As for the question about how one should use a textbook, the needs of the student are more important than those of the book. Yet, for most of us, the textbook is the main weapon in our armoury. The idea of a ‘common core’ is useful whether the materials and methods are selected by teachers or specified by the educational authorities. It is, then, broadly made up of two kinds of factors: firstly, of the various wide-ranging criteria on which decisions about language teaching programs are based, and secondly, on the pedagogy principles according to which materials and methods are actually designed. I take these two kinds of factors together and refer to them as the shared framework. To define what is meant here by ‘framework’ we start from the view that materials and methods cannot be seen in isolation, but embedded within a broader professional context. The purpose of this paper is to look at the educational framework of materials which is relevant to all ELT practitioners. It also provides an analysis of the growth of the communicative approach to language teaching and the implications for materials that this approach entails. This paper also examine topic areas such as the ‘good’ English textbook, and suggestions for the design of the materials appropriate to the teaching methodology.