The National Geographic Era of Language Teaching (and My Predictions)

Those of you who aren't in the English Language Teaching business may be surprised to learn how completely National Geographic has taken over the industry in the past 10 years.   

National Geographic not only publish multiple English Language textbooks, they publish multiple series of English Language Textbooks.

The Pathways series that I taught out of when I worked in Cambodia was published by National Geographic. 

The Life series of textbook that I taught out of for several years at my previous employer are published by National Geographic (see my materials for: Life Beginner, Life Elementary, Life Pre-Intermediate, Life Intermediate, Life Upper Intermediate).

Also the Time Zones are published by National Geographic (see my materials for: Times Zones 1, Times Zones 3, Time Zones 4)

Also the Close-Up series is published by National Geographic (see my materials for: Close-Up B2, Close-up C1).

And the Reflect Series is published by National Geographic (see my materials for: Reflect Listening & Speaking 5)

And the Impact series is published by National Geographic (see my materials for: Impact 2, Impact 3, Impact 4)

...so as you can see from the above list, National Geographic has a lot of different lines of textbooks.  So much so that when many schools are considering which textbook to use, it's often a matter not of choosing National Geographic or someone else, but choosing which National Geographic book.  

You can also see from the above list, I've put in a lot of time working with National Geographic textbooks and trying to supplement them in the past 10 years.

Now, if you're not in the industry, you may be slightly confused now.  You may be saying: "What, National Geographic?  What do they have to do with the English Language Teaching industry?"

I believe that they came in to correct a short-coming that the previous generation of English textbooks had.

In the previous years, English textbook publishers were often either unable or unwilling to negotiate copyrights for authentic materials.  So all the practicing readings and listenings were just inauthentic manufactured texts that the textbook publishers made up themselves.

So, for example, a practice listening might contain a dialogue between two people talking about their favorite movies.  But because the textbook publishers couldn't use the names of real movies or real actors, they would just use made up names (e.g. the characters would talk about something like "Space Wars" instead of "Star Wars" or "Juliet Robertson" instead of "Julia Roberts"). Or the characters would talk about shopping for shoes, but all the brand names for shoes would be made-up, etc.

And of course, students immediately recognized that it was just a fake inauthentic dialogue that didn't have any relevance to the real world, and they immediately lost interest in it.

National Geographic must have realized this problem.  And presumably at the same time, National Geographic started realizing what a huge industry English Language Teaching had become, and what a hugely lucrative market English language textbook publishing was.  And someone at National Geographic must have said, "Hey, we're just sitting on decades worth of photos, videos and articles all about the real world.  Why don't we use our material to make language textbooks?"

And thus, a new industry was born.  National Geographic textbooks come packed with large glossy photo spreads, articles about explorers, the rainforest and the solar system, and tons of video materials.  (All the National Geographic textbooks come with video lessons for each unit.)

And it all looks beautiful, and colorful, and shiny, but...

...but the problem is that it all flies in the face of what is supposed to be the dominant methodology in the field: Communicative Language Teaching.

In the traditional Communicative Language Teaching methodology, the reading or the listening text is exploited for some sort of communicative follow-up task, in which the students relate the text to their own lives, and discuss it.

In this methodology, it didn't matter so much that the textbook publishers couldn't get the rights to use real movie titles in their listening dialogue.  The point was that the reading and listening topics were on everyday life topics, and afterwards the students could discuss about their own lives.

So the students could listen to a dialogue about two people talking about movies they've seen recently, and then the students themselves could discuss movies that they had seen.

Or the dialogue would be about shopping for clothes, and then the students could discuss about their own shopping experiences.

With these National Geographic textbooks, however, it is very hard to personalize the lessons.  The reading and listening texts are often about outer space, or Alaskan Ice Climbing, or the customs of the Masai Tribes in Africa, or Bolivian Wrestlers and as a teacher you look at the text and you think "How in the world am I going to get a personalized communicative activity out of that?"

I was complaining about this to a co-worker the other day, and I said, "I bet in 10 or 20 years, people are going to look back at all these National Geographic textbooks, and think, 'What a silly fad that was.' "

"I bet you're right," he said.  "You know when you take the Delta and you have to study the history of language teaching methodologies?  And you have to study all these weird methodologies from the history of the field?  I bet in the future there will be a section devoted to these National Geographic textbooks."

We tried to imagine what such a history might someday say about our present era of language teaching:

"...it was widely believed at the time that students could most effectively learn English by studying about the tribes in the Amazon rainforest, instead of by talking about things that were relevant to their own lives..."  (Something like that.)

We'll see what happens in the next 10 or 20 years, but I'm putting my prediction down now.  This will all be regarded as a silly fade one day.