4 Adapt activities, where appropriate. You might see an activity as being
broadly beneficial, and yet unsuitable from a particular perspective: perhaps
the cultural content is inappropriate, or the skills emphasis not what you
want at that moment. By adapting the activity to your particular learners,
you offer them more opportunities to engage with it and gain benefit from it.
5 Build in learners’ real experience whenever you can. Use the activities in
the coursebook as an opportunity for learners to talk about their own lives,
experiences and opinions. The more chances they have in class to say what
they want to in the way they want to say it, the more likely it is that they
will be able to use their classroom learning in the world outside.
6 Help learners to understand the rationale of the coursebook. If you talk
to your learners about the reasoning behind the activities they are doing and
the way the coursebook is structured, you offer them more resources for
learning. They can use their awareness of coursebook’s intentions to develop
more conscious strategies for learning, both in class and outside. They can
also talk to you about their own preferred ways of learning.
7 Show learners some differences between coursebook language and the
language of the outside world. Spoken language in coursebooks is rarely
‘authentic’, and there can be good reasons for this. But more advanced
learners especially may benefit from looking analytically at the difference
between a made up or edited dialogue in a coursebook and an unscripted
dialogue produced by native speakers. If you can, record some unscripted
spoken language as an occasional supplement to your coursebook. See 21,
Collecting natural language data.
8 Use problem areas as a springboard for discussion. There may be elements
of your coursebook that you are unhappy with. These may be rather
insidious: for example, does the coursebook seem to imply a negative
attitude to particular social groups? If you find difficulties like this, then you
can discuss them with your learners. Once negative stereotypes or other
inappropriate attitudes are out in the open, their power is considerably
diminished.
9 Use the coursebook as a basis for negotiation with learners. A significant
advantage of a coursebook is that it allows learners, as well as the teacher, to
see what is planned for the course. As learners become more aware of the
purpose of various elements of the book, and of how they themselves prefer
to learn, then they may be prepared to share with you some of the
responsibility for deciding what happens in lessons. In this case, groups of
learners or individuals can select from the book those activities that they feel
are most appropriate to them.
10 Use the coursebook for your own development. A good coursebook will
not only enhance your knowledge of how English works, it will also offer
you space in which to grow as a teacher. As you use the book, you can
reflect consciously on how well its different aspects are working for you,
and why. You can ask other teachers how they handle the book, and maybe
LANGUAGE WORK IN THE CLASSROOM 39