Dr. Brian Tomlinson is a TESOL Professor at Anaheim University Graduate School of Education and an Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Liverpool. He is considered to be one of the world's leading experts on materials development for language learning and has helped to develop this comparatively new field with over 100 publications. In 1993 he established the world's first MA dedicated to the study of materials development for language learning (at the University of Luton in the UK) and he founded MATSDA (Materials Development Association). He has been Chair and then President of MATSDA ever since 1993 and, as such, has launched the journal Folio, has run (with Hitomi Masuhara) numerous materials writing workshops all over the world and has chaired and presented at 35 MATSDA Conferences in many different countries.

 

Introduction

Let me start by explaining what I mean by ‘converting’. I am using the word in two of its senses. One of these senses is to make changes to something in order to improve its effectiveness, as in the sentence, ‘Some British heritage railway lines are converting their steam locomotives from coal burning to oil burning in order to save costs and to reduce the likelihood of line-side fires’.

My other meaning relates to changing personal or societal beliefs, religions, principles or theories, as in the sentence, ‘Since she’s been living in Japan she’s converted from  Catholicism to Buddhism ‘ or the sentence ‘I’ve managed to convert  them from being Man U supporters to becoming Liverpool supporters (a true story about all the  male students except one in a university class in Oman, and he presented me on my birthday with a cake made in the shape of Liverpool’s stadium Anfield).

In this article I am going to suggest what teachers can do to convert a conventional coursebook based on structuralist theories of easy practice in isolation to an innovative coursebook based on humanistic theories of involving the whole human being in the process of acquiring a language and developing communicative ability from rich experience of personal involvement and communication.

 

Being a human being rather than a teacher

I have observed language lessons all over the world. Most of the lessons used a coursebook which focused mainly on the form of a pre-determined structure and many of these classes were taught by a teacher who focused attention on the structure and did not tolerate any deviation from the teaching point of the lesson. However, some of these lessons were facilitated by a human being who used the coursebook because it was compulsory but made use of it as a stimulus for communicating with the students and for student-student communication. One such human being was an Irish woman facilitating a class of young male elementary level students from the UAE at a college in England. She did the exercises from the coursebook with the students but she also chatted informally with them about their lives and interests and about her life and interests too. At the end of the first month, we tested the students on the structures they had been taught and their results were poor. However, we videod the lessons and found that the students very quickly picked up the conversational English she used with them and by the end of the month were using it themselves, together with a remarkably rich vocabulary, to communicate fluently with her and with each other.

Another such human being was a middle-aged Iranian lady facilitating a class of middle-aged intermediate level businessmen in Tehran. She added jokes, singing, drama and even dancing to the coursebook in order to engage the students, and they were very willing and communicative participants.

That is what I mean by being a human being rather than a teacher. It requires being able to engage students, regardless of their language level and the methodology of their coursebook, through their sense of humour, their respect for the students, an appreciation of what the students are achieving and a prioritising of communication above structural accuracy.

 

Localising the coursebook

Unless the coursebook has been especially written for the institution or area, it is not possible for the topic content of the course to be relevant to every locality (unless, of course, its authors have made every attempt to focus on such  universally relevant topics as growing up, making friends, falling in love, getting married, growing old and dying).

Fortunately, it is not difficult for the ‘teacher’ to localise their coursebook as they use it. They can add questions such as, ‘Is this the same in your town? ‘ and ‘Are examinations like this in your country?’. They can add activities like asking the students to rewrite a text by locating it where they live or asking them to say what similarities and differences there are between marriage ceremonies in their country and the marriage ceremonies described in the text. Or they could, as a teacher I observed in Shanghai did, replace photos in a web version of the coursebook with photos of Shanghai and of the school.

 

Personalising the coursebook

Even if the coursebook has been written for the institution or area it is not possible for it to be directly relevant for every student in every class (see Tomlinson, (2027a) for ideas on how to include every student in a class in activities of potential benefit to themselves).

Fortunately, it is not difficult for the ‘teacher’ to personalise their coursebook as they use it. They can ask such a question on the text as, ‘What do you agree with? Why?’, ‘Do you like or dislike the old man?’, ‘Which character do you like best? Why?’, ‘What does this text remind you of in your life’ The teacher could also, like the Shanghai teacher referred to above, replace some of the photos in a web version of the coursebook with photos of students in the class, ask the students to continue the text in the way they would like it to go or ask them to rewrite the text so that it includes reference and or relevance to themselves.

My first teaching post was to an Advanced Teacher Training College in Nigeria, where on the way to my first General English class I was given a coursebook and told which unit to teach to the class. The unit was about ‘eskimos’ building igloos from snow and the core text offered nothing of local or personal relevance to students who had never experienced snow. I decided on the spot to start the lesson by introducing myself, by asking them to volunteer information about themselves and then by asking them how they built their homes in their villages and how they repaired them. As I hoped, they told me how they went into the forest cut down trees and branches for the framework and then made the walls from mud. I told them to see images of this process in their minds and then read the text, and as they were reading it to compare visually how ‘eskimos’ made their houses from snow with how they made their traditional houses. Then they were asked in groups to list the similarities and differences between how ‘eskimos’ made houses and how they did. Only then did they answer the comprehension exercises in the coursebook exercises.

 

Adding the potential for affective engagement

By affective engagement I mean the willing and sustained dedication of emotional attention which has been found to promote language acquisition.

One very engaging way I have found of increasing affective engagement and intrinsic motivation is adding information about the anonymous characters in dialogues. For example, when asking students to perform a standard dialogue between a customer and a salesman in a shoe shop, I not only asked half the class to perform altogther the customer and half to perform altogether the salesman, I named the characters and I told the students that the two had recently been divorced. This added significance and engagement to the activity, especially when I then asked them to perform the inner speech monologues the two characters were performing with themselves. For example,

Jim: (It’s Gill. What the hell is she doing here?). ‘Good morning Madam. What can I interest you in today?’

Gill: (Oh no! It’s Jim. What’s he doing here?). ‘Good morning. I’m looking for a pair of dress shoes.’

Other ways I have achieved affective engagement whilst using a conventional coursebook have included:

• showing photos of a sad-looking old lady and a happy-looking old lady to accompany a text about old age
• reading aloud a poem about a refugee mother combing her child’s hair as he lay dying before listening to a dialogue about ‘the refugee problem’,
• getting a class to mime from my narrative an exciting story about strange creatures kidnapping a man and a woman from a beach
• telling the story as the doctor from a medical text about a doctor who decided to give his patients more time to tell him their problems and was able to diagnose an old lady as having cancer from her long rambling and repetitive story about her sister, her house, the weather and a cough.

 

Adding the potential for cognitive engagement

By cognitive engagement I mean the willing and sustained dedication of thought which has been found to promote language acquisition.

The easiest way I have found to achieve cognitive engagement is to add a ‘why‘ question to the comprehension questions in the coursebook, especially if the answer cannot be easily found in the text. For example, ‘Why do you think that Maria went into the city by herself every Saturday?

Other ways I have used to achieve cognitive engagement include:

• adding a related puzzle (e.g. adding ‘Where do fish keep their money?’) to an activity about banking.
• turning a coursebook comprehension activity into a problem-solving activity (e.g. ‘Before answering the comprehension questions see if you and a partner can come up with a suggestion for a cheap and simple device to help people to save water.’ ‘In a group work out a way in which doctors could give their patients more time to talk without causing long queues in the waiting room.’)

The ideal is to come up with an extra activity with the potential to engage your students both cognitively and affectively. An example of this would be adding the question, ‘Who was responsible for Bernard’s death?’ to the surface questions about what happened in a children’s story about a boy being ignored by his parents when he tried to tell them there was a monster in the garden who was going to eat him.

 

Adding exposure to accessible and potentially engaging communication

Engaged exposure to accessible use of language in authentic communication is a prerequisite for language acquisition and the development of communicative ability (Tomlinson, 2026b, 2026c). Coursebooks do not typically provide such exposure. They typically only provide what could be considered as an impoverished input of simple written texts, dialogues and monologues flooded with the target structure(s) and vocabulary of the unit and deprived of language not yet explicitly taught.

The missing exposure to authentic communication could be provided by, for example, two teachers combining their classes and having an unscripted discussion about a theme or topic relevant to the current unit in the coursebook. It could also be provided by the teacher treating students’ answers to questions in the coursebook as opportunities to open up conversation with the student who answered and with the whole class. This would provide opportunities for students to both experience authentic interaction and to participate in it too. Students could also be invited observe a class at the next level above them using the next level of their coursebook, thus being given the opportunity to experience the teacher-student and student-student interaction at the level just above them.

 

Adding opportunities for communication

Possibly the most vital pre-requisite for the acquisition of an L2 and for the development of communicative ability in it is the opportunity to use the L2 for purposeful communication rather than for practice, display or assessment. Unfortunately, most coursebooks do not offer many such opportunities and additions have to be made. For example, the students could be asked to evaluate the activities after using them and to offer suggestions for improvement. They could also turn the unit into a story or drama and add impromptu dialogue.

The teacher could also make use of the illustrations in the coursebook in ways in which the coursebooks rarely do. For example, if there was a photograph of passengers rushing to catch a train at a station, the students in group, pairs or individually could be asked to make up a story about one of the people in the illustration.

 

Adding creativity

Being creative in the use of the L2 is another of the prerequisites for language acquisition and another feature lacking from most coursebooks. In my view we need to ask students to do extra tasks which are creative. For example, putting themselves into any narrative text in the coursebook, using the language of coursebook drills to write a poem, coming up with song titles (and maybe lyrics) from any relationship mentioned in the coursebook. See Tomlinson (2023c) for more suggestions for using the coursebook creatively.

 

Adding choice

We cannot expect all students to want to do exactly the same activities. Students in any class will have different backgrounds, interests, language levels, objectives and motivation. With one class I ‘taught’ the students decided which coursebook to use, which unit to start with and what sequence to follow in using the coursebook. In another class each individual made their own decisions about the units and the activities and used me as a guide and supporter. In a class of high ranking young businessmen in Senegal the participants chose which version of a text to follow, the original, a slightly reduced and simplified version or a simple version. They all did the same activities in mixed groups and some of them eventually read the other versions of a text, In a group of upper intermediate young adults in the UK each student chose from eight different post-reading activities and decided whether to do the activity in a group, a pair or individually.

 

Adding materials developed by the students

I have found that challenging students to develop their own activities can increase learner agency and motivation. I have given students in groups a coursebook text to read and then asked each group to devise post-reading activities for their group to do before then checking the coursebook activities and making final decisions about what to do. I have got students in a language school to devise activities for the students in the level below them and I have observed one of my teacher trainees in Indonesia getting students in groups to replace the text in a unit with one they think will appeal more to their peers and then in the following term to get groups not only to replace a text but to develop their own activities and to teach them too.

 

The role of MATSDA

MATSDA stands for the international Materials Development Association, an association which I founded in 1993 to bring together teachers, researchers, materials developers and publishers in a joint endeavour to improve the effectiveness of materials for language learning. We hold an international conference every year, publish a journal called Folio once a year, run materials development workshops and organise materials development competitions. Go to www.matsda.org for details and examples of our activities and for news of our forthcoming events.

Recently we have focused a lot on ways of converting the coursebook and presentations relating to this ambition have featured at recent MATSDA Conferences in Lisbon in 2024, Beijing in 2025 and Puchuca, Mexico in 2026.

 

Conclusion

The ideal would be the development of a coursebook based on humanistic theories of whole person experience of language learning and respect for the learner but unfortunately whenever I propose such a coursebook to publishers they say it is very interesting but the market is not ready for it yet. However, it is possible to combine using the coursebook with using other relevant sources of materials (such as video clips, internet blogs, advertisements, cartons, extracts from novels, stories, songs, newspapers etc). and with other human beings telling their stories or being interviewed.  Also, it is possible, as I hope I have demonstrated in this article, to convert the coursebook as you use it with very little extra effort but with a lot of extra engagement.

All the suggestions I have made for converting the coursebook are based on basic, research-and-experience-attested principles of acquisition and humanisation. For discussion of these and other principles see Bell and Tomlinson, 2027; Sato and Ballinger, 2016; Tomlinson, 2023a, 2023b, 20-23c, 2026a, 2026b, 2026c, 2027a, 2027b; Tomlinson and Masuhara 2018, 2021, 2026.

 

References

Bell, D. and Tomlinson, B. (eds.) (2027) Materials for Humanising Language Learning Materials. London: Bloomsbury.

Sato, M., and Ballinger, S. (eds.) (2016) Peer Interaction and Second Language Learning: Pedagogical Potential and Research Agenda. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Tomlinson, B. (ed.). (2023a) Developing Materials for Language Teaching (3rd edn). London: Bloomsbury.

Tomlinson, B. (2023b) Using text-driven and other principled frameworks for developing language learning materials. In B. Tomlinson (ed.). Developing Materials for Language Teaching. London: Bloomsbury, 99-127.

Tomlinson, B. (2023c) Humanising the coursebook. In B. Tomlinson (ed.) Developing Materials for Language Teaching. (3^rd ed). London: Bloomsbury, 128-149.

Tomlinson, B. and Masuhara, H. (eds.) (2026a) Materials for Developing L2 Communicative Ability. London: Bloomsbury.

Tomlinson, B. (2026b) Second language acquisition and materials development. In F. Mishan and B. Tomlinson (eds.) Applied Linguistics and Materials Development (2^nd ed.). London Bloomsbury.

Tomlinson, B. (2026c) Ways of helping learners to develop communicative ability. In B. Tomlinson and H. Masuhara (eds.). Materials for Developing L2 Ability. London: Bloomsbury.

Tomlinson, B. (2027a) Activities for all. In Bao, D., O’Reilly, Barnes, M. (eds.). Diversity and Inclusivity in English Language Education: International Perspectives. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Tomlinson, B. (2027b) Humanising language learning coursebooks. In Bell, D. and Tomlinson, B. (eds.). Materials for Humanising Language Learning. London: Bloomsbury.

 

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