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Teaching more than English in


secondary education

Article in ELT Journal December 2010


DOI: 10.1093/elt/ccq016

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Daro Luis Banegas


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ELT Journal Advance Access published April 1, 2010
comment

Teaching more than English


in secondary education
Daro Luis Banegas
The issue of including controversial topics in the E F L classroom is not
new. However, this comment briefly reviews aspects of textbooks
produced in Britain for the general English class in terms of topics and
discusses how critical pedagogy could be systematically developed
through a negotiated E F L syllabus. The aim is to share what teachers are
currently exploring at secondary schools in a part of Argentina.

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(Un)controversial For reasons generally attributed to the production and marketing of
coursebooks mainstream coursebooks produced for the general E F L class regardless of
where they are used, publishers avoid the inclusion of provocative topics
in developing the units of work coursebooks may be divided into. This
has produced a set of guidelines summarized as PARSNIP (Gray 2000;
Akbari 2008). This acronym stands for the avoidance of topics related to
politics, alcohol, religion, sex, narcotics, isms, such as communism,
capitalism, feminism among others, and pornography.
As Hillyard (2005) points out, when we study the topics material writers
offer for the teenage E F L class, there is little controversial material. On the
contrary, we find such themes as the family, sport, hobbies, travel, pop
culture, festivals from remote countries, which bear no impact on students
lives, fashion, and food, among others. In her own words, there is little for
adolescents to get their teeth into; there are very few life hooks (ibid.: 328).
This idea of lack of realness, as Leather (2003) puts it in her review of
a textbook based on thought-provoking issues and taboos, has led to the
belief that textbooks produced for an international audience are bland, and,
to put it simply, boring.
Coursebooks are criticized not only for avoiding provoking topics but also
for presenting a romantic view of countries such as Britain or the U S A
(Helgesen 2007; Viney 2007; Masuhara, Hann, Yi, and Tomlinson 2008).
In an attempt to avoid taboos and issues, material writers opt for selecting
themes that are rooted in the British or American culture. However, the
portrayal they offer of the target culture is far from being innocent.
According to Gray (op. cit.) in his paper about the textbook as a cultural
artefact, the target culture seems to uphold values and living standards that
are better than those of the students culture, leading to the perception
that the target culture is superior to the students. Even if textbooks do
contemplate topics such as poverty, hunger, or even discrimination, they
are contextualized in Africa or the Muslim world, creating the idea that
poverty or discrimination is nowhere to be found in Europe or the USA.

E LT Journal; doi:10.1093/elt/ccq016 1 of 3
The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.
Consequently, students need to be helped to become more critical of these
aspects so as to evaluate the way in which cultures are represented in
textbooks used by the international community.

The challenge This critical view of coursebooks is very much associated with a broader
aspect to be considered, E LT pedagogy applied to EFL contexts. Akbari
(op. cit.) claims that CP should be given room in the E LT classroom. One of
the advantages of CP is that, when teachers and students find international
textbooks unappealing, it becomes a liberating force as it empowers
practitioners to legitimize their theories of learning a foreign language in
their context, having in mind the social matrix that education is part of.
In other words, even if coursebooks come packed with their own agenda,
teachers need to be aware of the fact that they have the power to create their
own agenda, in fact, their own syllabus around topics of interest in their
teachinglearning environment. What is more, teachers could use the
ready-made contents suggested by the coursebook they have adopted to

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challenge sociocultural assumptions as well as representations from both
the target culture and their own. Why do the poor have to be non-American?
Why are upper-class John and Mary from London the only ones who plan
holidays in the Caribbean? Do we not also discriminate against immigrants
from neighbouring countries in Argentina? Teachers need to be
empowered so that they can reject, criticize, and adapt the material they
use in order to help their students develop their critical thinking skills.
Better still, teachers may eventually create their own material, either as the
main source or as a systematically used supplement to their teaching
practices.

Our experience In an attempt to make room for CP in E F L classes at one secondary school in
Argentina, teachers have decided to adopt a two-part syllabus. On the one
hand, teachers follow a mainstream coursebook for teenagers, which is
used on a regular basis. On the other hand, teachers, together with their
students, have agreed on a negotiated syllabus in which controversial topics
have been included. While teachers suggested topics such as child abuse,
gay marriage, drug abuse, discrimination, and immigration, students asked
to discuss issues related to psychological disorders, divorce, politics, eating
disorders, the Catholic Church, and single parenting among others. This
negotiated syllabus, which is covered once a month, has been crystallized
in the form of a sourcebook in which teachers have compiled authentic
reading and listening material to develop activities aimed at the
Argentinian teenage students at state schools in an effort to produce more
contextually appropriate material (Block 1991; Peacock 1997). If, for
example, gay marriage is an issue students would like to debate, why do
we have to set it in a foreign country, when such a topic is currently an issue
in Argentinian society?
This exploration is a local initiative and it is not claimed that the same should
be carried out everywhere, as the experience is very much rooted in the
Argentinian context. So far, students have warmly welcomed the material
produced by their own teachers and their motivation has increased as they
feel they can use their English to talk about real matters they would like
to discuss openly, no matter the language.

2 of 3 Daro Luis Banegas


References
Akbari, R. 2008. Transforming lives: introducing Masuhara, H., N. Hann, Y. Yi, and B. Tomlinson.
critical pedagogy into E LT classrooms. E LT Journal 2008. Adult E F L courses. E LT Journal 62/3:
62/3: 27683. 294312.
Block, D. 1991. Some thoughts on DIY materials Peacock, M. 1997. The effect of authentic materials
design. ELT Journal 45/3: 2117. on the motivation of EF L learners. ELT Journal 51/2:
Gray, J. 2000. The ELT coursebook as cultural 14456.
artefact: how teachers censor and adapt. E LT Journal Viney, P. 2007. Author test. Folio 11/2: 257.
54/3: 27483.
Helgesen, M. 2007. Notes from the Apocrypha. The author
Folio 11/2: 9. Daro Luis Banegas holds an MA in E LT (University
Hillyard, S. 2005. Content with your content? Why of Warwick). He teaches EF L, Literature, and Critical
teach Global Issues in E LT? in L. Anglada (ed.). 30th Thinking at secondary schools. He coordinates the
F A A P I Conference. Towards the Knowledge Society: implementation of E F L at primary schools and
Making E F L Education Relevant. Conference teacher training (I N S ET) programmes in Chubut,
Proceedings. Cordoba, Argentina: Comunicarte. Argentina. His interests are curriculum design,
Leather, S. 2003. Taboos and issues. ELT Journal initial language teacher education, and Content and

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57/2: 2056. Language Integrated Learning (C LI L) in E F L
contexts.
Email: dariobanegas@hotmail.com

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