True Story 7.15
A consequential controversy over the usefulness of textbooks
The setting for this story
During the 1990s, New Zealand became the go-to destination for secondary and undergraduate students from China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and other Asian nations who wanted to learn English. Charlotte, then the owner of a small but thriving English language institute in New Zealand, recalls those heady days.
A story of misaligned minds23
As a small business owner, my task was to ensure that people chose to associate with my institute, Asians as students and English speakers who had been trained as teachers. I didn’t need to entice students; they were applying apace. For teachers, I found that a good source was university programs where fledgling English as a second language teachers were learning techniques such as “communicative language teaching.” CLT made use of spontaneous and interactive classroom methods requiring frequent vocal contributions by, and interactions among, the students. Teachers using CLT would often photocopy and hand out on an as-needed basis puzzles, pictures, maps, readings, newspaper clippings, vocabulary lists, game cards, role-plays and similar instructional materials. Many CLT teachers thought of textbooks as misguided relics of a by-gone language-learning era.
Students liked the idea of learning via modern methods, but by the second classroom session they were complaining. They felt cast adrift without texts. They asked for textbooks, pleaded for textbooks. Their teachers were having none of it. Their CLT students would learn “the natural way,” by interacting vocally with each other and the teacher and occasionally reading “authentic” materials from real life. When their teachers turned a deaf ear, the Asians complained to the boss – me.
- When I go home from class, I take with me scraps of paper. How can I review my lessons?
- We don’t want to know, in any language, how to cook New Zealand food. I will not become a chef!
- I do not want to waste precious time in class reading newspapers. I can read them at home.
- In Korea, we all need a textbook to study with. Here, we have nothing on which to base our learning. Without a textbook, we do not know what we’ll be doing in the next class and what is expected of us. We cannot predict and preview our lesson in advance, nor even review it later.24
I heard from managers and owners of other English schools who were receiving similar complaints, including about other features of CLT. The fact that we all had unhappy students was bad enough. Worse was the fact that these students often communicated with friends and family members back home – and with government officials. The Chinese Ministry of Education actually issued several official warnings about studying English in New Zealand! During the early 2000s, New Zealand’s reputation as a great place for Asians to study English was plunging. I should know. My institute went bankrupt.
Charlotte’s question
What was driving the Asian students’ earnest desire for English-language textbooks?
Critique of story 7.15
During the 1970s, second-language program designers knew that the standard approach, which prioritized grammatical precision, had enabled learners to progress in reading and writing faster than in speaking and listening. The developers believed that many second-language students hoped to learn how to comfortably converse with others in the target language about ordinary as well as job-specific topics. They decided to develop a new method that relied on student–student interactions, not teacher-guided grammatical study.
The designers weren’t aware25 of Asians’ knowledge-focused mindset: They are disciplined, structured, fearful of publicly making mistakes, and insistent on step-by-step guidance from (a) a human expert, their revered teacher and (b) an authoritative lesson guide, their treasured textbook. And they prioritize the mastering of grammatical precision over conversational proficiency.
Furthermore, the designers weren’t aware that Asian students expect to devote vastly more time and effort to studying between classes than many Western, especially American, students do. Most students from Asia diligently review past classroom lessons and prepare for the next one. They cannot do this confidently without an authoritative textbook to consult. Finally, these students react with disbelief and anger when, during class, the teacher turns aside their sincere and reasoned pleas for a text and instead passes out newspaper clippings, poems, cartoons, recipes, maps, and so forth.
Take textbooks away from Asian students and you take away their indispensable learning tool, not to mention their motive to spend lots of money to attend your language school.
For thought
To what extent, if any, do you think it’s possible for an English as a second language (or English as a foreign language) program design to combine spontaneous and interactive classroom approaches with the guidance provided by an authoritative textbook? What would such a program look like?
Related stories
Story 7.17 also discusses East Asians’ urgent need for textbooks, but the setting is China.
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Endnotes:
23 Li, M., entire article. A similar account is available in Campbell & Li.
24 These are four of the many similar complaints found in Li, M., 6–12.
25 During the 1970s, unlike today, information about the learning expectations of Asian students was not readily available. Of the few available books about Asian mindsets, norms, and values, the great majority were written for Western businesspeople.
Full citations are available at misalignedminds.info/References.