Job Discussion Forums

[coledavis]

I came across an old Soviet text. The political slant was a hoot. Lenin and his pal Sverdlov are going for a walk and the local boys ask him what they can do with their time. Lenin then tells them how to build a swimming pool.

[coledavis]

[hippocampus]

Bad books? Anything from Barron's in general, their TOEFL courses in particular. I have seen sentences in their structure test sections that were quotes from Shakespeare! Very pretty, but hardly the thing to instruct ESL/TOEFL students on English sentence structure. Then they have a TOEFL grammar/structure book and an accompanying exercise book. You would think the structure points (which are actually well presented) would match up to the exercises, but no - they are willy-nilly in another order, so that the reader must search and search for exercises pertaining to the grammar taught in the other book. Moreover, Barron's reading passages are often arcane and apparent-even-to-the student non-TOEFLesque and so rather unhelpful. The same is often true of the listening-section dialogues - they are too far from the TOEFL standard to be of much use.

I have shared my opinion with my students, and some have defended Barron's, saying it has taught them a lot. I say they would have learned more and more easily with just about any other book.

[scrog_420]

[artemisia]

Speaking of teens, I had a few teenaged groups on a summer course many years ago. We were forced to use materials (course books) produced by the school (remaining unnamed) � all business stuff on negotiations etc. In other words, materials that were clearly used in regular classes were dumped on the summer school classes as well. (Cheap). I�d not have wanted to use most of it with regular classes either.

I dipped in and out of it � skimming off usable bits here and there � and did a reasonable job of looking like I was really following it, as required. I�d have fallen with joy - possibly even fervour � on some of the more usual texts after that experience.