Encouraging students to question the textbook
I have to work with a writing textbook which is rather prescriptive. It lays down a lot of rules about how things should be done in different types of texts and leaves very little to the imagination. At first I found this rather limiting but now I use it as a talking point at the start of each lesson. I actively encourage the students to comment on the extent to which they believe the approach recommended by the textbook would work in every context and whether it is possible to generalize about how to produce a particular kind of text in every situation. Of course the learners realize that the textbook writer cannot anticipate every situation and they are very creative in these discussions, often mentioning aspects of their culture which would oblige writers to do something differently. In this way I believe that questioning the textbook "rules" ends up teaching them more about writing and gives them a more sophisticated understanding of the way that context affects writing.