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…

Even though textbooks are a central component of the daily instructional practice of English language teachers, relatively little research has been conducted on how teachers actually use (i.e., adapt) textbooks in the classroom. This gap is aggravated by the fact that the terminology proposed in the literature to analyse teachers' textbook use is…

This article adopts a sociomaterial perspective on ELT materials and illustrates how a mandatory textbook is used as a springboard to create decolonizing relations in the classroom ecology. Sociomaterial perspectives view learning as not the transmission but the emergence of knowledge from embodied relations, which shifts the focus from the…

The rationale behind this special issue is to underscore the importance of studying instructional materials in context--that is, how materials and textbooks are used by teachers and learners. Research on teaching materials needs to reach beyond traditional 'armchair' analyses and evaluations to appreciate the place of instructional materials in…

The commonly used categorical system for conditionals (zero, first, second, and third) has been repeatedly demonstrated to be inadequate because it is unable to account for many conditional types attested in actual usage. ELT coursebooks and pedagogic grammars are criticized for ignoring the evidence and persisting with its use, but the reality…

The words in a language or language variety are often rank ordered in lists that are meant to reflect the relative importance of those words to language users and learners of a language. This rank ordering is done on the basis of the relative prevalence of words in a corpus. Lexical prevalence is often operationalized as measures of frequency,…

Representations of a nation's history work as a powerful tool to consolidate a collective identity and build trust in the nation. School textbooks are ideological products that disseminate official ideas about a collective past and heritage; their depictions have an impact on shared understandings of a nation's history. However, what is included…

As a public compulsory course for Non-English majors in colleges and universities, College Public English should not only develop students' language and cross-cultural communication skills, but also cultivate their correct outlook on life, values, world and native land emotion, which is consistent with the ideological-political goals of the…

This paper suggests six areas of vocabulary research which the author believes would be fruitful for future research. They include (1) developing a practical model of vocabulary acquisition, (2) understanding how vocabulary knowledge develops from receptive to productive mastery, (3) getting lexical teaching/learning principles into vocabulary and…

Teaching intercultural communicative competence (ICC) is still a challenging goal to achieve in English as a Second/Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) education. ESL/EFL instructors teaching in textbook-based educational contexts require more tangible approaches to designing and implementing purposeful intercultural language teaching that amplifies the…

French teaching in Ottoman Turkey found its actual speed with the Tanzimat period (the political reforms made in the ottoman state in 1839). Until the proclamation of the Republic, and even until the 1950s, French was considered the leading carrier of Western culture and civilization in Turkey, and teaching French was deemed necessary. However, it…

Language textbooks have been--and still are--the centre of attention of substantial research in the field of applied linguistics, language education and instruction, and language studies, among others. This paper synthesizes results and findings from the current Special Issue 'The language textbook: representation, interaction and learning''. In…

What images of the world do we find in language textbooks? What countries and continents are favoured, what key problems of the world are mentioned and taken up, what segments of the world's populations are represented and how, what role is given to the understanding of world history, colonialism and imperialism, what role is given to the…

English Language Teaching (ELT) materials are not only pedagogical sources, but they also actively build a vision of reality, often reproducing, legitimizing and perpetuating certain hegemonic discourses. Even if injustice and inequalities are denounced in some materials, global issues are just mentioned rather than problematized and discriminated…

The incorporation of literary texts in advanced beginner and intermediate level language classrooms (high school Spanish, years 2-4; university Spanish, semesters 2-4) can seem intimidating. The thoughtful exploration of literary texts takes time away from other content, specifically grammar and vocabulary, which often seem more straightforward to…