As a new teacher it can be difficult to know what methods to use when teaching a second language. It can certainly be of great use to know if the method used is widely accepted today or if it has not been applied since the beginning of the 20th century. The aim of this paper has been to find out how textbooks reflect the general ideas of language teaching at a certain point in time. The study is an investigation of four textbooks from two different periods, the 1970s and the 1990s, and how they differ with respect to how the four basic skills listening, speaking, reading and writing are practiced. The results show that not very much has changed in textbooks over time. What has changed noticeably though, is the amount of translation exercises in the textbooks. Translation exercises have decreased from ~15 % to 5 % since the 1970s. However, not more than modest differences can be seen through this investigation. The reason for this may be that textbook writers are not as affected by current approaches in applied linguistics as one would have thought. Instead, they may write according to their own experience and what they feel is useful. Nyckelord: Second language teaching, foreign language teaching, communicative competence, applied linguistics, SLA