Building on the concept of Freirean culture circles, this study reports on the development of supplementary materials to incorporate critical literacy into high school EFL textbooks. Collaborating with two experienced high school EFL teachers in South Korea, critical supplementary materials were developed to compensate for the speaking sections of…

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 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…

General English coursebooks have dominated classroom-based ELT for 40?years. Their legitimacy seems unchallengeable; we can hardly remember a time when things were different, or imagine a time when coursebooks will not be used. And yet, coursebooks make assumptions about language learning that are contradicted by robust SLA research findings; they…

Nicaragua published its first series of textbooks for the teaching of English in public secondary schools in 2016. This article reports on an investigation of the first three textbooks belonging to this series. The aim was to see how the textbooks follow up the Nicaraguan national curriculum, which emphasizes the need for learners to develop…

In recent decades there has been a growing interest in the use of English as a lingua franca (ELF), for example identifying the lingua franca core (LFC), or pronunciation features important for intelligibility in ELF contexts. While some analyses of course books (CBs) have shown ELF research findings are not yet reflected in these materials, few…

This paper explores the applications of pattern grammar and local grammar in English language teaching, focusing specifically on the design of teaching materials. It shows that grammar patterns can be systematically analysed from a local grammar perspective, and further argues that the practice of local grammar analyses helps to raise language…

This article responds to Jordan and Gray's critique of the global coursebook and the call to have open, critical discussions about coursebook use in light of SLA research (Jordan and Gray 2019). I?make a case for why the assumptions made about what constitutes a global coursebook are too narrow. I?also dismiss the idea of one type of global…

This article charts the chequered history of the PPP model (Presentation, Practice, Production) in English language teaching, told partly through reference to articles in "ELT Journal." As well as documenting its origins at the dawn of communicative language teaching (and not in audiolingual approaches, as some have suggested), I chart…

This article reports on a survey of Swedish EFL teachers' attitudes towards, and dependence on, ELT coursebook packages in the light of recent research into digital literacy. The results showed that while ICT is making massive inroads into language classrooms in technologically advantaged countries like Sweden, the coursebook package still has its…

Curriculum innovation is challenging and, as several commentators have reported, moves to introduce communicative language teaching in many contexts internationally have resulted in mixed outcomes, or even failure. In an effort to shed some light on this complex problem, this article focuses on curriculum change through the introduction of new…

Trends and issues in ELT methods and methodology can be identified at two main levels. One is in terms of the theoretical pronouncements of the "professional discourse", as manifested by major publications, conference presentations, and so on. This article therefore begins by briefly summarizing some of the main developments of this kind from 1995…

Whenever high-stakes assessment/curriculum reforms take place, new textbooks appear on the market. These textbooks inevitably play a significant mediating role in the implementation of any reform and on teaching and learning. This paper reports on a small-scale study which attempts to investigate the role of textbooks in the mediation of a…

A case study of the foreign cultures represented in two English language textbooks used by Hong Kong secondary schools was conducted. Its aim was to investigate whether the representation of foreign cultures in these textbooks reflected the status of English as an international language. In order to do this, references to foreign cultures were…

In line with a communicative curriculum for English, it is claimed that communicative competence involves knowledge about when and how to display affectivity in talk-in-interaction. Typically, interjections have been described as a lexical means for expressions of emotion. A survey of textbooks canonical of EFL at German elementary and secondary…