Textbooks are one of the “core educational resources” (Costas, Long, Moletsane and Mthiyane 2002: 274) and the choice of textbooks and material for use in an English language classroom is not just a straight-forward task of matching material to suit a particular classroom need. Often the choice of material involves complex professional and financial decisions resulting in the selection of sets of relevant and effective material which “often do not seem to provide good value for money” (Sheldon 1988: 237).
The task of selecting material for classroom use is thus not a simple one (McDonough and Shaw 2003: 60), but appropriate pointers can be derived from literature. The following provides a guide to common factors that are involved most frequently in deciding whether any material, whether commercially available, or teacher or learner generated, is being considered for use in a language classroom. It must be borne in mind that no list can be regarded as definitive, nor will all the criteria necessarily be applied at the same time. A careful reading of these factors will reveal that all of them issue from the points already made in the literature survey in Chapters 2 and 3 and which are
discussed in greater detail in Chapter 5, where I deal with the insights revealed by an analysis of the classroom events as well as the material which was used.
It must be borne in mind that commercial enterprises are concerned with profit and product availability on the market as soon as possible. No set of classroom material is going to be perfect (McDonough and Shaw 2003: 61), but thoroughly researched material which is also valid and accurate cannot compete with market deadlines and they will therefore be published later and stand a good chance of not being sold. This very scenario unfolded in 2005 - 2006 with regard to grades 8 – 10 and was repeated in 2007 and 2008 with regard to Grades 11 and 12. Many schools, including the one I teach at, bought material purported to be in line with the new approach, only to find that material which is evidently better appears on the market later. I am in a position to know this better than most teachers as I am responsible for book acquisitions at our school and have seen how many books have been bought and abandoned within a year or two in order to make way for purportedly better books. A further complicating factor is the fact that textbooks sometimes merely imitate one another (Sheldon 1988: 239). Even so, material selection can be aided by some form of system regarding materials evaluation (Nunan 1995: 209).
When commercial material is considered for selection in the classroom, it is important to assess the extent to which the materials match the objectives of the programme as well as insights from research in language and learning (Nunan 1995: 209). Materials for South African schools will have to comply both with insights from research in language and learning and with the outcomes specified in the Language, Literacy and Communication learning area, as well as the critical outcomes defined for Curriculum 2005 as a whole. Although it is impossible to guarantee that a learner will definitely learn something from a particular book or set of materials, the text of the book or material on offer can be assessed with regard to the input it offers the learners, which the learners may or may not make their own in the form of intake (Littlejohn and Windeatt 1989: 156).
Naturally, the material must promote the achievement of the language outcomes of Curriculum 2005. In order for that to happen, the outcomes to be achieved must be clearly stated, and clear and relevant assessment rubrics be provided. Furthermore, the rationale behind the material and what it will try to achieve must be clearly stated (Sheldon 1988: 243) and must dovetail with the long-range goals of the learners in a particular classroom (Breen and Candlin 1987: 19). There needs to be a clear sense of what the linguistic needs of the particular learners in a particular class are and how the material will facilitate language acquisition and learning.
The needs of the learners are of paramount importance and, apart from being at the level of the learners concerned, it is vital that the material matches not only their language learning needs as perceived by the teacher, but also the learning needs as the learners perceive them (Breen and Candlin 1987: 19). This necessitates the use of real-life communication (Tomlinson 1999b: 88) for authentic purposes (Brown 1994: 78; Sheldon 1988: 244) that are seen as worthwhile by the learners, otherwise they may not give the material the attention it deserves (Sheldon 1988: 244).
When the learners perceive the material as relevant and interesting, inviting them to express meaning (Breen and Candlin 1987: 21), their engagement might enhance their personal growth and imagination, and the resulting stimulation lead to creativity. Thus the material must invite the learners to want to invest in the activities and thus in their own language development (Morgan 2004: 162) There should, in addition, be a clear invitation to engage with the material without fear of making mistakes because making errors is a part of learning and reflects the current state of a language learner’s language development (Howatt 2004: 336; Nunan 2001: 88) There is also a need for open-ended questions rather than the sense that ‘right’ answers are being sought.
The material must include activities for language use by the learners and also opportunity for revision and assessment (Sheldon 1988: 244); there also needs to be enrichment material for the learner who progresses quickly, as well as additional activities for the learner who takes longer to achieve the specified outcomes. The activities should also try focus on meaning and form, with the activities at the same time engaging the learner in meaningful communication as well as “consciousness-raising regarding form” (Tomlinson 1999b: 88, 89).
The material must be organised into “teachable units” (McDonough and Shaw 2003: 63) and the units must be carefully sequenced (Breen and Candlin 1987: 15). Any particular section must be linked to the activities that preceded it and also to succeeding activities, so that there is a steady acquisition of knowledge and skills from one level to the next (Sheldon 1988: 243), because continuity and coherence between sections and sub-sections is important (Littlejohn 1999: 193).
In addition to furthering the critical and language outcomes, the material must make provision for meaningful cooperative learning, in accordance with the emphasis that such learning has been given in an OBE Curriculum 2005 environment (van der Horst and Macdonald 1997: 27; Bennett and Dunne 1992: 3). Because of this emphasis, teachers need guidance on utilising group work, its dynamics and what makes for effective group work. Given the need of teachers to be persuaded of the merits and feasibility of group work (Chapter 5), as well as their need to have a greater
understanding of how to facilitate group work, fairly detailed guidance should be offered. This guidance should include effective management strategies, such as the development of learners’ group work skills and the provision of clear, learner-centred instructions, as well as facilitation strategies. The rationale for using group work in a particular instance should also be clear.
The guidance on group work must be coupled with guidance for teachers on other issues regarding language teaching because, until very recently, very little effort has been put into teachers’ books. They would be widely used if they contained a variety of suggestions about the activities the learners are to be exposed to. Furthermore, the material must contain guidance for the teacher on how to approach the activities, and guidance on the assessment of the activities and assessment techniques. Not doing so would, most likely, encourage teachers to stick with the material they are familiar with, largely defeating the aims of a new approach and new material (Wallace 1998: 189). The teachers’ guide books would be even more effective if the accompanying learners’ books contained a wide variety of material and options within a particular activity to cater for the particular needs of diverse learners and their varying learning styles. This could also help learners to take responsibility for their own learning (Tomlinson 1999d: 338, 339).
The material must at least reflect current views of knowledge and insights about learning in general and language learning in particular (Sheldon 1988: 244), or the gap between theoretical insights and classroom practices will become enormous. This places the burden on teachers to be well-trained and subsequently be willing to keep up with developments in the fields of learning in general and language learning in particular. Therefore the role that the material accords the teacher must be taken into consideration (Littlejohn 1999: 193; Sheldon 1988: 244) as too much or too little teacher- learner interaction would be detrimental to the amount of language learning taking place in the classroom. The material must lend itself to the idea that the teacher is the creator of a classroom atmosphere conducive to language learning; (s)he is the facilitator of the classroom events and not the oracle imparting information (3.7.2). The teacher also has to see that there is an appropriate mix of form and meaning tailored to the language needs of that particular classroom (3.7.2), while at the same time developing his/her own personal mix of appropriate methods and approaches (3.7.2).
In summary, then, material must be useable, adaptable and flexible. After considering all relevant factors regarding the selection of material, teachers will have to reach their own conclusions, remembering that the ultimate test for any material is trying it out in the classroom and then reflecting on its success or failure (McDonough and Shaw 2003: 71).
Despite taking these factors into consideration when material must be selected, it should be pointed out that combining material which tries to incorporate important aspects of CLT and also OBE/Curriculum 2005 will not be easy. CLT, by emphasising authentic language use for real-life purposes by means of learner interaction, is by its nature open-ended, free ranging and unpredictable. On the other hand, Curriculum 2005, with its OBE heritage, is deterministic and is characterised by a focus on attaining particular predetermined goals. Coupled to teacher resistance to (Hansen 1990: 184; Booysen 1989: 230), and confusion about CLT (van der Merwe 1994: 202), there is a strong likelihood that the element of control would encourage teachers to use traditional approaches which allow for this kind of control, even although they do not allow for the stronger role that learners are meant to play. Therefore teachers implementing Curriculum 2005 might revert to traditional language-teaching methods in order to achieve these goals.
Teacher-generated materials for use in the English language classroom, compared to published material, often appear in a bad light to the very learners they were created for, because the former are usually photocopied and not published with glossy covers, well-reproduced photographs and some pictures in colour. This is the case, despite the fact that these materials produced at school level are often of far more immediate relevance to the learners concerned (Sheldon 1998: 238). From the teacher’s point of view, the published material has the advantage of being (hopefully) thoroughly tested and professionally edited. On the other hand, such material might not be sensitive to or serve the needs of, local contexts and suffer from the drawback of being somewhat outdated, since the cycle of feedback and production of improved material is much longer that for home- grown material. Teacher-generated material can often be available for use in the classroom the day following a news-making event − something which is impossible for commercially produced materials. One set of criteria cannot be used for all materials (Tomlinson 2001: 69) and the recommendations above represent at best a set of considerations.
3.9 CONCLUSION
Having traced the essence and the rise of OBE and its implementation world-wide and in South Africa, this chapter pointed out that there are many issues which have to be resolved before OBE Curriculum 2005 can be said to have been implemented successfully or if, indeed, it is the right approach for South African learners, especially for language learning. This question arises because an approach with behaviourist potential (OBE) is being combined with constructivist elements in Curriculum 2005, the South African version of OBE.
It is clear from this chapter that OBE has certain merits, especially its focus on the learner. However, certain issues need to be addressed in order for OBE to be implemented successfully. These include, among others, the assumption that language learning can be broken down into clear, measurable linear elements; the speed with which OBE was introduced in South Africa; and the greatly increased teacher workload as a result of the emphasis on detailed curriculum planning and on tracking the progress of individual learners regularly. Thus OBE is far from being the panacea for the world’s or South Africa’s educational needs as it is an approach fraught with uncertainties, intangibles and difficulties, especially as regards the teaching of English.
The teaching of English demands classroom material that will facilitate language learning. With Communicative Language Teaching being the preferred language teaching approach and Curriculum 2005 being the stipulated teaching approach in South Africa, the classroom material must cater for the demands of both these approaches. The selection of suitable material is critically important, because it must encourage the communicative performance of learners as well as furthering the aims of Curriculum 2005. If the material is not carefully selected with these aims in mind, teachers may revert to the traditional teaching approaches and use the material with which they are familiar.
The next chapter will examine the research methodology for conducting a case study in an attempt to investigate, in actual classrooms, to what extent the insights from the literature survey regarding language teaching and OBE are reflected in the everyday realities of the classroom, using commercially available material.