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[basiltherat]

Hi folks
While I appreciate that some people regard published coursebooks as garbage, I am one who thinks they offer a great guide to preparing and carrying out a course of English Language learning.

However, I've always been astonished in regard to how long the publishers of a textbook recommend for the course in question.
I have a meaty coursebook of 52 pages in length with a lot of speaking tasks, presentation tasks, lengthy listening tasks, vasts amount of new vocabulary etc. They recommend 30 hours to complete the materials. Additionally, there are extra activities at the back of the book. A video component and thick workbook.

I find it inconceivable that any class/instructor could complete and absorb all the work no matter how much you gave the students as hw tasks.

This is not the first time I've seen this either. Headway is another coursebook which recommends an absurdly few number of hours to complete.

Does anyone have any comments on or similar experiences to this ?
best
basil

[gaijinalways]

However, I've always been astonished in regard to how long the publishers of a textbook recommend for the course in question.

It really depends on your students; level, size of the class, how they work in pairs, etc.. Also remember, most teachers don't use the whole text. I skip quite a few exercises or shorten some of the longer readings and listenings. I often take a whole year to do one text, but I also supplement quite a bit. That's about 26 x 1.5 =39 hours.

I agree with you, the estimates that textbook authors give for completing tasks often seem to show that they haven't actually used many of the tasks in their books themselves. I would just pick and choose, especially focusing on the stuff you think is more important and interesting for your students, within the time constraints that you have for the course. Also, you have to decide how much homework to give out, which can help you cut the time on some exercises to be used as review.

[Gregor]

Yeah,
I see your point, but there are a couple of things to consider - One is the students' learning styles (this is both individual and cultural). Some of the tasks, exercises, methods, etc. are not really appropriate for some classes. i think that the prescribed timing for the courses are for over-all retention of the core, basic targets.
Another thing, and this is related to the first point, is that no one - no reasonable, experienced teacher, no coursebook author or publisher - expects all the students to do all the things in the book and RETAIN all the grammar, vocab, etc. Students will take what they can use and the rest will come later in their development. This is why the texts are repetitive. Indeed, a good one (and I think that Headway is one of the good ones, hence its popularity, as easy as it is to laugh at) gives different students more and more practice with even lower-level stuff like simple past and so on. The practice gets more difficult, and as you go higher the assumption is, more and more, that the students have at least been exposed to this or that, but even high-level texts (Cutting Edge Advanced or Advanced matters, for example, which are VERY high level) give the students practice with stuff they already know.
Hell, they already "know" or at least have been exposed to ALL of it.

Also, students need to be reminded of this - if they don't remember every single piece of vocabulary or stop making mistakes with grammar after they've finished a "level," that's OK! I've had a bunch of students decide to take a break from studying because the course just went too fast (this is especially a problem in China, where they are meant to absorb and retain EVERYTHING - this is basically what their teachers TELL them - before moving on.
I always tell them (and my teachers, when they are studying Chinese, as well) - you aren't meant to remember EVERYTHING and fix ALL MISTAKES before going on. If they can pass the tests and deal with the speaking exercises and test, then they are FINE.
And LOOK at the tests. Don't show them to your students, but look closely at them, yourself. They expect a LOT less of the students than what they are exposed to in the course.
I have almost always found that the publishers' recommendations for course length are reasonable, for what they are expected to regurgitate on the test. And that's even to score 100%. If they get, say, 80%, they are doing swimmingly well and I'll pass them with 75%. (I have just found over the years that 75% is usually reasonable, as long as they seem to hang OK with the rest of the class.)