ARTESOL

Christine Feak

Ken Beatty

Mario López Barrios

Mario Luis López-Barrios holds a Dr. phil. (Universität Kassel, Germany) and a degree in Language Education in English and German (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina). Professor of Foreign Language Teaching (School of Languages, UNC). Areas of interest: Foreign Language Teaching, Materials Development, Research Methods in Applied Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition.

EFL coursebook contents and local curricula

The syllabus typically states the actual subject matter of a language course and its organization. In the school context, the topics included in EFL curricula are decided by an educational authority in accordance with national guidelines that frame the organization of the teaching and learning processes. In the Province of Córdoba, Argentina, themes are labelled in the curriculum as ámbitos de experiencia e interés, i.e. topics that relate to the experience and interests of the target learners, and include, apart from the typical everyday situations, cross-curricular topics from the social or natural sciences. Because some of these topics are controversial, they tend to be underrepresented or absent in commercial EFL materials. Despite the relevance of the non-language contents in foreign language education, these have scarcely been the object of research. Thus, this presentation examines their presence in five EFL coursebook series popularly used in some local schools and analyses them quantitatively to determine the coverage of said curriculum topics by the coursebooks. The study aims at raising awareness of the relevance of the inclusion of interest areas in teaching materials and at providing further insights into this marginal topic in materials development.