The Language Teacher
July 2002

ELT Textbook Rubrics: The Nature of the Beast

Kristofer Bayne

Aston University

Learners and teachers bring a wide range of attitudes, experiences, strategies and styles to the EFL classroom. A more concrete and widely used item they carry with them is a textbook. Such texts and the pedagogic materials and tasks within rightly receive broad and on-going attention from researchers and teacher trainers (such as Allwright, 1981; Cunningsworth, 1984; Dubin & Olshtain, 1986; Grant, 1987; Hutchinson & Torres, 1994; Johnson, 1989; Nunan, 1989; O'Neill, 1982; Tomlinson, 1998). The same, however, cannot be said for the written instructions, or rubrics, preceding and introducing tasks.

Breen (1989), Littlejohn (1998), and Ellis (1998) acknowledge the rubric in the context of analysing and evaluating "task." Outside of this context, those who comment on rubrics do so briefly. Among them, Chaudron (1988) points out the paradox of rubrics in that they are given in the target language and may be beyond the learners cultural and linguistic ability. This may account for the recognised "interpreter" role of the classroom teacher (Gower & Walters, 1983; Wright, 1987). There is general agreement that the clarity, precision and economy is essential, with Jolly and Bolitho (1989) suggesting that "efficient and effective" rubrics will determine the success, the "pedagogical realisation", of the materials. Finally, Littlejohn and Windeatt (1989) note that an examination of the rubrics in a given textbook will reveal much about its author's view of language learning.

This small selection of comments alone raises issues that have not been pursued in any significant studies. Just for starters we can ask a number of very fundamental questions about the various participants and their relationship to rubrics:

Rubrics are a physical presence in learner textbooks, they are the focus of at least one aspect of teacher talk in the classroom, and they can play an important role in the pedagogical outcomes. These and other related issues will be the focus of my workshop for JALT 2002. For now, however, I would like to outline some important definitions and general features of rubrics in the following sections.

Definitions

Previously I have defined textbooks generically as "all forms of printed ELT instructional materials, commercial or non-commercial, bound or loose-leaf, and whole or part of a textbook" (Bayne 1998). Textbooks will include coursebooks, self-access materials, supplementary materials and workbooks as Tomlinson (1998) defines them and also in-house materials such as those described in Gershon (2000).

Tomlinson describes materials as "anything which is used by teachers and learners to facilitate the learning of a language" and "anything which is deliberately used to increase the learners' knowledge and or experience of the language" (1998, p. 2). He includes teachers' instructions. I would like to add the rubric to the mix.

The term rubric (alternatively, written instructions) will be used for those directions that in most cases precede the learning task. These are predominantly written in the target language and directly address the learners. Rubrics aim to physically organise the classroom and learners for learning purposes via specific pedagogic tasks. It is almost a given that the author of the materials will include a rubric, particularly if it is for consumption beyond the author's own classroom. This is also true for examples and sample tasks used in teacher references (e.g. Grellet, 1981; Hughes, 1989; Hutchinson & Waters, 1987; Savignon, 1997) and for demonstration-type tasks for teachers such as My Share contributions to The Language Teacher.

I have chosen not to attempt to define task, as my issue here is not with the task itself (for details on tasks see Nunan, 1989, p. 5-11; Crookes and Chaudron, 1991, p. 50-57). Obviously, separating a rubric from its task is not a reflection of reality. There is always a rubric/task context. I will suggest, however, that the rubric itself is a key in the move from "task-as-workplan" to "task-in-process" (Breen, 1989), and as such can have a great bearing on the outcome.

Features of Rubrics

Rubrics can range from a single-step direction (usually in a sequence of related tasks) requiring the application of one skill, as in the example:

Listen [followed by a short dialogue on tape]. (Richards, et al., 1991, p. 82)

or it can be very explicit, multi-step and multi-skill, as in:

Match the following words on the left-hand side with their meanings on the right-hand side. Write the correct letter on the line. For clues to the words' meanings, review the exercises in Part Three [followed by "1-10"/"a-j" lists]. (Kim & Hartmann, 1990, p. 39)

In some cases the rubric may also include "appendages" such as contextual information and conditions:

If you were talking to an American and wanted to avoid misunderstanding, what would you say in the following situations? a) Write it in English, b) Close your book and role-play the situation with your classmates [followed by a short written description of a situation and a cloze dialogue]. (Yoshida, et al., 2000, p. 36)

Embedded in the rubric may be questions essential to the successful completion of the actual task.

What do you need to do in order to set up your own business? What problems can you anticipate? Work in small groups. Make two lists. One example is given for each [followed by two titled columns with one example each]. (Jamall & Wade, 2000, p. 6)

Examples or models can also be used with or without reference:

Listen to six sentences. How many words are there? Draw a circle around your choice. Contractions (for example, she's) count as two words [followed by six multiple choice questions]. (Jamall & Wade, 2000, p. 7)

We can see from the above examples that the rubric is written in the imperative addressing the learner, usually with a simple sentence structure. Rubrics may be visually distinguished from other text by various design and layout manipulations such as the size, style or type of font, shading or white space, numbering or lettering, or the use of directional graphics and icons. For listening textbooks and audio portions of other skill texts the written rubric is usually repeated verbatim on the tape or CD.

In this brief and by no means complete description of rubrics we can see that they appear in almost any form of printed ELT textbook and can include a variety of "directional" information. We could surmise from the use of language, appearance and appendages that they are intended for the learner (but I would like to hint that the jury is still out on this point).

Considerations

In preparation for this piece I looked back over the past two years of Main and Feature Speaker articles in The Language Teacher for guidance and inspiration. I found both, but also as I read through I was struck time and again by the fact that the humble rubric, the simple written instruction, can have a bearing, with varying degrees of relevancy, on such a diversity of ELT issues and perspectives.

Just as rubrics pervade all ELT textbooks so their relevance extends beyond their role as simple transactional functions in the classroom (Widdowson, 1990) or guidance whenever or wherever learners use their textbook. Rubrics can be seen as a lynchpin between what the materials writer and publisher--backed by sound pedagogic theory, experience and creativity--intends for their task, and what the teacher and learners--through their interpretation and application of that intent--actually do with the task. I would like to suggest that on this link also rest relationships with deeper issues. I will also ask you to consider the role of rubrics as I do--their creation, presentation, treatment by teachers, use by learners.

Given the existence of rubrics and their intended audience in learning materials there is a connection to course design (Gershon, 2001; Han & Dickey, 2001; Nunan, 2001; Richards, 2000; Woodward, 2001), task design (Tomlinson, 2000; Willis, 2000), lesson planning (Woodward, 2001) and teaching young learners (Krause, 2001). With teachers being teachers the written instruction has a relationship to teaching styles (Thewlis, 2001) and teacher effectiveness (Burns & Candlin, 2001; Jones, 2001). Given that teachers deal with learners and rubrics in a classroom setting we also have to consider teacher motivation (Woodward, 2001) and teacher development (Barfield, et al., 2001; Craven, 2000; Smith, 2001). Finally, in their role as introductions and links to pedagogic tasks rubrics can effect learner autonomy (Nguyen & Aoki, 2001; Robbins, 2000; Smith, 2001), learner motivation (Dornyei & Csizar, cited in Burns & Candlin, 2001, p. 6) and learner involvement (Swan, 2001). These issues would, in turn, be related to language acquisition (Burns & Candlin, 2001). I hope I have been able to give you a new or different perspective on rubrics, or written instructions. I think there is something for everybody. (Comments on rubrics are invited at eltrubrics@hotmail.com)

References

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