Realizing the Possibilities of the ESL Textbook

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Pedagogy Literature Studies course: ICEG 2006 (international congress) language: English abstract: Views about the English as a second/foreign language (ES/FL) textbook (as a medium) polarize. Learners teachers and educational administrators in any ES/FL situation need a textbook though it is unlikely that they regard the prescribed ES/FL textbook as an unmixed blessing. But the very idea of a fixed textbook -- of a pre-packaged set of learning/teaching materials -- appears to be viewed with disfavour in the English Language Teaching (ELT) literature where the trend in the last three-and-a-half decades has been towards greater negotiation and individual choice in the classroom.This paper examines the anti-textbook argument considers the alternatives to the textbook suggested by some experts and finds the textbook having the potential to act as a support rather than a constraint and fulfilling a range of needs that emerge from any teaching/learning situation. The paper also discusses the factors on which the supportiveness of the textbook depends.