This is No. 4 in an occasional 10-part series on the topic of self-publishing textbooks. If I’ve recorded a podcast or writtten a post in the series, it will be linked to in the footnote at the end of this post.1 If there’s no link, it’s because I haven’t created it yet. But I will. Eventually. I may write posts out of numerical order and reserve the right to not post about the topic the following week just because.
If the sum of your publishing experience is scribbling a few notes before a lesson and posting a tweet or two, the prospect of publishing a series of textbooks may seem beyond the realms of possibility.
But if you have ever cracked open a rather dull or overly fussy textbook and thought I could do it better myself, and you have the ability to type up your lesson plans in a Word or Pages document, then you have all the motivation and skills you need to get started. Perhaps the best way of learning is to just jump in with both feet and figure it all out as you go along.2
But if you are still reading this, maybe you were hoping for a little direction? A few words of advice might save you hours of frustration. I’ll tell you my approach and if it’s helpful, please follow it. If it’s not, well, of course, take the bits that you think might be helpful and discard the rest.
Still with me? Then I’ll get stuck in.
There are two elements to contend with before you write anything: 1. Working out the content, aka a syllabus, and 2. Presenting it, aka designing your textbook (what us ex-newspaper hacks would call laying them out).
1. Working out the content
You may be tempted to do something wholly original based on your own brilliant, original ideas. Great!3 But if you are anything like me when you started out, you have a few good ideas, maybe one or two original ones, but mostly have no notion of what to do.
I have good news. Greater minds than ours have already wrestled with this and come up with a number of syllabuses. They are the folks behind the existing textbooks out there. If you’ve been in the TEFL biz for a few years, you’ve probably come across a few textbooks. Some, of course, are a lot better than others. Some are really bad.
Who decides whether they are good or bad?
If you are self-employed — you do!
Based on what criteria?
Based on whether they give you what you need to give your student what he or she wants.
So, when assessing the value of a textbook, first work out what it is that your student really, really wants. Then, figure out if the textbook gives you what you need to do that. Look at existing textbooks and steal the best ideas (but not the copyrighted words or pictures), add the best of your own ideas, furnish with your own examples, and you are well on your way to creating your own textbook. Here’s what I’ve used in my teaching life, and what I learnt from them:4
The Berlitz textbook. This was a giant ring-binder of a textbook, whose first lessons were “a pen” “a pencil” followed by “This is a pen.” It did have two redeeming features: every lesson introduced vocab or grammar that built on a previous point; and everything was in English (with no Japanese explanations even in the students’ workbooks). Heavy on repetition and drilling, it was good for beginners (both teacher and student), but maaaaaaan it was dull.
Headway (Oxford University Press) books. Lots of pretty pictures, they were engaging general textbooks and had a variety of exercises for adult students in every lesson, that followed logical grammar points that became progressively more complicated. It wasn’t always clear how to teach certain points and it was unclear where one lesson began and another ended. Designed for large classes, not so hot for a one-to-one lesson, or as I was back then, a beginner teacher.
English for Life (Oxford University Press). About the best, most versatile general textbook I’ve used, certainly for one-to-one teaching to adults. Each lesson was self-contained over one page, had a clear grammar, vocab or reading comprehension exercise with starter exercises and questions all worked out for you. It was a revelation to me that you could have a clear, simple textbook that followed a logical grammar and vocab progression that was cut up into pre-planned lessons, each good for 40 to 50-minutes. The downside was they only had three textbooks made (beginner, elementary and intermediate, as I recall). If you have students who stay more than a year, what do you do with them next?
Business One to One (Oxford University Press). Like the above series, each lesson had a clear focus based on grammar and vocab but organised into business-y themes (how to write business email, how to greet people before a meeting, how to give directions). It was good for folk who said they wanted to learn business English, but again, they only had two textbooks (lower intermediate and intermediate) so if you had a long-term student you would run out of material pretty quickly.
Let’s Go! (Oxford University Press) Probably the best of the bunch of old-school textbooks for primary (elementary) school-age kids learning English as a foreign language. The strong points? There were six books — one for each year of Japanese elementary school — and each were pitched at about the right level of difficulty for the age group with good flashcards and a syllabus that made sense. But it was not clear how to teach each lesson and there was never enough material to last a whole lesson, or enough lessons to last a whole school year of 42 to 45 weekly lessons, so I found myself constantly having to supplement lessons with my own material. Wasn’t that the point of having a textbook — to remove the need to plan every lesson? Plus there was no obvious sister textbooks for kindergarteners and junior high school kids, let alone high school kids.
Tiny Talk. This was a lovely textbook series for kindergarteners (those aged 3 to 5). It had a nice, simple syllabus and child-friendly artwork, but it was nowhere near thorough enough to flesh out a single lesson, and I found myself going through all three available books within a year, instead of three as they were designed for.
Sunshine English. A series of three junior high textbooks my daughters endured through Japanese junior high school. The syllabus was so-so, though starting way too easy and then progressing to a little too difficult for most kids. But for every paragraph of English there were three pages of explanations in Japanese. No wonder (some) Japanese parents see value in their kids practicing how to speak English by attending eikaiwa classes.
Google search. This is not a textbook, but it became the go-to fall back when I needed a lesson planning before I had the confidence to write my own plans completely from scratch. There’s a lot of free stuff out there, some of it pretty good, but most of it not, and because of its random nature, the stuff available for free is not organised in any coherent, reusable syllabus, or consistent style. I’d spend so long looking for usable stuff, it was easier just to start from scratch myself.
AI. I’ve only had limited experience with this, messing around with the free ChatGPT 3.5 chatbot and the rudimentary AI that generates free art for posts here at Free Talk TEFL. When I’ve used the chat AI to write lesson plans and dialogues, it’s been OK, but it writes without much pizzazz and I ended up having to rewrite and edit what it produced so much, I’m not sure of its value — yet. But watch this space.
So, how does all this help you, the budding textbook self-publisher? Well, here’s what I suggest:
Work out a syllabus for your textbook (or better yet future series of textbooks) by following the progression from your favourite existing textbooks.
Add your own lesson plans and personal favourite lessons.
Use your own examples, supplemented by Google searches and AI to flesh out your textbook lessons.
Write the textbook that you would be happy to use everyday.
What next? Next, get started on designing your textbook. That’s a topic for another post entirely…
I hope this has been helpful for you, whether you are planning to self-publish your own textbooks, or just wonder if a textbook is worth using.
See you on Friday for the (video) podcast.
Patrick
Introduction: How to publish your own English textbooks in Japan
How to design your own textbooks
How to make the covers of your own textbooks
How to format your own textbooks for different media
The pros and cons of Amazon, going wide and traditional publishing
How much should you charge for your textbooks?
You’ve published your textbook. Now what?
That’s an excellent idea and if that’s what you wanna do, go do it, why are you wasting your time reading this? Go on, get on with it.
That’s an excellent idea and if that’s what you wanna do, go do it, why are you wasting your time reading this? Go on, get on with it.
I stopped using mass market textbooks ten years ago, so these listed here are no doubt out of date, but I present them here by way of example. Your experiences will differ.