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Taboos and Issues

Article in ELT Journal · April 2003

DOI: 10.1093/elt/57.2.205 · Source: OAI

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Taboos and Issues
R. MacAndrew and R. Martínez
Language Teaching Publications, 2001 80pp.
£18.00
isbn 1 899396 41 1
A great deal has been written about the lightness of
much EFL material, and it is the major coursebook
publishers which have come in for most criticism.
On the whole, appealing to the global market does
not lead to risk-taking. Rinvolucri (1999: 14) notes
that ‘The EFL discourse world avoids the shadow
side of life with little or no reference to death,
poverty or war.’ Thornbury (1999: 16) adds to this
list when he bemoans the lack of mention of
homosexuality in EFL coursebooks, saying that
‘Gayness is about as omitted as anything can be.’
This lack of what we might call ‘realness’, and the
supremacy of linguistic form over content, have
been the main two criticisms. So why is the EFL
material world so far from real life? One reason is
that in the absence of a real culture to root itself in,
apart from a heterogeneous global culture, EFL has
had to invent one. This leads to a world in which
nothing too o¤ensive happens, or is even
mentioned. Rinvolucri’s (1999: 12) ‘EFL sub-
culture’, with its ‘soft, fudgey, sub-journalistic,
woman’s magaziney world of EFL ese course
materials’, or Pulverness’s (1999: 6) ‘rarefied
atmosphere of Cosmopolis’, do not easily lend
themselves to the status of important global
issues.
Then there is the matter of linguistic form. As
Thornbury points out (1999: 15), talking about the
coursebook: ‘Form is safe. It sells books. Meaning,
relevance, engagement: these are unstable, fickle,
not safe.’ In a world in which subject matter is
almost always subservient to the god of language,
one can sometimes feel that both materials and
classrooms have been stripped of anything truly
meaningful in life.
Taboos and Issues is not a coursebook, however, and
supplementary materials have always been able to
get away with more. Not having to please the entire
world helps. There are still hazards, though, in
addressing the weightier side of life. I was
interested to see how the authors would manage
these questions of cultural context and focus on
form through the material. And, perhaps most
crucially, to see whether a teacher could use these
materials to meaningfully engage her students in
really important matters.
Reviews
The idea behind the materials is to provide a set of
‘straightforward, easy- to-use’ lessons on
controversial topics. Aimed at students of
‘intermediate level and above’, the 40 topics range
from the death penalty, through sexual harassment,
gay families, AIDS , euthanasia, and the legalization
of drugs. Each unit is presented on a double page,
with discussion questions and text on the left-hand
side, and language work and further discussion
activities on the right. The material is
photocopiable, and the layout lends itself to this.
The authors point out in the Introduction that they
expect the material to be used by ‘experienced
teachers’, and so the teachers’ notes have been
kept to a minimum. There are also some wise
words about how to deal with the ‘sensitive nature’
of much of the material. This is a kind of necessary
health warning, since the authors and publishers
have not steered clear of any contentious topic.
Some topics are potentially more controversial
than others, depending of course on the situation.
The astute teacher will think carefully about context
before plunging into the units on Gays and Jobs, or
Abortion, or Torture. Indeed, almost all of the
topics require a good knowledge of the context, and
of the students.
Each unit starts with a discussion activity, which
both introduces relevant vocabulary and entices the
student into thinking about the topic. Sensibly, the
teachers’ notes at the beginning of the book
suggest that the student should be given time to
think about the topic silently before going into pairs
or small groups. In the unit ‘It should be banned!’,
for example, there is an activity which invites
students to think about whether such issues as
smoking inside public buildings, abortion pills,
smacking children, topless sunbathing, and
smoking marijuana are banned in their own
country. They then have to compare with other
students in their group.
This discussion activity is followed by a reading
task which o¤ers four articles on laws in four
di¤erent countries: topless sunbathing in Brazil,
fox-hunting in England, smoking bans in the USA ,
and a Ku Klux Klan rally in an unnamed context, but
presumably also the USA . The articles are quasi-
authentic, and read fairly naturally. Reading tasks
are varied; true/false questions, prediction
questions, filling in a table, and questions which
allow the student to express their own opinion
about the facts presented. In the case of ‘It should
be banned!’, students are given two or three
questions on each short text. Again, there is plenty
reviews welcome 205
 of potential for students to compare ideas and
feelings on the issues.
I tried out this unit with a group of Dutch teachers
with upper-intermediate level English. This was
ambitious on a number of fronts. Firstly, the Dutch
are famous for their unshockability. Drugs?
Prostitution? Gay marriage? Euthanasia? You name
it, the Dutch have discussed it at length, and
usually decided in favour. Secondly, this kind of
material obviously works best in a multicultural
class, a fact which is perhaps true of much of the
book. These topics are certainly challenging
enough, and a multinational group containing a
couple of Dutch students would really do it justice.
More worryingly, I found that the complexity of the
language and vocabulary did not hold up very well
at this level, despite the fact that it is called
‘intermediate and above’. I found, as I find with
many materials, that I wanted to supplement it with
something really authentic and ‘here and now’.
This was both because of the linguistic complexity
issue, and because it’s always a good idea to take
advantage of students’ real world preoccupations. I
was able to do this as a prominent Dutch politician
had been assassinated a few days before, and
everyone was talking about how to ban guns. I
could therefore bring in a Herald Tribune article on
the topic, which made the whole lesson more
challenging. This is as it should be: the responsive
teacher will find ways of really engaging their
students in the topic and of challenging them.
So what of my ‘real cultural context’ question? Not
much ‘fudginess’ here. Most of the texts are rooted
in specific cultures, and deal with real events. In the
unit on torture, for example, one of the articles
deals with Dr Sheila Cassidy’s real experience
during the coup in Chile in 1975. In the unit
‘Nobody needs a gun’, the reading passage is
about the Columbine massacre in the USA in 1999.
These are useful texts. Most teachers know that
when a particular topic comes up, it’s always good
to have a real situation, and it’s not always easy to
find something in today’s newspaper.
Then, of course, comes the section on language.
Well, we knew it had to happen. It would be too
much to think we could have material which aimed
at really engaging learners in meaningful subject
matter without then giving them a cloze text or a
collocation exercise. In fact, though, the authors
have worked hard to make the language section as
unobtrusive as possible. Many of the exercises are
on vocabulary rather than manipulation of form—
and, of course, they can be left out of the lesson
206 Reviews
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itself. I’ve always thought it a great pity to get the
students really engaged in the topic and then get
them to do an exercise which exhorts them to ‘read
through the text again and find the verbs which go
with the following nouns’.
Each unit ends with a further discussion section.
Again, the formats are diverse, so that if a teacher
decides to use this material on a regular basis,
there is always some variety. There are debates,
small group discussions of specific situations, and
opportunities to ‘choose your favourite quotation’,
among others. One of the attractive features of
these activities is that they allow for a high level of
personalization. ‘What would you do in this
situation?’ is a good way of ensuring that students
really engage with the topic.
So what of learner engagement, that ‘fickle’ and
‘unstable’ quality? I believe that working on real
topics in the classroom is one of the best ways of
engaging learners and promoting real learning.
Taboos and Issues is a brave and useful book. The
thoughtful teacher will use it to tune into her
students’ own agenda, perhaps even inviting them to
choose their own topics. Whether the teacher is able
to truly engage her students using this material will
ultimately depend on her own skill and judgement.
Above all, heaviness needs a lightness of touch.
References
Pulverness, A. 1999. ‘Context or pretext ? Cultural
content and the course book’. Folio Vol. 5/2: 5–10.
Rinvolucri, M. 1999. ‘The UK , EFL ese sub-culture
and dialect’. Folio Vol. 5/2: 12–14.
Thornbury, S. 1999. ‘Window-dressing vs. cross-
dressing in the EFL sub-culture’. Folio Vol. 5/2:
15–17.
The reviewer
Sue Leather runs Excel Training Services, a training
company based in the Netherlands which operates
internationally. She has extensive experience of ELT ,
particularly in the fields of teacher training and
management. She is a frequent contributor to
international conferences, and writes regularly for
ELT journals. Her main professional interests are in
the management of change in developing contexts
and cross-cultural teacher training.
Sue Leather is also a writer of short stories and
original readers, as well as books on methodology.
Her publications include a range of readers in the
Cambridge University Press Cambridge English
Readers series.
Email: exceltraining.sue@planet.nl
reviews welcome