Geoff felt guilty about using ChatGPT to create his first drafts. It was the start of the project and he should be full of his own ideas. ‘I can fall back on AI tools once the publisher has stifled my creativity’ Geoff reasoned.
Admittedly, he’d also noticed (after submission) that in his manuscript for Unit 2, ChatGPT had started a 200-word text about Crazy Hobbies with the following phrase:
I’m sorry, but as an AI language model, I’m not able (and not willing) to write texts that are so distant from the actual interests of most learners. However, I can provide you with some facts about extreme ironing which you can build your own text around.
Luckily, Geoff’s email submission to the development editor hadn’t actually sent (which was convenient for this story). The deadline for Draft 1 of Units 1-4 was in two days, so Geoff got cracking.
The prescribed topic for Unit 1 was ‘My Family’. Geoff built the unit around texts describing traditional, happy, nuclear family units. That seemed a safe bet, although as a stepdad and adoptive father, twice-divorced, who grew up in a single-parent family, Geoff struggled to conceptualise ‘a traditional family unit’. Luckily, Geoff remembered the advice he was given by a successful coursebook author: ‘If you’re not sure what a coursebook family should look like, refer to the box for the 1983 board game Ask Me Another’
Unit 2 focused on ‘My Hobbies’. He jazzed up the topic with texts on extreme ironing, chessboxing, and a 25-year-old amateur beekeeper from Surrey. Unit 3 was ‘My Home’. Geoff filled the page with images of western-style houses (mostly detached, plus some big Georgian terraces in Brighton too), and included a text about a filthy rich, white, male, European banker who decided to quit his job, buy a tropical island and become self-sufficient. Unit 4 was about ‘My Country’. Geoff included country profiles of the USA, Norway, and New Zealand, and a double-page spread on festivals around the world which included an interview with a morris dancer.
Geoff made the deadline with minutes to spare. He immediately received an out-of-office reply from the editor explaining that they would be away until a week after Geoff was due to receive feedback.
While waiting for feedback, Geoff spent a bit of time with his family, attended eight webinars about AI tools, downloaded 6 books on AI in ELT, read ten pages of one, located three guidance documents on Sharepoint (which took nearly a week), got into three arguments on Twitter, and read some anti-coursebook research which rambled on about the ELT publishing hydra. ‘This is so ill-informed,’ moaned Geoff, ‘The Tentacles of Target Markets was an octopus. Granted, as the Content Authority state, there are certain similarities between the creatures – although the researcher is presumably referring to the Lernaean Hydra from Greek mythology rather than the small, tube-like creatures found in freshwater habitats. That being the case, the only way to destroy the hydra’s ‘immortal’ head would be to chop it off with the golden sword given by Athena. However, this researcher suggests more localization, teacher-made resources, and task-based methods would work just as well. Ha, you’ll need something a lot more powerful than that, mate!’
It’s worth stating at this point, that years previously Geoff had wrapped tennis racquet overgrip around the handle of his own Sword of Pushback – just for extra comfort. Had he not done so, he may have noticed the engraving on the handle which said ‘Dear Cunningham and Moor, why not be truly Cutting Edge? Yours, Athena’. The engraving was covered by a layer of dust when Geoff had found the sword behind a copy of Ship or Sheep? in a British Council staffroom cupboard.
Anyhow, on a Friday afternoon at 4pm, Geoff said goodbye to Julie Moore after a nice StetWalk, and headed home through the Forest of Feedback. Suddenly, Geoff’s editor appeared in the form of a fierce dragon, swishing a sword through the air. ‘Oh great,’ said Geoff, ‘the feedback’s arrived just in time to stress me out all weekend’.
The dragon slashed relentlessly at Geoff, trying to punish him for every decision. Chessboxing had already appeared in a 2015 edition of ‘Become Great! A2’. The family members in Geoff’s artwork choices from Shutterstock didn’t look happy enough while doing the washing up all together. The texts in which people describe their family only included 18 examples of the target phrase ‘I’ve got’. There wasn’t enough support for speaking tasks. The text about the banker didn’t include an image of him lassoing wild boar with a necktie (not one being worn). Geoff had failed to get two items from the target vocabulary list (‘sane’ and ‘popular’) into the text on morris dancing. Where there were eight questions in detailed reading tasks there should be five. Where there were five there should be eight…
The feedback was brutal, although there was some praise. One comment read ‘The three countries included in your country profiles are all in the Global North. Although New Zealand is geographically south and I like the fun fact about Lord of the Rings being filmed there – learners will find that interesting.’ A comment next to the title of the text about the beekeeper read ‘inspiring story’.
This comment, above all, made Geoff feel sad. He remembered something that one of his favourite editors (who, incidentally, wasn’t a fire breathing dragon) had said to him during a previous trip to the Forest of Feedback.
‘I will return your language to you. But what is important is not the words, but that which you know is true in your heart’.
‘What have I done?’ said Geoff, ‘I went straight for generic, quirky, and/or sanitized texts and images and made no attempt to change coursebook content for the better.’
With those words, Geoff could feel the susceptibility spell placed on him in the Park of Publisher Flattery lift. He felt free to push the boundaries, and that didn’t just mean replacing chessboxing with freestyle scootering. However, he knew that any attempt at pushing those boundaries would mean a visit to the Hands That Write Really Long And Ultimately Dismissive Comments.
To be continued…
Credits
All stills taken from Soleil / Crusader of Centy (c) Sega/Nextech/Atlus
Image of Ask Me Another here.
GIFs adapted from Shadowserg’s all bosses walkthrough here.
Categories: General, materials writing
ELT Planning 
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