Job Discussion Forums

[MyTurnNow]

Curious to see what your experiences have been.

I like New Interchange a lot, myself. Imperfect but I think it's the best series available in China. I got my school weaned off No Concept English and am using New Interchange for all my remedial English classes (my core subject texts are written and supplied by my company).

A lot of schools here seem to use No Concept; I think the school owners are getting kickbacks. No Concept is OK for early students but goes downhill fast in the later volumes.

And that seems to be a common thread for texts...the early stuff is not bad but it's harder to find good textbooks for advanced students. If deterioration doesn't set in, at least boredom does.

So whaddya use? Or like? Or hate?
I know there's a lot of Family Album USA fans lurking out there...

MT

[senor boogie woogie]

New Concept English 1 (NCE1) is the best, best book to teach beginner English speakers. It uses simple but useful language, cartoons and a friendly tape series to keep the learner occupied and interested. I love this book. If I owned a school, the beginners would be learning from this guide.

The glossary is both in English and Chinese (characters).

My wife used it to learn the language, and the book is good for primary school students, high schoolers, college or adult. 144 easy lessons that will build language skills. Excellent book. This book can be easily bought at the local bookstore that carries English teaching materials. Yellow book only!

The junior middle school I taught used this book. My Chinese friend used this book to teach primary school. Used effortlessly to teach adult beginner students. NCE1 is the King James ESL book!

Warning, 2 and 3 of the series blows. A bunch of silly long stories. Maybe good for an advanced college level reading class. Worthless as a practical guide.

How many days I worked in a Shane School teaching from their idiotic, worthless material that I could delve into an NCE1!

I do like new Concept English 1, can't you tell?

SENOR

[arioch36]

Well, never used New Concept for kids. So maybe Vol I is okay. I concur that Vol 2,3 I HATED. Not as worthless as something local colleges use ...the Oral Workshop series.

I don't think there is anything inherently horrible about Family Album, except....Chinese teachers use it for Listening English...and the idea of Listening English seems to be...show movies with Chinese subtitles. Show family album as the students read the book. Ask no questions, don't require the students to write or talk about what they are watching. With the obvious result.

I guess that doesn't really answer the question of what book is good.

I think intensive reading is a big waste of time, at least the way it is taught at my school to the grade 2 students.


I do like...It is a Longman book for High School Grade 1 English, but I don't know the name. Every school in Henan sems to use it. I like it because it is simple enough to be flexible. I think it is foundationaly sound, and makes a good springboard for doing many activities. It wasn't the oral enlish book when I taught High school, but the Chinese teachers used it for reading class. I incorporated and reinforced a lot of it in my classes. I could make it easier or difficult, based on my class's ability.

A book I liked for Grade one reading english (but not so much for grade 2) was called " A freshman reader" catchy title, but I have no idea who puts it out

[Roger]

No COncept? What's that? Never seen that. New Concept English? I think it still beats many more recent materials although its language is a bit jaded ("rocket" instead of spaceship).
My bone of contention with it is that it is a typical Chinese botched-up product: bilingual up to level 4!
Sorry, but if students do not care for English they will simply read the Chinese translation! Defeats the prupose of studying English!

[struelle]

[wix]

I nominate Side by Side. It is particularly good for one-on-ones.

senor boogie woogie, with all greatest respect to you I must say New Concept English is a great pile of ox manure. You would do well to investigate some alternatives.

[MyTurnNow]

Don Boogie, que tal! Tu eres un caballero verdad.
(Weird speaking Spanish here....when I try I now find I can't separate the Chinese and I end up saying things like "Que tal ma?" or "Usted es yi ming profesora, dui bu dui?")

I kinda like the yellow New Concept (Yes, Roger ) book too. I use it for private lessons...lots of neighbors and friends etc. (and yes, hot babes!) that get a thrill from being English dilettantes, and they enrich my life enough that I willingly help them do it. I must admit I use it partly because it's dirt cheap here, and this is all pro bono (or pro coitus) work... For the higher levels, you had the best words: they blow. No, wait, I just saw Wix's message and his are better: a great pile of ox manure. Except I wouldn't have used "manure".

Which leads me to Strulle's post....does Spectrum manage to do well at advanced levels? If so I need to look into it...it'd be a rarity.
I have a grudging tolerance for NI Book 3. Pretty klunky but I haven't found anything I felt was really better. If a student can hack its level they can handle also doing some independent conversations etc.
Apparently planning time _should_ jump for higher levels. Certainly been my experience. It's harder stuff to teach, and the students are more impatient and have a lower tolerance for ox shit.

My take on Side By Side is mixed. I've seen worse, and their handling of very advanced grammar is not bad...unfortunately I think it's TOO grammar-driven. Boooooo-rrrrring! Vocabulary is decent. But I think it gets insanely boring after Book 1; their handling of count/non-count nouns in Book 2 puts students in adjacent classrooms to sleep.
My view may be pretty skewed...I think it's really meant for American EFL classes with a diverse group of students. I mean, everyone in my class likes to eat rice, has 3 people in their family, and has black freakin' hair, OK? I also encountered it at a large chain English mill who was entirely misusing it as a children's book. (This was back in the dark dismal days when I would still teach children and work for large chain English mills.)

Anyone used New Person to Person? I taught one very advanced class with it; it was their choice. It wasn't The Perfect Book but it didn't make me retch, either. I had to supplement it a lot...

MT

[arioch36]

One good thing about Person to Person is that the casette tapes are better then many other books. For the motivated student, there is a lot of good stuff in the back. A workable book, especially for language school type classes. American english. I thought they did a good job being modern without getting caught up with slang. They include vocabulary words, which I think is good. A language student needs to be told which new words to learn.

Get it Got it! by Naomi Woronov...well she must be from my home state of New York. Some use in college clases..but she spends more time in the book teaching bad english and slang, then on teaching good english. And it is too inconsistent, as far as the difficulty of the units. The overall level of the book is more for college freshman, but some units would be difficult for a senior or grad student

More input on Spectrum?


PS Cobuild's workbooks on things like verbal phrases, etc. I like their stuff. Others think what?

[Gray000]

I go with SBS as well. It is grammar, but you know what? The students that I taught had never had it presented in a sane way before, and SBS does it pretty well. It's also pretty situational, so after doing the exercises one can reasonably hope to have a snowballs chance in hell of using that grammar appropriately. I didn't have problems with the count/non count (the context is food) chapter, but some of the reading comprehension passages are really geared towards those stateside - like the one about greek parents whose children don't speak greek. The guys had a little trouble relating to that one...

[Freaky Deaky]

I think New Headway is very good. They explain English grammar in an easy effective way and is interesting to use for both teacher and student. Bit expensive though. Being a Brit I find the Interchange series too American for my liking.

[MyTurnNow]