Adult coursebooks

Abstract

In 2001 and 2008 we contributed reviews of adult courses to this journal (Tomlinson, Dat, Masuhara, and Rubdy 2001; Masuhara, Hann, Yi, and Tomlinson 2008). In the 2001 review we welcomed, in particular, an ‘increase in attempts to personalize the learning process by getting learners to relate topics and texts to their own lives, views, and feelings’ (2001: 96). We also welcomed an increase in the use of humour and fun and an increase in the realism of the audio components of courses. We regretted, though, the increase in attention given to explicit knowledge of grammar at the expense of affective and cognitive engagement as well as the scarcity of narrative, of extensive reading and listening, of intelligent adult content, of achievable cognitive challenges, of ‘real tasks which have an intended outcome other than the practice of forms’ (ibid.: 97), and of activities which made full use of the resources of the learners’ minds. In other words, we were disturbed by the apparent disregard of the findings of second language acquisition (SLA) research. We were also disturbed by what we perceived as an excessive increase in the number of course components. In the 2008 review, we welcomed a further increase in attempts to help learners to personalize their language learning as well as an increase in the ‘reality’ of texts, of ‘global English’, of intelligent adult content, of cognitive and affective challenge, and of applications of the findings of corpus studies. However, we regretted again the scarcity of ‘engaging and extensive reading and listening texts’ (2008: 310), of ‘real tasks which have an intended outcome other than the practice of forms’ (ibid.: 310), and of activities stimulating multidimensional mental responses. We also regretted the continuing predominance of analytical activities, the neglect of activities catering for experiential (and especially kinaesthetic) learners, and the even greater increase in the number of course components. We were pleased that some acknowledgement had been made of the value of some research findings, but disappointed that many of the main findings of SLA research were still being ignored (for discussion of how the main findings of SLA research can be applied to materials development, see Harwood 2010; Tomlinson 2011, 2012, 2013a,b; McDonough, Shaw, and Masuhara 2013).

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