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[lagringalindissima]

So..who uses these books, including the related series for kids (whose name I forget) and the more advanced books for older teens called Expressions (I think..I could mis remember)?

Do you like them? Why or why not?

Do you follow them strictly or are you more flexible?

My answer: I found the series awful, so my goal was to "use the book" just enough that parents who brought it wouldn't protest . With my high school seniors (who used the Expressions book) I decided to take advantage of the fact that in high schools Ecuador seniors are not expected to attend class much.. school is all about both school wide extra curricular activities (school clean up day, intramurals weeks (plural ), etc) and senior only extra curricular activities (senior summits where they attend lectures on values, days to go on senor only field trips, etc.). Yes I was the classroom teacher--i.e. this wasn't a language school-- so we discussed and wrote about whatever they did/would do tomorrow/were in the middle of; that was 60% of class.

With my 9th-10th grade beginners I took grammar points barely explained in the book and expanded them into multi-class exercises and took general themes in the book (What classes middle schoolers like and why) and made my own unit. They won the contest to see which class used the book the least.. we used 9 pages in 2.5 months- and we used the workbook once. (That was so they could show mommy ad daddy that one page was filled in ).

The kid series was better..although it had that "cut and paste" (only) extra book that parents had to but; it was only useful it the kids cut the pictures out but then made flashcards.

One of the authors recently made a mini webinar where he really hammered on the point that in beginner monolingual classes the use of the student's native language is needed..he is pro translation, pro explaining content in the students L1 and anti encouraging students who are beginners to think in English. Opinionsabout that ? The textbook distributors (at least in Ecuador) seemed not to be aware that the author has this view when I was there.. they were most unhappy to find out that I'm bilingual but my principal had hired me anyway.