Language and Language Teaching, Issue 2 - Azim Premji Foundation

Overcoming Bias in ELT Textbooks: A Studyin the Indian ContextRudrashis DattaIntroductionTextbooks form the primary resource of Englishlanguage teaching in classrooms in most secondlanguage scenarios of the world. Their primacyas the basic source material lies as much in theirversatility of production, as in their ease of usein actual classroom situations. Furthermore,textbooks serve as models of language materials,graded and refined, and made to suit the levelof learners in accordance with the immediateand long-term requirements of the policy makers,both at macro- and micro-level contexts. Thoughsome commentators have degraded theimportance of textbooks in ELT, and describedthem as “a shackle for the innovative teacher”,(Saraswathi, 2004, p. 120), the primacy oftextbooks in English classrooms has not beeneffectively challenged to this day.Content of textsIt is commonly accepted that textbooks arecollated from English language and literatureresources, either directly, or in an abridged orsummarized form, in accordance with the levelof attainment of the learners. In the Indiancontext, ‘readers’ or graded textbooks whichserve as the repository of basic language andliterature structures, have formed the core ofEnglish language curriculum across the state andnational boards administering secondary andsenior secondary examinations. Since alltextbooks in ELT are supposed to contain lexicalunits which are “central in language use andlanguage learning” (Richards and Rodgers, 2001,p. 227), it is significant that content be so chosenthat contextual and lexical use can be unitedthrough carefully selected passages or extracts.The content of textbooks in English courses canbe categorized under the following basic types:1. Prose passages, directly lifted from originalEnglish works, such as extracts2. Prose passages abridged from originalEnglish works3. Short stories4. Extracts from newspapers, generallyjournalistic reports5. Poems by English or Indian poets, usuallylimited to sonnets or lyrics not more than 30lines6. Recreations of well known English plays inprose7. Extracts from full length plays, usually inthe form of an important or climactic scene‘Bias’ and where it creeps in‘Bias’ is a widely defined term in the contextsof sociology and social psychology. Ordinarily,‘bias’ can be defined as the tendency to portrayand interpret individuals, their actions, or socioculturalpractices according to the parametersdefined by the observer, usually in rigid, nonflexibleterms (Baron and Byrne, 2002, p. 91).This rigidity often results in the portrayal of adifferent culture or practice as ‘wrong’ merelybecause it differs from the point of view of theLanguage and Language Teaching Volume 1 Number 2 July 2012 34