survey I carried out for a majorpublisher in which they said they selected a best-selling coursebook becauseit was designed to minimize their lesson preparation (even though many ofthem said they felt guilty because their students found it so boring). What thissituation means for writers of commercial ELT materials is that they can at besttry to achieve a compromise between their principles and the requirements ofthe publisher. See Bell and Gower (1998), Mukundan (2006a, 2006b), Richards(2001) and Wala (2003a) for discussions of ways of resolving this dilemma.

Johnson (2003: 28-29) gave a group of experienced and expert materialsdevelopers a task to design, involving the development of a un i t of materials giv-ing learners 'a 'communicative' activity to practise 'describing people'. He elicitedfrom them observations about their design process so as to be able to comparetheir efforts with those of a group of novice materials developers. He found thatthe experts used such strategies as simulating input and output, practising 'con-sequence identification' (131), designing in an opportunistic way, spending timeexploring and 'using repertoire a lot' (136). What he doesn't report is any overtconsideration of principles of language acquisition. This concern for what theycan get learners to do rather than how they can get them to learn is a character-istic of other reports of expert developers at work. See Byrd (1995), Fenner and

8 Brian Tomlinson

Newby (2000), Graves (1996), Hidalgo et al. (1995), Jolly and Bolitho (1998),Lyons (2003), McGrath (2002), Maley (2003), Mares (2003), Mishan (2005),Prowse (1998), Renandya (2003), Richards (2001), Tomlinson and Masuhara(2004) and Wala (2003b) for discussions of the process of developing ELT mate-rials and, in particular, Bell and Gower (1998), Flores (1995) and Tomlinson(1998b, 2003b, 2003c, 2003d, 2003e, 2003f, in press) for discussion of principle-driven materials writing. See Search 10 (Fenner and Nordal-Peedesen 1999) foran example of a commercially published local coursebook which is designed pri-marily for the learner and which is driven by principles oflanguage acquisition.

I have listed below, in a rather lengthy list, some of the things which many ELTmaterials are currently doing which are likely to inhibit language acquisition anddevelopment. Obviously there are exceptions to these generalizations and thereare some materials which are actually and commendably doing the opposite.

They are underestimating learners both in terms of language level andcognitive abili ty.In particular they are treating linguistically low level learners as intellectu-ally low level learners.They are impoverishing the learning experience in a misguided attemptto make learning easier by simplifying their presentation oflanguage.They are creating an i l lusion oflanguage learning by using a Presentation/Practice/Production approach which simplifies language use and resultsin shallow processing.They are also creating an illusion of language learning by ensuring thatmost activities are easily accomplished as a result of involving little morethan memorization, repetition of a script or simple substitution or trans-formation.They are confusing language learning and skills development by trying toteach language features during listening and reading activities.They are preventing learners from achieving affective engagement bypresenting them with bland, safe, harmonious texts (Wajnryb 1996) andrequiring them to participate in activities which don't stimulate them toth ink and feel.They are providing learners with far too much de-contextualized experi-ence of language exemplification and not nearly enough experience oflanguage in fu l ly contextualized use.They are focusing on activities which require efferent listening or read-ing for detailed and literal comprehension and are providing very l i t t leopportunity for the sort of aesthetic listening and reading which stimu-lates the total engagement so useful for promoting both enjoyment of thelanguage and acquisition of it (Rosenblatt 1978).They are fa i l ing to help the learners to make full tise of the languageexperience available to them outside the classroom.They are focusing on uni-dimcnsional processing of language throughactivities requi r ing only the decoding and/or encoding of languagerather t h a n on mu l t i - d imens iona l representation of language through

Acquisition Research and Teaching Materials 9

activities involving the use of the full resources of the brain (Arnold 1999;Masuhara 2007; Tomlinson 2000c, 200Ib).

Conclusion

The hope, of course, lies with local, non-commercial materials which are notdriven by the profit imperative and which are driven rather by considerationsof the needs and wants of their target learners and by principles of languageacquisition. I have recently enjoyed being involved as a consultant in a numberof projects contributing to the development of such materials. One example ofsuch a project has been On Target (1995), a coursebook published by GamsbergMacmillan for the Ministry of Education in Namibia. The first draft of this bookwas written by a team of 30 teachers in five days in response to the student artic-ulation of their needs and wants and with the help of a principled, text-driven,flexible framework (Tomlinson 2003e). Another example is a textbook cur-rently being developed by a team of 17 teachers at Sultan Qaboos University inMuscat. In a radical departure from the norm, the starting point has been thearticulation of the writers' beliefs about what facilitates language acquisition(i.e. universal criteria) and what is needed and wanted by their target learners(i.e. local criteria). These beliefs have been supplemented by consideration ofthe findings of language acquisition research and by the results of triangulatedneeds and wants analyses, and they have been developed into criteria whichwill be used both to drive the writing of the book and to evaluate it during andafter development. Before starting to write the book the writers are develop-ing a library of spoken and written texts with the potential for affective andcognitive engagement, they are developing a principled, text-driven, flexibleframework and they are writing sample communicative tests and examinationsto ensure eventual positive washback on classroom use of the book. Soon theywill start to write the book in small teams and each uni t will be monitored byanother group, revised and then trialled. Eventually a small team of editorswill match the learning points in the units to a 'secret' syllabus they have devel-oped, develop final versions of the units and then fit the final versions of theunits together into a structure which will ensure principled cohesion as well asmaximizing student and teacher choice.

Perhaps this type of principled approach to materials development can beused as a blueprint for commercial production of L2 materials - with due con-sideration being given, of course, to the face validity and conformity to marketexpectation which is necessary to ensure profitability.

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LI and L2 acquisition and development', in B. Tomlinson (ed.), LanguageAcquisition and Development: Studies of Learners of First and. Other Languages.London: Continuum, pp. 1-12.

Tomlinson, B. (forthcoming a), 'Principles and procedures of materialsdevelopment', in N. Harwood (ed.), Materials in ELT: Theory and Practice.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Acquisition Research and Teaching Materials 13

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Part2

DIFFERENT TYPES OF MATERIALS

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Chapter 2

Materials for General English

Hitomi Masuhara and Brian Tomlinson

Introduction

The shelves in the English Language Teaching (ELT) section of bookshops inmajor cities anywhere in the world seem to be dominated by global course-books published by major British publishers. English Language (EL) teachersand learners all over the world are likely to recognize at least some of the namesof best-selling coursebooks. The front pages of publishers' ELT web cataloguesprominently flag their new coursebooks, which seem to be added every year totheir existing ones. Exhibitions at ELT conferences are a showcase of course-books and participants witness intense competition.

Coursebooks often come with a Student Book, a Teacher's Book and aWorkbook. Many offer additional materials such as cassette tapes, a CD Rom,tests, extra resources and photocopiable materials. Some may offer videos, webresources, a mini-dictionary, a mini-reference book and/or an extensive reader-booklet. Coursebooks seems to mean big business.

Questions come to our minds. What kinds of ELT learners are these course-books catering for? What are the needs and wants of the teachers and learnerswho use these coursebooks? Are these coursebooks meeting the target users'needs and wants? Are these coursebooks effective in terms of second languageacquisition (SLA)? What are the strengths and weaknesses of currently pub-lished coursebooks? What kinds of improvements would teachers and learnerslike to see?

Having these questions in our mind, we conducted a small-scale surveyamongst teachers and learners who use General English (GE) coursebooks inthe UK and overseas. We then randomly selected seven coursebooks publishedfrom 2001 to 2006, analysed their coverage and claims and then independ-ently conducted pre-use evaluation using 14 criteria based on SI A principles.Our objective for this evaluation was specifically focused to see if these sam-ples of coursebooks mirror what is recommended by SIA studies (Ellis in press;Tomlinson 1998b; Cook 2001).

In this chapter we will firstly try to describe how these current GE course-books may be used in UK and overseas and we will also ask if these coursebooksare meeting the needs and wants of the target learners and teachers. Secondly,by reporting the results of our evaluation of seven recent coursebooks, we willlook into how these sample coursebooks match SIA principles. We wil l then

18 Hitnmi Masuhara and Brian Tomlmson

conclude by presenting our personal views as users on possible future direc-tions for coursebooks.

What Kinds of ELT Contexts are General English CoursebooksCatering for? What are the Needs and Wants of the Teachers

and Learners who use these Coursebooks?

Major global coursebooks seem to be mainly targeting two different kindsof teaching contexts: 'General English ' in English-speaking countries and'English as a Foreign Language' in non-English-speaking countries. Such dualroles of the same coursebooks may be evidenced by the fact that four of (herecently published seven coursebooks (2001-2006) randomly selected for thereview for this chapter acknowledge language teaching inst i tut ions in Englandand overseas as providers of feedback or as pi lot ing ins t i tu t ions (see Donovan1998 and Singapore Wala 2003 for publishers ' accounts of the pi lot ing ofcoursebooks).

Let us firstly focus on typical GE contexts. English-speaking countries suchas the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand attract a lot of learnersfrom all over the world who wish to learn English for various purposes includ-ing academic (i .e. FLAP) and professional reasons (e.g. ESP, Business English)(see Chapter 9 for more details). Amongst these language learning visitors,there are a signif icant number of young adults/adults who enrol in 'GeneralEnglish (GE) ' classes at language schools, further education colleges (FE col-leges) or language centres in higher education institutions (HE).

According to our survey distributed among GE teachers and students, one ofthe main needs of such GE learners is to improve the four language skills, espe-cially speaking and l is tening to everyday English. These learners are well awarethat English is widely used as a lingua franca or as an international language(EIL) . Another major reason for enroll ing in GE courses is an instrumentalmotivation in tha t being f luent in P'nglish will give them better job prospects inthe near future.

Interestingly, GE learners also express thei r wish to enlarge their vocabularyand consolidate their grammar. Many of them seem to feel that their Englishis 'not good enough' and that they make 'a lot of mistakes' when they speak orwrite in English.

It is puzzling that these learners normally have spent at least 3-6 years learn-ing English back home at school with a vocabulary- and grammar-driven syl-labus. Do these learners feel the need for more similar pedagogic grammar? Ifso, current coursebooks should be satisfying such needs and wants. Or do theymean different kinds of grammar? Grammar that is more closely connected toreal life communica t ion , for example, spoken grammar (Carter, Hughes andMcCarthy 1998; Carter and McCarthy 2006)? Judging from their responses inthe questionnaires or even those in interviews, learners themselves do not seemto be able to articulate what exactly they mean by 'grammar' apart from thei rwish to 'speak/write perfect English without errors like native speakers', the

Materials for General English 19

myth still widely believed by teachers as well as learners. As Masuhara (1998)argues, alternative ways of tapping into the users' voices may be required.

The contents of recent coursebooks seem to respond to the general needsand wants of GE learners in that they all cover skills, vocabulary and grammar.Publishers launch new or revised coursebooks fairly frequently and supply lan-guage teaching institutions with fresh but similar GE materials for new learnersand repeaters who come and go year after year.

The coursebooks used in GE courses in English-speaking countries are alsoused in countries where English is taught as a foreign language (EEL), espe-cially in private schools, language schools and universities (see Part 3 of thisbook for area-specific reports).

In some EEL countries (e.g. China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia), their Ministriesof Education control the primary and secondary level English language teach-ing. In such countries, the majority of EEL learners normally spend about sixyears in secondary schools, learning English through locally approved materi-als, taught by local teachers who may prefer to use the local vernacular lan-guage in English classes. These local teachers say that it is difficult to teachEnglish using English because they are under pressure to cover the syllabusand also to successfully prepare their students for examinations. Teachers, par-ents and students are very much concerned with exam preparation, being fullyaware that the results of the exams will determine the academic and occupa-tional future.

The majority of EEL learners may manage not to fail in local tests but theyseem to feel that their English is not 'native-speaker like' (Timmis 2002). Forthem, native speakers mean 'middle-class British, North Americans, Australiansor New Zealanders who happen to speak a fairly standardised white version ofEnglish' (reported by overseas EEL teachers). Such a 'native speaker' imageseems to have been created by dominant popular cultural artefacts such asfilms, Western music and magazines. Coursebooks may have contributed inperpetuating such images (Cook 2002; Tomlinson et al. 2001).

The growing awareness of the importance of English as a tool for inter-national communication, however, is gradually changing the perception oflearners, teachers and administrators. After f inishing their secondary educa-tion, many of the EEL learners proceed to colleges and universities in whichglobal coursebooks are used to teach English for communication. Some EELlearners may visit English-speaking countries to do GE courses. The Ministriesof Education in many countries are updating their curr iculum, syllabus andmaterials to keep up with changes in English language teaching at primary andsecondary level.

Are the GE/EFL coursebooks meeting users' needs and wants?The results of our survey contained mixed responses.

GE and EEL contexts do share some similarities in that:

teachers have tended to be native speakers from English-speaking coun-tries