Job Discussion Forums

[soapdodger]

As a complement to my post about crap in textbooks ( the norm ), what do people want to see in them?

Me? More pictures of shapely ladies churning butter and maybe some rather more realistic situations and vocab relating to the UK, like "You looking at my girlfriend, cnut?", something about happy slapping, attacks on foreign students ( very common these days),a day in the life of a drunken slob, how to claim social security and so on.

But seriously. Clear, well-thought-out explanations of grammar. Whoever decided to introduce the cognitive approach to EFL should have been given a full medieval departure from this mortal coil. ( No nitpicking on that, please, there is a very intelligent argument why it is nonsense when applied to EFL, much more credible than the one that it isn't ).

More practice exercises. Most people outside the English-speaking world have not yet succumbed to the fantasy that you are entitled to, and can, get something for nothing and are quite familiar with the idea that hard work gets far better results.

A realistic approach to what people need to concentrate on learning. There are certain areas, like prepositions and articles, which pose a problem to millions of learners and are dealt with in a totally cavalier fashion....to say nothing of simple functions like telling the time....if I had a carrot for every student at FCE and above I've met who couldn't tell the time properly I'd be king of the rabbits!

Evidence that half a minute's thought had gone into the preparation of material.

Any more ideas?

[coffeedrinker]

Interesting question.

I'd agree on more practice exercises but I might personally prefer more in a workbook - or, if they are in the book, students' minds changed to understand that they are not being cheated out of their class if we don't do every single one.

Better discussion questions for texts (I guess I can think of those, and I do, but we're making wishes here...), and in higher level books, texts and listenings that don't just rely on being long and having big words that no one uses.

Better SPEAKING activities in the teachers book...to some extent it depends on the students, what they will find engaging, but some suggestion - even in the books I'm mostly okay with - are just ridiculous.

I guess I'm still more focused on what I don't want in a textbook. I have found Headway and Cutting Edge not too bad.

Maybe in the end I'll take more practice exercises somewhere and request a change in the way students look at the book. I know, I know, learner training is involved, but when you deal with people once a week for eight weeks and possibly not again it is harder.

[wfh]

I agree that Headway isn't too bad, but I find it a bit cluttered and distracting. I'd like more streamlining, better reading passages (or the quality of the readings to stay at the level I find it now), better discussion topics (so also agree with you, my students respond okay to my discussion suggestions, but they love nothing better than seeing it there in the book, printed!), a big one for me - seems easy but i don't trust one single text book out there - grammar explanations should be followed by exercises that help students to understand the explanation, not those that instantly contradict the explanation, or instantly flag up exceptions to the rule.

Honestly, the quality of discussion topics is generally very poor. Nice, simple discussions, to allow them to practice speaking, not controversial, sensitive topics that would bamboozle a native speaker. But not too simple, where the students just look at you like "What the hell are you asking us? We're not five year olds"

More opportunities for presentations, extended work (outside class)

Suggestions for practical tasks

Suggestions for what students should achieve by the end of the book

I'm biased - I want textbooks that can be used with arabic speaking adults who are inclined to take one reading passage (Clockwise Pre-Intermediate about househusbands springs to mind) and generalise it to the entirety of Western Civilisation - I'm still convincing that class that some men in the UK actually DO go out to work. So, we need context.

Less zany, oddball "funny" stuff that isn't.

Less US-UK centric stuff (about Friends and Madonna and fame and celebrities - that's too embarassing to teach and my students couldn't give a fig, they don't care, also it goes out of date very fast). Also even stuff about Hamlet, Shakespeare, Mozart - isn't well-known in an arabic speaking classroom - I'm not making a value judgement, just saying that the exercise becomes pointless when you have to take a detour to explain who shakespeare was, what he did, why he's well-known, and why the student should care that "Hamlet was written by Shakespeare" - you get my drift, I hope.

Some sensitivity to Islam (this is a WISHLIST, okay? ) - some ideas for discussion just won't be discussed in a room full of muslims.

Thanks, sorry for turning this into a venting session

[mcsam]

I would agree with what wtf said but I would extend it.
More stuff that is culturally sensitive and age appropriate.
Chinese teenagers are not the same as say Italian teenagers. They are, the boys especially, not interested in fashion, they are also not allowed to have girlfriends/boyfriends and these topics seem to come up in every book ever written for teenagers.

[TheLongWayHome]

I would like to see the grammar shamelessly translated into the students' L1. Timelines and pointing over your shoulder to indicate the past tense don't quite cut it .

Phrasal verbs in beginner books, and not just wake up and get up. Such a fundamental part of English is usually left until the advanced levels.

More work on sequences of tenses. It is unnatural to learn tenses in such a broken down fashion and surprise surprise students can't use more than two tenses at the same time.

Contexts. They are crap. They do not interest students. They make teachers cringe. Just stick to the grammar, cold and hard.

Get rid of the watered down stuff, it does students a disservice. I had a French teacher who forced us to listen to real French when we were beginners. Of course we understood nothing for 6 months but when we began to understand, whoa... did we understand.

That said, I don't mind the Inside Out series. Check it out if you can't quite tolerate Headway or Cutting Heads.

[coffeedrinker]

[Stephen Jones]

I want a pony!

[fluffyhamster]

[TheLongWayHome]

[rusmeister]

Mostly agree with TLWH. The cold hard grammar can be applied anywhere. Of course some relative contextual application is good and necessary, but the focus should be (on the lower levels) on the rules and shifts to exceptions should be dealt with mostly on advanced levels. The main thing is to find/offer applications for the theory that make sense/are relevant to the students. THAT is what turns them on to pay attention to the theory.

[fluffyhamster]

I'd agree that the choice of topics often leaves a lot to be desired, and there's really no need to wade through so much (at least, not until the students are capable of reading extended texts, and then the teacher should be able to find more interesting stuff, surely); the problem still remains, however, of contextualizing the grammar sufficiently well that it is 1) not only realistic and functional but also 2) covering the words and phrases (i.e. lexicogrammar) enough that the students will not have gaping holes in their knowledge-ability (I'm not saying that people use or should use the likes of Murphy, just making the point that there is a lot of lexis out there to cover beyond such books/grammar sessions).

As for exceptions, maybe there really aren't any (given enough analysis), or they are so rare as to be unlikely to ever be encountered by the average user of English.

[alexcase]

http://www.developingteachers.com/articles_tchtraining/books1_alex.htm

[Julieanne]

I always find that for advanced students, there are not enough idioms and how to teach them because they really are the hardest things to teach.

[soapdodger]

Considering the pathetic state of the education system in the UK at least ( and I don't think the US is any better), it would be nice to have a page somewhere towards the end of Elementary textbooks that simply says " Congratulations! You have passed the level of literacy of a native speaker!"

[Insubordination]

Lessons centred around an authentic and interesting text (with a photo) which is suitable for many age groups/cultural backgrounds. This could be a spoken text, not always a written one. It should start with conversation questions, a breakdown of the genre as well as grammar points. Grammar should be pulled out of the text rather than being taught in 'ideal' sentences (there are plenty of books already with that kind of stuff).

An interactive activity where students must work together to create something to practise the genre or vocab would be helpful at the end of each unit (could be pron, role-play, group work, oral presentation or a list which is then presented to the class). It should be tested by experienced and successful teachers who know what works.

I go insane when I see that Nun in Headway. Sure there are ways to jazz it up but engaging students is so important.

Usually, if I have the freedom/time, I grab a text from the internet or a newspaper and do the rest by myself. However, I work in Australia and it's pretty easy to find stuff in an English-speaking country.