Realizing the Possibilities of the ESL Textbook

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Didactics - English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, , course: ICEG 2006 (international congress), language: English, abstract: Views about the English as a second/foreign language (ES/FL) textbook (as a medium) polarize. Learners, teachers and educational administrators in any ES/FL situation need a textbook, though it is unlikely that they regard the prescribed ES/FL textbook as an unmixed blessing. But the very idea of a fixed textbook -- of a pre-packaged set of learning/teaching materials -- appears to be viewed with disfavour in the English Language Teaching (ELT) literature where the trend in the last three-and-a-half decades has been towards greater negotiation and individual choice in the classroom.

This paper examines the anti-textbook argument, considers the alternatives to the textbook suggested by some experts, and finds the textbook having the potential to act as a support rather than a constraint, and fulfilling a range of needs that emerge from any teaching/learning situation. The paper also discusses the factors on which the supportiveness of the textbook depends.