Mistakes in EFL textbooks like wrong answer keys and typos are nothing new, though I’d swear they are becoming more common. There has also been a totally new (for me?) variation in the last couple of years:

– I’m reading something out to the students or checking their homework when I find a mistake and ask them to change it in their books. Confusion ensues until we work out that the error that is in my copy of the book isn’t in their copies of the book, despite being the same edition with the exact same texts and exercises on the exact same pages. Much more rarely, even more confusion can occur when it turns out that some of the students have the corrected version in their textbooks and the rest of us don’t.

I’m guessing it’s all because the publishers release things to a more and more inflexible schedule and work out the bugs for the second printing, kind of like a beta version of software or websites. Classroom confusion aside, it’s obviously better than the notorious Cutting Edge workbook keys staying unchanged for years, but it might tempt publishers to allow such sloppiness knowing that they can clear it up a little later.

The other thing that happens more and more between editions is new technology appearing before new editions do, e.g. my Market Leader students having nice video content on their CD ROMs that I can’t fully recommend them because my older version of the same edition doesn’t have it.