The Birth of NoNonsense
In the mid-nineties I had been teaching English as a second language (ESL) for well over a decade, yet always I had encountered difficulty in finding effective textbooks for my students. What was needed was a well-organized and concentrated format which would allow language concepts to be compared, contrasted - and ultimately absorbed - efficiently; but the trend in the late eighties and the first half of the nineties was towards pricy, high-gloss graphics and watered-down content. Increasingly, the use of grammar was being thrown out the window to make way for more eclectic, conceptually-disjointed approaches. It wasn't always easy to identify the language learning theories underlying those books, mainly because the importance of pedagogy itself had been downgraded in favor of a new priority: the dictates of consumerism.
Taking its cue from modern marketing strategies, 'Nouveau-ESL' put the emphasis on style and layout. Typically, a page from an early '90s ESL textbook presented an eye-pleasing composition of pictures and sentences floating amidst a sea of white. The aesthetic of Japanese rock gardens had found a home in the world of ESL. Meanwhile, less and less was being learned, and all that glossy paper was costing money. Textbook prices soon launched into an upward spiral which continues today. By mid-1997 I was fed up, and in retaliation against the ever-rising tide of consumerist and pedagogic nonsense, I created the first in what would become a series of low-budget, self-printed books.
In the NoNonsense books, costs are kept down by shunning graphics and filler-type material in favor of the essentials. Each NoNonsense manual contains a set of grammar, conversation, reading, and writing modules, all presented in a concentrated form. As opposed to 'communicative' methods (grammar-lite grab-bags of 'hands-on' activities), grammar is given a central, unifying role in the belief that it serves to consolidate a student's learning, and nurtures a global appreciation of what is going on in the language. The manuals are printed and spiral-bound at a local photocopy shop and sold to students at a price that works out to be about a quarter that of your average mass-produced, commercial ESL textbook. Students feel fair-changed for once, and I can feel fully confident in my classroom material. If I have doubts about the efficacy of an activity, an exercise, or an explanation, I make the necessary revisions in the next edition.
The core of NoNonsense English is about empowerment. For me, it means having full control over pedagogy. I can formulate and realize pedagogical goals without worrying whether I'll be able to find a book which approximates what I'm trying to do. For my students, the empowerment is twofold. Since their books are designed explicitly for the course they are taking, they don't have to worry about which parts are relevant and which parts are not. Everything is relevant. Furthermore, at the beginning of each NoNonsense manual there is a course calendar that details the contents of each lesson and the homework that will be assigned for that week. Students are thereby able to follow the progress of their course without being overly dependent on their teacher. I can be less of a taskmaster (the book does that), and more of a resource.
The NoNonsense books are not available for sale to students other than my own for the simple reason that they are designed with MY pedagogy in mind. Each book is specifically tailored for one of my courses, and unless another teacher happened to be my clone, he or she would inevitably opt for a different content, emphasis, and style reflecting his or her own beliefs about the way language acquisition occurs and should be taught. The NoNonsense materials may nevertheless be useful to other teachers because of their modular design. Rather than creating an entire method from scratch, a teacher could choose a subset of NoNonsense modules as a framework to build upon. If you are a teacher and the possibility of using NoNonsense materials interests you, contact me. I charge nothing for the use of my materials, although I do ask to be given due credit.
The goal for NoNonsense in the future is to get away from a reliance on hard copy (paper) materials and all the environmental and commercial exploitation which they tend to perpetuate. Such a reliance becomes increasingly inexcusable as the Internet becomes available to more and more students. Above all, the NoNonsense mission is to seek out efficient tools that facilitate learning, and to avoid all that extraneous noise that serves to obfuscate the goal.