Luckily for the observer of these pillars, the pattern is the same. Imagine trying to focus on one of them if every other pillar was intricately different in decoration...
Image: Jay Peeples
This is a post I've been meaning to write and explore for quite some time, as it deals with a subject which well and truly precedes my time in ELT blogging. An issue I've heard brought up time and time again by learners in classrooms and by teachers in staffrooms.
What is it with coursebooks for teenagers and adults that feature tiny typefonts and bunched up collections of activities crammed into two or three columns on one page?
Now, to attempt a bit of context here, I have to confess to having begun materials design with younger learners and teenagers in mind (though I went on from that to produce just as much for adults as well), as well as being based in Asia (and now Australia).
I mention that because in Asia, there is less hype about the cost of coursebooks (they're generally dirt cheap compared to other parts of the world, and being sold in contexts where many families are willing to invest up to a quarter of their monthly income on English education), and the prime culprits for what I generally term "pillars of distraction" appear to be ELT coursebooks designed in and for the UK/Europe. I assume that the high cost of coursebooks in Europe is part of the mentality of squeezing as much content as possible into each and every page so as to create a product that can represent value for money for the average student.
And, perhaps secondary to the economic issue, small fonts with lots of sophisticated bundles of content are often assumed to be more appealing to the more mature student, who doesn't want to be made to feel "kiddy" or simpler (somehow) in intellectual capacity.
I'm now at a point where I feel comfortable in challenging those assumptions. Words per page might seem economically advantageous to some students at first, but I think crammed content in multiple columns and tiny fonts is off-putting for as many if not more adult students (and teachers as well!). I also don't think larger fonts with more spacing (and strategic placement) of material is automatically demeaning to the majority of adult language learners.
In both respects, I would challenge the assumptions on another ground: a coursebook's overall "economic value" is reduced if a learner struggles with the overall learning process on account of the cramming and layout. A sophisticated and "mature" appearance might initially encourage a sale, but if the layout factor creates ongoing frustration and confusion then the publisher may have inadvertently sabotaged the chance of future sales with future levels of the same series.
I managed a school some years ago where that is exactly what happened: we took on Cutting Edge one term, admiring its cool, sophisticated and robust look, and after a term of complaints and frustration from both learners and teachers on account of layout and tiny fonts, dropped the series and never used it again. A pity, really, because there was some great content in it. We just got sick of having to peer at/for it.
And I'm not so sure a modern magazine format is the best way to go when we are talking about books that aren't actually being used the way magazines generally are (and aren't being read -- technically speaking -- by magazine readers).
Perhaps you're not really sure what I'm on about here (though I suspect most teachers reading this are). I'm going to give you an example based on a very recent and award-winning series: Global, from Macmillan.
Now, before I sink the raven claws into this coursebook series, let me point out that the content and methodological design of Global is actually -- in my opinion -- quite brilliant. Some of the best content and activity design I've ever seen in ELT coursebooks.
And, like a lot of people around the world, my first look at Global in electronic format had me singing its praises. The outstanding content and activities were delivered in a cool, elegant format that oozed class. It looked very much like a magazine, with all the production excellence we might expect from a top selling periodical.
And finally, the criticism I'm about to deliver is not unique to Global at all. The layout in this series is typical of a large number of contemporary ELT publications for both adults and teenagers.
But anyway, here goes -- using a double page I chose completely at random from one of the levels in Global...
Okay, first look at it. There's a nice spread of colour and variation between text and illustrations, with a sort of "feature" feel like you might see in a magazine. It's modern, fresh, sophisticated.
But there are immediate problems here. The adult learners I've shown this to have all immediately said "it's too busy" (or words to the same effect, including "it looks like it will take forever to finish even one page"). It's hard to see the flow or method here. The typefont is incredibly small - your average learner needs to have their face at least 18 inches from the page in order to read it, which in many cases would mean heads well and truly bent over the desk. I challenge anyone (including smurfs) to complete the gaps in the gap-fill sections with an ordinary pen or pencil without feeling like they're trying to squeeze a watermelon into a shot glass, and I challenge anyone on the planet to find me a learner who has a pen with white ink to complete the gap-fill exercise featured on a jet-black background.
But beyond the (I think extremely important) size/space issues, the cramming of content like this into columns and disparate chunks represents other issues for effective delivery of the content and activities.
The first activity here (circled) asks students to refer to the two pictures above it, and then a series of exercises and activities follow down through the rest of the column -- each asking the students to look back and forth at the images at the top. Other than the distraction of locating where one is up to in the column sequence itself, we have the distraction of the content and activities in the adjacent column to the immediate right, including one part in a very eye-catching black box.
The activity/application circled here requires students to scan across to the top and far rim of the opposite facing page to refer to a serries of pictures. This represents a fairly major distance between rubric/reference and picture sequence, with the eyes having to travel over a lot of intervening content on the facing page AND the problem of finding one's way back to the next word or number in the original rubric on account of the tiny typeface.
The inside columns on open spreads always represent the most difficulty and potential confusion for coursebook material formatted in this way, basically because the learners have potentially distracting content and activities alongside on BOTH sides. In addition, the column here has an instruction/activity referring to a different activity in the previous column, but not at the same horizontal level. Again, the potential to get confused or downright lost is exacerbated here.
This is another example of a column of activities surrounded by potential distractions -- both previously completed activities in the column before, and a surrounding band of images that play no part in this column's applications.
And here, the circled application asks the students to "look at the picture below" -- when below is just another set of different activities and the picture is actually "below right", across a small swath of more potentially distracting content.
So how would I do this page differently?
Well, I can have a quick shot at it, in cut/paste clunky fashion, and hope to heck Lindsay either never reads this post or does so with a forgiving heart...
The basic approach here is to ensure that activities referring to pictures have those images available alongside them. Different sets of activities are generally aligned horizontally rather than vertically, which results in different clustered sections of related content minimalising the chance of becoming distracted (or feeling hemmed in by) unrelated material.
Of course, it looks terrible the way I've cut and pasted things here, but some industry standard formatting and a little more strategic outlay for the different cluster sections could potentially result in a double page look as smooth and sophisticated as the original version (I would like to hope).
And, seeings as there appears to be a bit more blank space here now, perhaps we could leave a little more space between activities and resize the gap-fill sections so that students can actually write responses in them!
You may very well feel this is an unfair and overly analytic critique of Global and the many other ELT series out there just like it (in layout terms, anyway) -- in which case, please, by all means let me know.
But if you feel, as a teacher, that my analysis and objections to the layout here go beyond simple fussiness to an essential understanding of how important content and layout can be for practical classroom application as well as independent learning efficacy, you may be asking yourself how and why it happens in coursebooks.
Beyond the ideas of economics and first impressions explored above, perhaps it's simply a case of not enough ELT layout people having enough actual classroom experience with coursebook material. Or wires getting crossed somewhere along the line between content composition and page design and production (writers are often asked to write their content in very simple format, adhering to word and sentence counts, and to "leave the design to the experts"). I don't know.
In any case, my personal view is that the approach of cramming in many modern coursebooks -- using multiple columns with often indiscriminate horizontal alignment of content and activities -- is actually hurting them.
And this is a bit tragic, considering that some have some absolutely superb material in them.
Like Global, for example!
=D
