Creating an Editing Mandate

Abstractions need to be thought through and operationalised before beginning the edit. The more assumptions unearthed, the more accurate the text will be in fulfilling its purpose. That purpose, though, at this stage remains unstated. A critical, if not the most critical, action an ELT writer needs to do is to develop an editing mandate.

In no particular order, here are some important considerations.

• Pedagogic context for learning


• Pedagogic purpose of the context, the overall textbook


• Pedagogic purpose of the text itself


• Readers’ prior linguistic knowledge


• Readers’ background

As it stands, the ‘Coffee Maker’ text may require no changes at all if it is an exercise in error spotting. Students may complete such an activity by focussing on spelling and comma placement without necessarily comprehending the semantic or conceptual meanings of the individual words. However, the possibilities of use of ‘Coffee Maker’ range so widely that I will outline a single context, that is, the actual perceived future readership of the book.

I believe that it is useful to have an exact class group in mind when preparing any activity. Doing so will help keep the boundaries of the activity realistic. Later, that class’s idiosyncraticies should be considered and the activity generalised. Here is a summary of the ‘class in mind’.

A 2nd year Japanese university class – basic grammar course completed – working vocabulary (visually and aurally, but not output) of the Japanese middle school oral communication level – visual recognition of vocabulary of the high school ‘blue star’ level – ability to decode most basic English written symbols orally – willing to read for comprehension – motivated to learn English for some intrinsic value, i.e. not learn just to pass a course or a test – believe in the value of learning orally

The more comprehensive this characterisation, the more precise the overall textbook will be in meeting the mandate. Furthermore, the process of producing the characterisation highlights certain necessary features of the textbook that may otherwise be overlooked. For example, above I have written ‘willing to read for comprehension’. If the student body is led to believe that reading for test taking is more important than anything else, they will do so. This belief is easily fostered by providing test-like so-called ‘comprehension’ questions after the text or by actually testing students on grammar-based textual details.

Having a characterisation in mind, the mandate criteria may be developed further.

The textbook (from which the passage is taken) is based on an integrated skills focus. Students probably will not take other English courses; this textbook needs to provide a range of useful skills practice. The ‘Coffee Maker’ text needs to exemplify one or more elements of the integrated skills focus of the unit. In this case, the textbook leads students towards preparing a description of an invention that they can’t live without, and the ‘Coffee Maker’ text shows a sample description. It also needs to demonstrate the two grammar foci of the unit; ‘present tense for habit’ and relative pronouns. Above all, it must be intrinsically interesting and be an appropriate model for what will be student oral output.

The stylistic appearance is very much controlled by what I think is useful for students to learn to say. The precise details of the ELT edit – actual words chosen, readability, grammar constructions used, word and sentence length and so on – will be looked at in the following blog.