MELEE
Joined: 22 Jan 2003
Posts: 2583
Location: The Mexican Hinterland
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 Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 3:41 pm Post subject: |
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I think there have been some exciting developments in course books in recent years.
CUP has come out with a couple of "corpus informed" series that offer real language, you know like phrasal verbs, idiomas and common expressions right from level one. Did you know that "you know" is actually one of the most common utterances in our speach? If students are taught how to use it from the get go they sound more natural and also have an easier time understanding native speakers.
On the other hand, the textbook industry has also come to accept that fact that more English is used by non-natives than by natives and a few publishers have started to create text books that are really EFL texts, not ESL texts. Back in 1998 I had to use the New Cambridge English Course here in Mexico. The lessons were all about life in England, and most of my students had never even been to Mexico City at that point.
More and more textbooks also include learner training activities and strategies to try to help the students develop into better language learners.
Another reality is that there are many many many English teachers out there with little or no training (both native speakers and non-native speakers) so the teacher's book has got to be more than just the answers to the activities. The English File series from OUP has a great teacher's book--they should all be like that! The author's actually tell you what they had in mind when they wrote the lessons, offer several different warmer and extension activity ideas and give little notes on points that they anticipate students being confused about. I would really love to see more textbooks have this type of teacher's book.
Lastly, textbook publishers really need to dive into todays technologies or they will pushed out of the market by them. Many courses now have a CD-rom and/or website, some have interactive white-board software, and some works-in-progress plan to have the audio available as mp3 downloads. But what about mp4 or mpg files for students to use for self study or homework? Something that can be loaded into palms, blackberries, or ipods? a weekly (or daily?) text message? or howabout a skeleton book in a 3 ring binder, with the teacher/school recieving a CD-rom full of printable pdf files and the teacher deciding which things to use with which class and printing those for the students to add to their binder? If the big publishers won't do it, we teachers will do it ourselves and they lose a significant market share. |
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