Is your textbook becoming your curriculum?

A lot of times courses tend to have a textbook at the centre of the curriculum.  As Auerbach (1995) so eloquently puts it "the goal becomes to cover the material rather than to uncover what is important to students".
There are several disadvantages to having the course revolve around a textbook.

1. The textbook is probably produced and distributed to ESL learners around the world and therefore cannot attempt to identify the common errors and weaknesses of the particular group that you are teaching.
2. A text book is teacher-driven not student-driven.  This means that the teacher is reinforced as the dominant entity in the classroom.
3. The incentive for publishers is to then create the most comprehensive texts possible rather than to focus on delivery of what the particular students require.  The more comprehensive the text, the less opportunity for students to interject their own experiences.
4. Selecting a text without input from students sends the message that they are not part of this process. 
5. Text exercises often focus on rehearsing the correct forms rather than generating new meanings, sharing the information in a way that personalizes the language to that particular student.  It is teaching as apposed to managing the acquisition of language. 

Auerbach, E.R. (1995).  The politics of the ESL classroom: Issues of power in pedagogical choices.  Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Trial and error and trial again

It wasn't until the late 1960's that we changed our paradigm of ESL students as producers of faulty English to intelligent, creative thinkers who are working through the progression.  A progression to produce closer and closer approximations of the complicated linguistic system that native speakers use with ease.

We started to look not just at the errors that the students were making but at the creative brilliance behind their successful hypothesizing and testing routines.  Encouraging good habits of hypothesizing and testing, encouraging students to make the errors and learn from them and providing an environment where the students feel not just safe but enthusiastic about doing this is simply the hallmark of a strong ESL educator.

But how do you measure up with your consistency in confirming or refuting these hypotheses?  In his book Teach like a champion, Doug Lemov gives some great tips on how to establish a standard for right and wrong answers and states that it is important to uphold the standard.  Giving a response that does not confirm the correctness or incorrectness of the answer in the students' minds is not doing them any justice.
And therein lies the balance of being a strict judge and a lenient peacemaker.  The greatest skill that a teacher can have is the ability to constantly monitor and correct the troops and yet maintain the morale to keep them marching.

Writing imperfectly

When I teach writing in class, the first thing I do is ask students to write a letter so that I can see what they can do.  I analyze all the mistakes in that letter and from that point on, I know what to teach.  What you have to understand with this is that I am never trying to completely eliminate their mistakes.

You see, if they make no mistakes, it is probably because they are reproducing the same material that they have already learned and are not stretching themselves.  So, I focus on eliminating the punctuation and spelling mistakes, and I am trying to eliminate the grammatical mistakes that they are making now and help them to make more complex mistakes in the future. 

When the mistakes they make are the same as a native speaker would make then I know that I have taught them well.