Is there a future for the coursebook?

For various reasons, there is an increasing scepticism as to whether the coursebook is a pedagogical medium that is suited to guide and structure language learning and teaching appropriately any longer. In terms of its content, it is characterized by a certain belatedness since by the time it is released, five or more years have passed between the early stages of the conception of the coursebook and its publication. Also, in terms of cultural and digital practices of access to knowledge it is a closed medium so that interactive and active research strategies do not apply. And, last but not least, whereas the coursebook is created by experts along various pedagogical and didactic principles, a linear progression of learning and a highly selective content strategy in particular, the vast majority of adolescents in our classrooms are content creators themselves and socialized as such.´

Closed vs. open access

For adolescents in the digital age, with global and mobile access to content and all its active and interactive communicative and social practices, it is extremely difficult to identify with (and be motivated by) a medium which presents them with closed, pre-fabricated and fixed content and knowledge, and which does not allow for active knowledge and content construction. In terms of learning and motivation, students cannot be expected to make productive use of it; instead, they will refuse to engage in learning processes that are solely instructed and guided by the coursebook.

The alternative: the coursebook as a discourse curriculum

What is the alternative if the coursebook is to be preserved as a resource that guides language learning in a curricular manner? If for structural reasons the coursebook can no longer rely on and present relevant, meaningful, interesting or even fascinating and thereby motivating content, it will, as an alternative, have to focus upon and offer insight into and guidance for social and communicative practices and their generic forms. These are recognizable patterns and structures of utterances in cultural discourses of all kinds, analogue and digital alike, like stories, descriptions, protocols and instructions, all kinds of argumentative forms and also specific genres like various forms journalistic texts. The students will somehow be familiar with them since many of them are part of the cultural and their own communicative repertoire and discursive practices.

A discourse-oriented repertoire of the forms of utterances

Such a kind of coursebook will teach all of these forms of utterances in a systematic and deeper form, a whole ‘grammar’ of utterances, as it were. Such a concept of language learning can and will also have to be organized in a curricular manner. Narrative genres are a case in point: The discourse curriculum would begin with simple and shorter stories in the fifth grade and then, over the following years, gradually build up a repertoire of more complex narrative forms and a multitude of semiotic modes like storytelling in comics and videos and would finally lead to more subtle forms of narration in the upper secondary stage like creative writing or re-writing of short stories or episodes, beginnings or endings of a novel. Such a discourse curriculum is suited to teach relevant discursive practices in which the teenagers and young adults in the language classroom can and would like engage because they are familiar with them and will intuitively understand how such a learning resource meets their needs and helps them organize and structure their communication in analogue and digital environments.

The large variety of discourse practices

One of the most striking advantages of such type of coursebook is its ability to introduce the students to the whole range of generic forms and semiotic modes that they use in their daily offline and online communication and which they can refine, develop, systematize and understand more deeply in terms of purposes, structures, social contexts and communicative affordances. Also, in such a rich learning resource students will recognize themselves as communicative and cultural agents since all of the discourse patterns introduced in such a language course represent forms and practices which they regularly utilize in their own lifeworld.

The changing role of content in the coursebook

Of course, discourse is always about content; when we communicate, we want to convey something, i.e. thematic issues and content to others. That’s what communication is about and what drives young people to learn a language. Still, in such a ‘discourse-oriented language course’, content has to take on an exemplary character; it is ‘only’ paradigmatic in the sense that it can easily be replaced by other content which the teacher prefers to introduce or which the students themselves select and integrate in the discourse curriculum. For instance, learning what a good podcast is like does not depend on the respective thematic issue; as a genre and discursive practice it is highly transferrable and functional. However, the principles of relevance and meaningfulness also apply to exemplary content. Also, there is no curricular dimension to content choices in such a coursebook; rather, it is structured as a discourse-oriented language course, starting with simpler generic and semiotic forms in the early stages and leading to complex forms and a large variety of genres and modes in the upper secondary classroom.

Students as content creators

This way, the coursebook can account for the students’ experiences concerning the retrieval of information and their ways to access knowledge and content. What’s more, the coursebook can take up and develop further the students’ cultural role as content creators, help them understand and systematize the knowledge and the competences that such a role requires and close the gap to the students’ content creation experiences in the lifeworld, mainly in digital environments.

Bringing discourse competence to life

Last but not least, such a discourse curriculum is suited to bring to life the abstract concept and pedagogical goal of discourse competence. It breaks ‘discourse’ down to the level of individual and situated utterances and focuses on their semiotic and generic forms (discourse with a small ‘d’). This way, the students are equipped with the ability to participate in and contribute to all kinds of cultural discourses actively (‘Discourse’ with a capital D) – as many of them already regularly do in the English language on digital platforms and online communities of all kinds.

This post was inspired by conversations and discussions during the conference of the Klett Akdemie für Fremdsprachendidaktik (Klett Academy for Language Education) on the occasion of its 20th anniversary in Strasbourg on the 19th and 20th of June 2026. Thank you!