Like my previous edited volume (Harwood, 2010a), this book is intended for teachers, teacher trainers, researchers, publishers, and materials writers who work with English Language Teaching (ELT) textbooks. The remit of the earlier book was wider, focusing on teaching materials in general rather than textbooks in particular, and so many of the chapters in the previous volume described unpublished
... [Show full abstract] teaching activities produced by the authors themselves. For the present purposes, in contrast, the focus is squarely on published ELT textbooks (also known as course-books) and, where relevant, the aids that accompany them (such as teachers’ guides, workbooks, listening exercises, etc.). More specifically, much of the focus is on ‘global’ textbooks, normally published in the West and marketed worldwide, such as well-known series like Headway, Interchange, and Cutting Edge. While it is important to analyse unpublished, teacher-/researcher-produced materials, since no textbook can ever completely meet the needs of a class and, institutional and other factors permitting, teachers will wish to supplement their textbook with other materials to cater to their learners’ needs, it is also essential to focus on the published textbook, because most teachers are required to use them to some degree. An oft-cited statistic is Tyson and Woodward’s (1989) claim that textbooks structure up to 90 per cent of what goes on in school classrooms in the US.