Job Discussion Forums

[kev7161]

Do you think it would be more practical in this modern age to have CDs that accompany texts (and, naturally, CD players in the classrooms) than tapes? It might make it a lot easier to find those recorded passages.

[Boy Wonder]

1) Inlingua In House Course Books
2) c.r.a.p.

[shmooj]

[Deconstructor]

Trust me when I say that replacing tapes with CDs is the least of your problems when it comes to Spectrum texts. At Spectrum 4 level, which is supposed to be intermediate 3, the conversations, which are supposed to develop grammatical clarity, are still totally formulaic, something you would do only with beginners.

Furthermore, on page 29 of Spectrum 4 the students are "encouraged" to use the relative clauses with who and whose. There are 6 book covers while the activity 20 asks students to work together and figure out what type of books each of these is. The choices are: fiction, short story, sci fi, autobiography, non-fiction, mystery and short story. There is also a short description of what each book is about, which by no means is sufficient to even start guessing whether one is a short story, a mystery, both, or neither. The book does say, "Some books may fit more than one category", but then this means that the original task of figuring out the genre of the books is suddenly irrelevant. Even if the students could guess, then what, if they haven�t read the whole book? Of course, 99.9% of the time they haven't read a single one, which means that only the dead-end descriptions are read and the conversation stops before starting while students look at you with perplexed eyes.

And how would they incorporate the relative clauses? This is a story about a man who...
This is a story about a girl whose life...

Then what? How else would the students use these grammatical structures? How about like this:

1. Spectrum writers are people who lie and scam innocent students for a buck.

2.Spectrum writers, whose unprofessionalism is beyond imagination, should be exposed for the liars that they are.

[naturegirl321]

[dmb]

1. Private Turkish school.
2. Cutting Edge
3. It's quite good for dipping into. But as I teach only 1-1,1-2 and 1-3 I personalise classes alot more.
Remember a course book is only a guide not a bible.

[ChinaMovieMagic]

* In Chengdu, China...at Sichuan U.
*all levels over the years--now I'm teaching Professors headed abroad for further study, as well as children in my apt.
*I basically don't use books anymore. I prefer using movie segments on DVD w/subtitles...for Listening Comprehension, Role Play, whole-brained input etc.

The stories/actors/interactions in movies are non-pedagogic, non-linear...and therefore more intrinsically interesting...and...more memor-able.

If there's no choice but to use the BOOK, movie segments can also SUPPLEMENT the textbook...but, usually there's not enough time to "cover the lesson..." as they say in the school-business....

(How about "uncover"..."discover"...?

Relevant quote from over 40 years ago, concerning the episode hypothesis, which states that:

"...text (i.e. discourse in any form) will be
easier to produce, understand, and recall to the
extent that it is motivated and structured
episodically...these ideas lead to the supposition
that perhaps second language teaching would be more
successful if it incorporated principles of good story
writing along with the benefits of sound linguistic
analysis."
(Oller)

Other relevant quotes:

*A very interesting hypothesis is that we learn best
only when the pressure is completely off, when anxiety
is zero, when the acquirer's focus is entirely on
communication; in short, when the interchange or input
is so interesting that the acquirer 'forgets" that it
is in a second language.
(Krashen)

*It has become evident to many teachers of ESL
students that most of the available texts and
materials are based on artificial sequencing of
grammatical structures and stilted, often irrelevant,
dialogues and topics.
(Rodriguez and White)

For more, check out "China: Job-related"--"Promoting Change in China's Classrooms"

[shmooj]

[pirateinpanama]

In the university I work, we now use something called World View which is excellent. It's published by Pearson/Longman.
Last year we were using the biggest piece of garbage called Up Close that was filled with mistakes---many editing mistakes. Here's a series you should stay far far away from.

[bluffer]

1 Prathom ( Primary ) School in Thailand
2 Get Set Go Books
3 Average. Some chapters are good and some are downright awful. You can have 3 chapters of bubble strip cartoons and then suddenly its a three quarter page full of solid text. Quite Euro centric.