Why are so many English as a foreign language textbooks so bland, boring, and culturally deaf? Let me ask you a more polite question.

How can English teachers working abroad and international English textbook publishers respect local cultures and create more engaging English lessons in the classroom? The challenge may be more difficult than you suspect.

A long, informative and detailed exchange on a TESOL roster recently focused on the peculiar sensibilities of Saudi Arabian students. An experienced American English teacher reported that his Saudi students expressed anger over a paragraph in his writing book. The imported textbook in American English, which has received considerable critical acclaim, contained a paragraph celebrating friendships in many countries and religions, including an unpopular democratic rival nation of the Saudi kingdom. Working in a closed and theocratic society where women are forbidden to drive clearly poses many delicate problems for English teachers, and many English as a foreign language and English as a second language materials need to be carefully edited. Obviously talking about politics, religion, sexuality and gender issues is clearly culturally inappropriate and is often legally prohibited in this rigid Islamic kingdom.

Without judging for the moment the religious perceptions and passions of Saudi students, let’s zoom out a bit. This uncomfortable incident illuminates the need to explicitly adapt English as a Foreign Language (EFL) content to reflect different national cultures. It also identifies a central flaw in the many EFL editorials and why so many EFL and ESL textbooks are bland, boring, and heavily censored. Who wants to offend a lot of potential customers and clients just by mentioning the name of a small country?

As I heard explained in two fascinating TESOL workshops for writers of EFL material at the 2011 conference in New Orleans, the current practice of EFL editors is to simply collect all possible objections, adopt the “red lines” from all countries. and enforce them uniformly. taboos around the world. The default advice for writers of English as a foreign language material includes banning not only politics, the religion of alcohol, sex, and nudity (predictable), but also mentioning luck, negative emotions, Israel, gender roles and pork.

Here are some memorable examples. A writer of English as a Foreign Language materials detailed how he had to leave a chapter on bad luck because it implied that God was not in control of events and could encourage superstitious thinking. Another writer told TESOL participants that they had to drop a health chapter that included a “no smoking sign” because it implied that smoking was an option. Another presenter was proud that he was able to list “negative emotions” as “bored”, “tired”, “unhappy” when he was outnumbered by positive adjectives by a margin of 3-1 in a chapter on feelings.

Clearly, many educational bureaucrats place the creation of a “harmonious society” and the teaching of conformity above the actual acquisition of language or student expression. Shock, shock. The ban on mentioning Israel stems, as demonstrated in the Saudi Arabian classroom that sparked this informative discussion among TESOL professionals, the fashionable desire to see a successful and democratic nation abolished among many Arabs. Many British publishers have also found that many Arab countries, including several former colonies and some royal kingdoms that the British Empire helped create after World War I, are important and lucrative markets for English as a foreign language. The predictable result: indulging local prejudices and the systematic omission of positive references to Israel.

Naturally, printing world maps that ignore the existence of a small country is also an explicitly political decision, so the advice to “avoid politics” is a bit dishonest here. Also, as the son of a Holocaust survivor, I find the strange belief that all groups deserve a nation except Jews, sheer bigotry and hatred of trendy groups. However, for better or for worse, this quasi-official ban appears to have been widely adopted by many British publishers of English as a foreign language. (American textbook publishers, perhaps inspired by a federal law prohibiting honoring the Arab boycott of Israel, do not appear to follow this particular practice.)

However, instead of focusing on passionate Middle Eastern politics, let’s remember that major clients often dictate content in many fields. And governments and their ministries of education remain by far the main clients of international educational publishers. Indeed, ministries of education, especially in closed dictatorial societies where the teaching of critical thinking is more than discouraged, censorship is taken for granted, and English is often viewed with some suspicion as an ancient imperial language, have exceptional power. to approve or veto English as a foreign language textbooks. Focusing on pleasing these customers, many American and British publishers have chosen to embrace all the “red lines” from various cultures. Unfortunately, this current practice ends up imposing the safest and most restricted paradigm on all of its international clients, all over the world. The Saudi standard also becomes the standard for students of French, Brazilian, Japanese, and Korean English.

After all, efficiency matters in publishing too. From an editor’s perspective, creating a basic English as a foreign language textbook and making minor adjustments (usually illustrations) for each region works well. The downside, as many of us know from personal experience, is that the resulting product often turns bland, often fails to engage students, and effectively allows more closed societies to dictate content around the world. Both English teachers and their students lose access to more meaningful, thoughtful, and accurate information and to broader, more modern, and tolerant perspectives.

However, satisfying student interest is far less important from a global sales perspective than complying with the dictates of a ruling regime to reinforce local beliefs and maintain the political status quo. These larger concerns translate into many boring English as a foreign language textbooks that indulge and overlook local cultures by promoting a one-size-fits-all textbook for all English learners. As of now, many of these well-known English as a foreign language degrees still manage to sell in large numbers and avoid dozens of interesting topics that tie directly to the students’ real lives, experiences, and hopes. For example, English learners in poor countries in Asia, Africa, and Central America have to learn about housing vocabulary written from an abstract and universal perspective with examples from London, New York, and Tokyo. How relevant, appropriate, or accurate will the housing vocabulary be?

However, there is a better, smarter, and more culturally sophisticated way of acknowledging the political realities of working in closed societies and creating more engaging English as a foreign language textbooks that express and reflect national cultures. We could develop more appropriate ESL materials that authentically reflect the real-life experiences and aspirations of English learners in their current context.

Ask more. Know more. Share more. Speak more.

Create engaging conversations.

Visit http://www.compellingconversations.com