Global vs. Local: Does It Matter?

Abstract

Teaching materials are used in specific teaching contexts (schools, universities, language schools, and so on), with specific learners (according to age and degree of L2 competence), and to meet specific needs (for example, to build a general communicative competence in L2, to train call centre staff in reading or speaking skills). This is why, when teachers use materials produced for international markets (so-called global coursebooks), they adapt them to fit their students’ needs, to comply with curricular demands, to supplement any missing information, to provide extra practice, and so on. This is also true of locally produced materials. How do EFL teachers go about using global and locally produced coursebooks? Is there a significant difference between the way teachers implement global and local coursebooks? Do they supplement them with other materials? Do they skip some texts, activities, or other elements, and on what basis? These are questions we address in this chapter in order to find out about EFL teachers’ practices when using both kinds of coursebook.KeywordsTeaching MaterialTarget LanguageLanguage TeachingCritical PedagogyEnglish Language TeachingThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.