Job Discussion Forums

[soapdodger]

Over the years it has struck me that it must be a wheeze of a job being an EFL textbook editor; from the amount of errors and just plain rubbish that get into books, they must spend their working hours sitting around drinking martinis and playing darts with pictures of the archetypal student stuck to the board.

Some particularly irritating ones that come to mind:

New Cambridge English Course 2 - Teacher's Book. In a unit dealing with the present perfect it advises the teacher to go to an exercise in the workbook if they think their students need further practice. The exercise in question, some lame gapfill about a bank robbery, contains about 30 vocabulary elements of very little use to anyone except a policeman or a criminal which are not dealt with anywhere else in NCEC 1 or 2... and one example of the present perfect. Golden

Success at First Certificate (old edition...mid-90's) Students are asked to transform this sentence, so that the new sentence has the same meaning: "The fire is going out". Have a try. There is no other way to naturally say it. The teacher's book helpfully says the answer is " The fire is stopping burning" Nonsense.

Can't remember which teacher's book helpfully gave me the instruction " Divide your students into 12 groups". Er, how many? Figgin hell, the last time I was able to do that was in Africa when I had 70- odd in a class.

I could go on but I'm sure other people have better ones.

[rusmeister]

I've seen a lot of ideological nonsense inserted into new editions of old textbooks (politically correct changes make it bad to show a woman holding a baby or being the employee of a male boss), but that's been covered on other threads...
A couple of times I've had similar experiences to yours with Oxford's Headway, but for the most part, it's not a bad book.

[TheLongWayHome]

Check out Framework by Richmond Publishing. It tries to be PC and cool at the same time. You can find mention of womanisers, bisexuals, the plight of the red-head in today's society, the history of the word f***, ethnic communities, tree dwellers, squatters, Spanglish?!

It also has some truly bizarre readings: '2050 - A day in the life of citizen KYZ606 and his pet computer Daniel' and 'I want to be a cyborg' to name a few. I don't know what they were smoking when they put this book together.

[Phil_K]

I think some of the structures in the TOEFL preparation courses are a bit anally retentive. If you don't use exactly the structures they teach, you don't get into a US university? This is the country that doesn't use present perfect or the 3rd person negative of "do" !

[Jetgirly]

If my memory serves me, there's a lesson in the Inlingua General English book that goes:

"Do you have a brother?"
"Do you have a sister?"
"Do you have a husband?"
"Do you have a wife?"
"Do you have a dog?"
"Do you have a cat?"
"Do you have a helicopter?"

[Guy Courchesne]

[gaijinalways]

I've seen a few examples of where vocabulary was introduced and explained in the next chapter!

[Glenski]

[coffeedrinker]

Well, these are just things I find funny...

Headway has a couple of funny listenings. There's something with Seamus the guy with 13 jobs, I can't even remember what, and the whole class just laughs. He also appears in another textbook at another level, and it should just embarrass me that I know, but I think it's funny.

I administered an institutional TOEFL, I believe it was, which used "retired" versions of the tests. And I concur that I almost laughed out loud at the conversations. "Oh I can't study with you, I have a dentist appointment today" "Well, you'll be grateful for the work of the ancient Etruscans then. Did you know they innovated the drill?"

[QatarChic]

[wildchild]

The fire nears the precipice.
The fire dwindles.

or you could say nothing at all and simply jab your mate with an elbow then point to the fire. With any luck, he'll figure it out - that he needs to go get another log! and grab me a beer while your up! communicated by a whistle followed by extended pinkie finger and thumb raised to mouth in a drinking fashion.

[rusmeister]

[Sef]

I can't remember the name of it but I remember using a textbook in China that claimed 'many people in England believe that Boxing Day is associated with the sport boxing or the Boxer rebellion in China.'
Ummm... No they don't.

And veering slightly off-topic - where do they find the 'actors' to record listening exercises?! I've heard British people doing abysmal American accents as well as people who are clearly southern trying to imitate Mancunian accents - not badly enough that the students notice but obvious enough to me that I start giggling during listening exercises.

[rusmeister]

In Oxford's children's "Chatterbox" series, the main hero of the first two books is "Capt. Shadow", a black woman who has obviously 'gone native' in Britain. She mostly speaks normal American English, but you can catch her saying things like 'baahs-ket' for 'basket' and 'professuh' for professor. It's not particularly ridiculous, but does give a snapshot glimpse into actors recording dialog.

[cangringo]

One of my textbooks is Pop Up, which I've never seen anywhere else ...anyway it has a bunch of ridiculous songs...I mean really ridiculous.

At the crappy school whose name I won't mention because I don't think I'm allowed to trash the actual school here...well put it this way their books are ridiculous and the tests they take from the books are full of mistakes. Anyway one lesson that I find particularly irritating starts with I eat with my mouth, I think with my head and moves on to I love with my heart and I smile with my face...most of the conversations are totally ridiculous and unnatural and the cd's...well the Stephensons is pronounced Stefensons, cereal sounds like thereal but the th is barely pronounced to name a few of the things I've found so far.