Good servants but poor masters: On the important role of textbooks in teaching english pronunciation

Abstract

Textbooks are the most commonly used teaching materials among European EFL teachers (Henderson et al., 2012), and it is undeniable that they have a central role in foreign language teaching overall. Scholars across time have claimed that the role of textbooks cannot be overestimated: textbooks determine a major part of classroom teaching (see Sobkowiak, 2012). This paper discusses the influence of textbooks in English pronunciation teaching in an EFL environment. It presents a study in which the occurrence of four typical pronunciation teaching task types and four pronunciation teaching topics were analysed in three data sources: textbooks, classroom observations, and learner interviews. The results indicate that textbooks do have an influence on teaching. This is clearly shown when it comes to task types or pronunciation teaching topics that are absent from the textbooks: they do not occur in the teaching either.