Job Discussion Forums

[El_Che]

i find them invaluable, both in content and curriculum. i'm happy to look elsewhere if i don't think they cover a point satisfactorily, but they do save me an awful lot of prep time.

does anyone prefer to teach without them? i'd be interested to hear what you use in their place.

thanks.

[spiral78]

Totally prefer not to have a book.
By definition, no book author can have inside knowledge of any specific class, its needs, their learning preferences, or my teaching style.

At the two universities where I've taught, we've created our own task-focused materials for all courses. We can use this material in the same ways you can a course book, but it's tailor-made for our specific teaching contexts, was highly interesting to design, pilot, and tweak, and is much more rewarding than teaching from some stranger's materials that happened to have enough popular appeal to be published.

Not to slam course books:) I'm looking to publish one of my own next year - which I devoutly hope anyone who is kind enough to try, will feel entirely free to criticize, alter, and tailor for his/her own classes.

[fluffyhamster]

That's the wierd thing with textbooks - nobody really likes using them and can't recommend many, but everybody fancies that they could write better! (And they can, for themselves and their students!).

[spiral78]

To clarify - I don't think mine will be better - than what- for any teaching context!! Just slightly different than most And not necessarily applicable to every student group.

At least I'm not falling into the 'broad-sweeping' trap, thinking that anything I could design would fit huge groups of students in many/all regions of the world....

[Glenski]

Show me a book that I like, that meets all the needs of content, level, clarity, interest, and fun, and I'll use it.

Have been at this for 10 years, from conversation school to high school to university. No textbooks yet work well for the many courses I've taught in conversation, writing, reading, listening, TOEIC/TOEFL prep, or anything else.

I would prefer to use one, but I have not found a good one. Have used many.

[fluffyhamster]

Oops, I meant weird, not wierd. And sorry if it sounded like I was sceptical, spiral, I was trying to sound light-hearted (this is one time I didn't use emoticons but should've!).

Glenski's made explicit a point we'd all be at least implicitly making: that of course we'd use textbooks, if only they were better! So, what type of textbook would we prefer? (I guess this is where a lot of the non-textbook work we do could prove enlightening, and be incorporated into improved textbooks). Maybe this has been discussed before on the forums...

Just to answer the OP's question about what we prefer to use, though: I myself like to design worksheets, often with a picture to provide focus and context, bilingual glosses of key words and phrases, plenty of space for recording and expanding vocabulary, further work and notes, links forward and back to connected language points, sometimes even a few notes that explicitly explain the rationale for an activity. I also try to give an indication of what is essential i.e. has to be retained in phrasing, so that students realize that in speech, phrases rather than sentences are OK (I might try introducing students to "quasi-backchaining" - building "fluency" from core predicates or keywords - in the form of a rough pyramid on the page, narrow on top but wide at the base...just something I saw in a Chinese course). Generally I like a worksheet to be a self-contained lesson or part-lesson - some textbooks are a sprawling multi-page nightmare of irrelevances ultimately!

[Glenski]

Some people publish their own books from years of notes, using self-publishing sites such as www.lulu.com .

Nice and all yours, but there is still a problem. I prefer to hand out worksheets and other prints because there will always be someone (plural) who does the work in advance, leaving you with nothing in the classroom for them.

Also, handouts can be handed back for grades, but not textbooks.

[johnslat]

I've always used "the textbook" as a "take-off" point. Textbooks can be handy, especially if they're accompanied by workbooks with good exercises (such as Azar's.) But since every class is different, I rely mainly on my own handouts and quizzes, which I modify (or occasionally redo entirely) to meet the needs of the class.

[arioch36]

Textbooks tend to be limiting once you feel comfortable with what you are teaching.
For most of my Oral or Writing classes in China, the students also take extensive reading, intensive reading (6 hours a week) and listening.

I usually try to use one of those textbooks in conjunction with the class, especially to get them using... (sorry). using "new" vocabulary words. I will also try to pull some other stuff from the book.

I must get the good students. Teaching oral english, 2 45minute periods, by the 5th week the students can talk for 45 minutes of that time. I have a dozen oral english textbooks I like to steal from, but actually following one of them wouldn't leave the students enough time to listen and respond (Oral English class should be a true listening class, yes?) The worse the students, the more I use the dialogues in the book for their confidence.

Writing ... I haven't found anything realistic to use for my Chinese students. None give time for multiple draft and revision work. Sometimes I point students to certain parts and tell them to steal from the book a key sentence or phrase. Maybe 5 minutes of the class I discuss the book?

For writing Dave's, other ESL websites, and Purdue OWL all have good stuff I wantonly steal from (with credit to the source). Why reinvent the wheel?

[Kootvela]

I use a coursebook and supplement when necessary. I find it difficult to teach without any coursebook and in such cases I just make copies from my own set.

[Teacher in Rome]

For some students and classes I use textbooks, for others, I use my own material.

I agree with all the points made so far, but I'd also like to add that sometimes you just know that a particular unit / presentation in a book is perfect for a student. And it saves an awful lot of prep time if you can use a book.

What I find surprising, though, is that so many teachers here don't use textbooks. I used to work in ELT publishing and new course books were extensively trialled before publication. Do those teachers who don't like textbooks think that the trialling is failing in some way? Or is it just that many teachers here are teaching highly specific classes for which a textbook couldn't be developed and made profitable?

[Kootvela]

I think that it's got to be related with culture and society. For example, I use New Headway series, where:
- there's an activity (Elementary set) about ordering food in a cafe. The menu is quite okay but all prices are in pounds. In Lithuania, we use litas, in EU we use Euros, few of my students are likely to end up in the UK. There's not enough practice of different curriencies in the book.
-some texts about education or health care (put in many book for teenaggers) are not-relevant to 98% of students because they're not so keen on finding out the differences and how the systems work in the UK.
-listenings tend to be really difficult. I don't ask for monosyllabic texts or anything but I have to work really hard with listenings because of speeling and pronunciation differences, speed, accents, etc.

And some more.

[arioch36]

[naturegirl321]

I prefer to have one and adapt it. Sure it'd be nice to use just your own material, but I honestly don't have time to make that much. With a course book I can pick and choose eexercises and then invent some of my own, but am not totally dependant on one or the other.

[Stephen Jones]

I found the listening passages in Headway to work very well. I was surprised as they seemed so difficult to me, but if played two or three times the students would get them.