For teachers who like to use some of the new techniques involved with “bookless” classrooms such as Internet-based projects, or email exchanges, or wiki-creation, one of the uses of the “textbook” tool is to provide a meaningful assignment that students can work on independently while the teacher devotes some time to developing a “bookless” activity, correcting online work, and sending email messages to students.

In regards to your final question, there’s no need to make that choice. Having a flexible environment and using a textbook in a classroom or not mutually incompatible. A professional teacher will be able to have use a textbook and have a flexible environment.

Near the end of the course I took last spring, my teacher asked us students if we had suggestions for themes to use, since they were going to be writing a new course pack for our next level. I did offer a suggestion but perhaps they chose not to develop it. I suppose it’s hard to collect good student input on this for a general language course, but I think in an ESP course, learners would have a better idea of what they really need and want to know.

Despite all the good things I said about textbooks, I’m in a complete write “all my own materials phase” at the moment and so for myself all that I ask is that a textbook doesn’t have too much stuff to get through or can be left mainly for homework, so suddenly Language to Go, up till now one of my most hated textbooks, is working well in my classes…

We’ve started using Intelligent Business, and it’s probably the best Business book I’ve used in a while. It also has a whole seperate book of skills stuff, which helps for flexibility. The new editions of Market Leader are an improvement on the old (one thing that works well is the fact that they’ve recorded the authentic recordings with actors, perhaps surprisingly), as are the new “International” editions of Business Basics and Business Ops etc. For one kind of ESP class, Tech Talk has gone down very well, although inexperienced and non-technical teachers might need some help spicing it up.

If you, or anyone else reading, ever want any freebie books, I can get you review copies if you can write me a short review for the TEFL.net review pages. Details on www.tefl.net/reviews/reviewers-guide

Especially, your points about books helping teachers remain on target (avoiding chit chat etc) really make sense. It’s important to realize that teachers are all at different places in their skill development, and sometimes books are just necessary to help them along. I know, back when I was just starting out, books were very important to me:structuring my classes, explaining grammar etc. Good point, and one I had not considered. (Isn’t it funny how some of the most obvious and important things you should consider just seem to hide out from ya?)

Then you also mention your insight into student’s study skills and “authority”: I don’t think that is just specific to Japanese students. There is a certain degree of “officialness” or correctness associated with using course books: you use em, and you’re considered professional and for real. But most important of all, is what students do with your photocopied hand outs or printed out articles and notes.

Few of my students successfully maintain a binder where they store all our class work. Most of it floats about, and I imagine is rarely reviewed outside of class.
On the other hand, I’ve had several “course book” students tell me that they have tried reviewing their stuff out of class…so books are good for that too I suppose. All the content is right there in one safe and secure place.

I really liked your idea about sitting down with teachers to help them draw up an opening syllabus. That makes good sense, and will help shape each lesson toward the student…and not so much around a course book.

So…for practicality and being teacher friendly, I think I will need to explore some course book usage. I don’t want to have teachers or students getting lost - roaming around direction-less in the name of being student centered. That happens pretty easily I think.
Instead, I think a middle ground can be found don’t you think? A class that follows a book, but is wide open, or even required, to offer additional content that helps keep the path close to each student’s needs and interests.

Just out of curiosity, do you have any business English books that you’d suggest? Thanks again for your wonderful comments, you’ve really helped me think differently about this.

I like the idea of teachers working together to create packs or modules. I see things like delicious.com working great, or even wikis, as group content banks.

Thanks for your comments Jo - I would love to learn more about what your school does. Have you been able to contribute to the packs? What was that like?

We have found that:
- Some teachers demand a textbook for the reasons you gave. We then need to help them add a bit of needs analysis and ESP without too much additional effort, e.g. by adding a once a month ESP lesson to the syllabus or helping them plan how to mix up the order of the units in the book so students get what they need first.
- Some teachers need to use a book. That can mean problems such as too much chit chat, choosing unsuitable materials, having great ideas but not following them up with recycling and homework (that’s me!) etc, but it could just mean the best way of that teacher developing at the stage they are in is by seeing how teaching is tackled in different ways by different books. I still have stages when I get into a routine and need a new textbook as a stimulus too.
- Many students demand a book. Japanese students, for example, are very presentation conscious and tend to trust authority. In this case meaning the big publishers. They’ve also often never been taught study skills like filing their notes, so photocopies are rarely refered to again once they’ve been used in class.

With other classes and other teachers, we do decide not to go with a fixed textbook. Ways you can make this ESP planning easier for them include:
- Designate one textbook or other book (e.g. a marketing vocabulary book) that will be most useful for them to turn to when they can’t find topical stuff etc.
- After needs analysis, draw up at least the beginning of a syllabus with the teacher for their class
- Have supplementary files for all the different kinds of ESP classes and different skills that teachers can quickly refer to. If you have a limited budget, to start with, this could even just be photocopies of units from textbooks arranged by topic, then built up as you and the teachers find more resources. Or even cheaper, just a list of pages in different books for each kind of ESP.