In Part 2 of this book, I explored pedagogy. Part 3 turned inwards to examine the personal. Now, Part 4 turns outwards to explore the bigger factors which shape EFL teachers' professional lives. In the present Chapter 10, I analyse the role of L1 in accessing monolingual L2 textbooks; Chapter 11 explores the global domains of ESL and EFL; and concluding Chapter 12 draws together threads of pedagogy, the personal, and the professional.

During the course of my research in Thailand, it emerged that three teachers were presenting the same Foundation English subject by means of the Passages textbook series (Richards & Sandy, 1998, 2000a), and that local bilingual teachers' use of this monolingual international publication was problematic. Thus I was impelled to explore key features of the series itself, and to look at the ways in which teachers responded to it both in class and at interview. In particular, I wished to find out the extent to which teachers' bilinguality could aid in making accessible to students the language and culture of such texts. That is, how did the use of L1 mediate the meanings presented in a monolingual English textbook?

It must first be said that for majority-world foreign language teachers and students across the globe, the textbook is the curriculum. As Akbari has noted, ours is not simply a 'postmethod' era, but one of 'textbook-defined practice' (2008: 647). However, in many contexts, such textbooks are Western imports: Kumaravadivelu speaks of the 'vice-like grip the Anglo-American textbook industry has on the global ELT market' (2003: 565). When exploring the impact of EL textbooks worldwide, there have been two approaches: to focus on content, or upon pedagogy. Content analysis of textbooks has received considerable attention for some decades; and is addressed in volumes by Tomlinson and Masuhara (2010), Gray (2010) and Harwood (2010).