Coursebook

A coursebook (also textbook) is a published teaching resource designed to serve as the primary material for a language course, typically organised into units that sequence grammar, vocabulary, skills, and topics across a defined proficiency range. Coursebooks embody a particular approach to syllabus design and implicitly enact a methodology, which is why they are read both as practical tools and as ideological objects.

Why Coursebooks Dominate

Tomlinson's (2008, 2013) practitioner surveys put regular coursebook use among ELT teachers at around 92%, a figure that has held remarkably steady across decades of theoretical critique. The reasons are pragmatic rather than ideological: coursebooks supply a defensible sequence, calibrated tasks, integrated audio and video, teacher's notes, and a shared reference point that makes large-scale curricula and inexperienced teachers tractable. For institutions, they support standardisation across teachers, classes, and exam-aligned outcomes. For new teachers, they reduce planning load to a workable level. For learners, they provide visible progression and revision material outside class.

The economic logic is equally important. Major publishers (Cambridge, Pearson, Oxford, Macmillan, National Geographic) operate global production pipelines that absorb the cost of audio recording, design, photo licensing, multi-component digital ecosystems, and CEFR alignment. Individual teachers cannot reproduce that infrastructure. Even teachers who critique coursebooks tend to use them because the realistic alternative is hours of weekly preparation per class.

The Standard Critiques

Critique of the global ELT coursebook crystallised from the mid-1980s onward and has converged on several recurring objections.

Generic content insensitive to local need. A coursebook written for a global market cannot reflect the specific topics, registers, and discourse types learners in any given context actually need. Forward-design and ESP traditions argue that genuine needs analysis routinely produces a different sequence from the canonical structural-functional progression most coursebooks assume.

The "Cinderella's slipper" problem. Maley and Tomlinson (2017) describe the global coursebook as a slipper that fits no foot perfectly: it must be inoffensive enough to sell across markets, which constrains content choice and discourse register before pedagogy is even considered.

PARSNIP self-censorship. Gray's (2010) The Construction of English documented the publisher acronym PARSNIP (politics, alcohol, religion, sex, narcotics, isms, pork): topics systematically avoided to keep coursebooks saleable across all major markets. The result is content skewed toward "safe" middle-class lifestyle topics (jobs, technology, leisure, travel, food, environment), which Gray argues commodifies English as a particular cultural product rather than presenting it as a neutral medium.

Methodological inertia. Coursebooks tend to reify the methodology that was current when their templates were designed; the PPP cycle, in particular, is structurally difficult to remove from a unit format that publishers have refined over decades. Innovations in TBLT, lexical approach, or Dogme reach coursebooks only after substantial delay, if at all.

Teacher deskilling. When coursebooks are followed as scripts rather than used as resources, teachers lose the planning, materials-evaluation, and adaptation skills that constitute professional expertise. Tomlinson's central argument across his career has been that coursebooks should be written, and used, as resources rather than scripts.

Cover-the-book mentality. Institutional pressure to "finish the book" substitutes content coverage for genuine learning. Learners and teachers measure progress by page number rather than by what learners can actually do.

Defences and Counter-Arguments

Defenders point out that the critique often targets a strawman global coursebook rather than the diverse market that exists. Local and national coursebook markets (Vietnamese MOET-aligned series, Brazilian editions, region-specific Cambridge editions) routinely feature local content and discourse types. Modern materials integrate digital components, video, automated practice, and adaptive testing in ways that solo teacher production cannot match. Teacher's books include differentiation suggestions, extension tasks, and adaptation routes that transform the published material from script into platform.

Tomlinson's own position is therefore more nuanced than the headline critique suggests. He has fought for coursebooks "written in such a way that the teacher can make use of them as a resource and not have to follow them as a script," and proposed humanising the coursebook by reducing non-humanistic features and expanding sections that invite learners to think, feel, and do (Tomlinson, 2013, 2016).

The Dogme Counter-Position

Dogme (Thornbury and Meddings, 2009) is the strongest principled rejection of coursebook-driven teaching. Dogme treats published materials as obstacles to learner-centred, conversation-driven lessons in which language emerges from interaction. Even Dogme's proponents accept that the approach is harder for novice teachers, large classes, and exam-driven institutions, which is part of why coursebooks remain dominant despite the critique.

Adaptation as the Pragmatic Middle Ground

Most experienced teachers neither follow nor reject the coursebook; they adapt. Adaptation (selection, reordering, supplementation, replacement, omission) is the practitioner's default. McGrath (2013) and Mishan (2022) frame adaptation as a core professional competence, often invisible because it leaves no documentary trace. The line between "adapted coursebook teaching" and "Dogme with a textbook on the desk" is thinner than the published debates suggest.

References

• Gray, J. (2010). The Construction of English: Culture, Consumerism and Promotion in the ELT Global Coursebook. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Maley, A. & Tomlinson, B. (2017). Authenticity in materials development for language learning. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
• McGrath, I. (2013). Teaching Materials and the Roles of EFL/ESL Teachers: Practice and Theory. Bloomsbury.
• Meddings, L. & Thornbury, S. (2009). Teaching Unplugged: Dogme in English Language Teaching. Delta Publishing.
• Mishan, F. (2022). The global ELT coursebook: A case of Cinderella's slipper? Language Teaching, 55(4), 490–505. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444820000646
• Tomlinson, B. (Ed.). (2008). English Language Learning Materials: A Critical Review. Continuum.
• Tomlinson, B. (Ed.). (2013). Developing Materials for Language Teaching (2nd ed.). Bloomsbury.
• Tomlinson, B. (2016). The importance of materials development for language learning. In M. Azarnoosh, M. Zeraatpishe, A. Faravani, & H. R. Kargozari (Eds.), Issues in Materials Development. Sense Publishers.