Telling Tales: Changing Discourses of Identity in the ‘Global’ UK-Published English Language Coursebook

Kullman, J.

doi:10.1057/9781137384263_2

Cited by 11 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…The 'personalisation' activities typical of communicative textbook materials, for example, promote engagement and fluency in the appropriate cultural settings. However, it must be recognised that these techniques are situated within 'a discourse of psychotherapy' (Kullman, 2013, p. 36) fed by North American traditions of psychoanalysis which uphold a 'cult' of 'emotional frankness' (Prodromou & Mishan, 2008, p. 200) and 'reify' self-disclosure (Kullman, 2013). Such behaviours can be uncomfortable and alien to some cultures.…”

Section: Methodology and The Coursebookmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Global ELT coursebook: A case of Cinderella's slipper?

Mishan¹

2021

Lang. Teach.

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English language teaching (ELT) publishing as we know it today has a long and lucrative history, dating, according to Rix (2008), from the Longman publication of Michael West's New Method Readers in 1926, to the present day, where annual turnover runs to around US$194 billion (Jordan & Gray, 2019). Some of the sector's best-sellers, such as Oxford University Press's Headway series (Soars & Soars), have sold over 70 million copies (Ożóg, 2018) with OUP's English File (Latham-Koenig, Oxenden, & Lambert) selling over a million copies in China alone. Generally speaking, it is taken for granted that commercial publications in the educational sector are based on sound, accepted pedagogical principles. Early language teaching publications (from the 1950s onwards) naturally reflected practices that were thought to promote language learning at that time – such as repetition, drills and sentence-level grammar exercises. As our understanding of language learning developed, this Structural approach gave way to a Communicative one, reflecting the 1970s preoccupation with the importance of communicative competence, influenced by theorists such as Hymes (e.g. 1972) and Halliday (e.g. 1975). This approach remains the predominant one (in the West at least) 50 years later. It represents, remarkably perhaps, the last time that applied linguistics substantially influenced a language teaching approach, or at least, one that had such global reach and enduring influence. Since then, findings from the fields of applied linguistics and second language (L2) acquisition, which should have fed into language learning approaches and hence language coursebooks, have been slow to do so in any systematic or significant way. Where they have, the way in which language learning theory ‘translates’ into pedagogy in the coursebook and thence classroom, can be questionable. In parallel with this is the problem of the socio-cultural standpoint of teaching materials of an international language such as English, issuing from a particular geographic heartland, viz. England. As with applied linguistics and L2 acquisition research, developments in sociolinguistic, socio-cultural and socio-political theory have been realised in language teaching coursebooks only as a rather superficial multi-cultural gloss. The advent of ‘global’ coursebooks conceived in the 1990s, with multiple iterations, attempting to capture international appeal, still has not resolved the conundrum that language – and hence language teaching materials, that is, the combination of content and pedagogy – constitute cultural artefacts, imbued with cultural values and ideologies. All in all, as Timmis, Mukundan, and Alkhaldi laconically observe: ‘for such commonplace objects, [coursebooks] have aroused a surprising degree of controversy’ (2009, p. 11). These then, are the chief areas of contention that I will develop in this article. Opposing these issues, it will be acknowledged that coursebooks remain the default language learning resource, and that teachers and learners world-wide need, want and value them as ready-made language teaching materials.

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Section: Methodology and The Coursebookmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Global ELT coursebook: A case of Cinderella's slipper?

Mishan¹

2021

Lang. Teach.

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“…There are two parts of this checklist. The first one is composed of four sets of questions about context and user definition related to the description of the target groups; questions about cultural content including sub-questions about topics, characters, visuals, language and context of verbal input; questions about the design of the cultural content (verbal and visual modality), meanings and arrangement (Kullman, 2013).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As Holmes states Language learning is no longer about food, festivals, facts and flags, but understanding culture as a social construction: learners are encouraged to understand how culturetheir own and that of others -permeates and shapes behaviours, interactions and language choices. It also requires an understanding of their own identity and that of the others in this (intercultural) communicative process (Holmes, 2014, p.77-78).Cultural content is always designed in a frame, which defines what and how it will be represented (Gray, 2013;Kullman, 2013). 8 Publishers who sell their products must be politically correct following Western values with a non-sexist approach to the way the female and male are presented (Gray, 2014;Gray & Block, 2014).…”

Section: Identity and Elt Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identity And Multimodality Of Cultural Content In Elt Coursebooks For Yls

Stec¹

2019

The European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences

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“…104-106). In the case of language education, this list of images, idiomatic expressions, descriptions of cultural events and situations and very particular cultural values, lead teachers and students to believe that they define the language that they are learning (Kullman, 2013;Risager, 2018).…”

Section: The Monolingual Monocultural Fallacymentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural threads in three primary schools

Driscoll

Holliday

2019

AILA

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This paper explores headteachers’ and teachers’ perceptions of foreign languages(FL) and cultural learning in three primary schools in areas of disadvantage in England. Drawing upon a new theoretical frame for primary languages, Critical Cosmopolitanism (Delanty, 2006; Beck and Sznaider, 2006) and The Grammar of Culture (Holliday, 2018), we argue that the grand narrative of a target language inhabited by a target culture is outdated and approaches to cultural learning in primary schools could lead the way. There is substantial evidence that most learners find language lessons fun, particularly activities such as songs, stories and intercultural events (Driscoll et al., 2004, 2014; Cable et al. 2010). The discourse on conditions for inclusive practice is less commonplace and little is known about FL learning in areas of high deprivation (Nikolov & Mihaljević Djigunović, 2011). Teachers and headteachers in this study were committed to cultural learning and staff adopted creative approaches to teaching. The findings, however, also indicate that traditional notions of a mono or homogenised national culture with associated stereotypes linger in teachers’ framing of FL. There exists a need for a more personalised approach to cultural learning drawing upon children’s own cultural experiences. Data was analysed thematically following strict ethical guidelines and all names were anonymised to ensure confidentiality.

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Telling Tales: Changing Discourses of Identity in the ‘Global’ UK-Published English Language Coursebook

Cited by 11 publications

References 0 publications

The Global ELT coursebook: A case of Cinderella's slipper?

The Global ELT coursebook: A case of Cinderella's slipper?

Identity And Multimodality Of Cultural Content In Elt Coursebooks For Yls

Cultural threads in three primary schools

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