Introduction

One of my earliest memories as a once untrained, unqualified language teacher is of the principal of my first school proudly presenting me with my coursebook. It was, she explained, the ‘best book available’, with the most up-to-date method, that would guarantee excellent results. It had, what’s more, a major technological innovation – a piece of green card which students should use to cover the text whilst they looked at four pictures and listened to the reel-to-reel tape recordings. She showed me how it worked. The recording would say ‘It is half past nine. Deborah is having breakfast and listening to some music on the radio. The maid is carrying a tray with some more coffee on it.’ Then, I was to direct the students’ attention to the prompts printed next to the pictures, ‘(a) What time? (b) What/Deborah? (c) What/maid?’, and ask them to complete questions. I was to continue like that for each of the pictures and recordings. Next, the students were to remove the card, read the texts aloud and answer more questions, before we moved on to some substitution exercises on the grammar point. Finally, there was an instalment of a story which ran through the entire book. I could make up my own questions for that, or make slashed question prompts for the students to ask each other across the classroom. The next unit would be the same, and all units after that would be the same, until, at Unit 12, the book ended. There was a teacher’s book available, the principal told me, but I wouldn’t need it, apparently.

She was right, of course – I didn’t need the teacher’s book. The book was so scripted and provided so little that it was not long before I discovered that I had to contribute a lot more if I and my students were to stay sane in the classroom. Through the process of personal involvement that this required, I actually became grateful to the book writer for allowing me such space to teach myself how to teach, whilst providing at least a backbone of something that was deemed ‘a course’, in contrast to the somewhat random nature of activities and texts with which I supplemented it.