Korean Job Discussion Forums

[some waygug-in]

I have to agree with TECO about "Headway" for adults. I like using Headway. I've never seen another book or course that does so much with so little.

Korean students don't seem to like it however, and that's a major hurdle to overcome. Headway has a lot of grammar based exercises, and while I agree, that's what students need, the students don't see it that way.

Headway does a lot of really creative things with simple grammar. I have learned a lot by using it. The problem here is the old,"I'm not need to studying grammar, I'm been grammar studied until 10 years ago in middle school and I'm conversation need. "

I'd choose Headway over Interchange any day.

[katydid]

I haven't used these books, just browsed through them, but I have to say I think I would like to use Headways and Interchange, as well. There just seems to be a lot of good activities to use for the class, and it just LOOKED interesting.
For the kiddies, I REALLY liked the English Time series. It taught a good range of vocabulary and expressions, had fun songs, and a good workbook. Plus, I thought the book was designed so that even an inexperienced teacher could find a number of ways to jump off from the book and teach other things related to the lesson.
Let's Go is pretty good too, but it's even better if one is able to use the Teacher's book alongside with it. (I'm an inexperienced teacher myself, and I thought last year, that some of the extension exercises were a life-saver in class.)
I thought Chatterbox was just way too much for my kids. The things they asked the students to do, like read this paragraph and answer these questions, none of my kids could get through that.
Parade was good, too, I thought. Sure, alittle artsy-craftsy, but it made the lessons interesting I think. I'm sure most 8 year-olds would agree: making a book or finger puppets is much better than doing repetition for 45 minutes straight.
I liked English Firsthand for the changeable dialogues, the use of everyday speech, but more importantly, I guess I really liked how they exposed students to different cultures through this fill-in-the-blank in the letter exercise. My students using this book were about the age of 13, and at that age, it's good I think to introduce them to the world outside of Korea, as God only knows what they are taught about Korea and the other countries in middle school.
As for the adults, I like the Talk It Up series....lots of extension exercises and gives plenty of room to jump off from the book to discuss cultural points and other idiomatic phrases. The dialogues, though, can be a bit cheesy....
In my freshmen class, we are using Take Off! I highly doubt this is a book for adults (ok, college freshmen...not really adults, but close enough) and even for kids, it's a pretty ridiculous book. It depends too much on listening to a tape and repeating. There's very little room for self-expression, I think. I ended up using a lot from Talk It Up and other activity books to supplement this book last semester and plan to do the same this time around.

[crazylemongirl]

I think that new parade maybe could be better with time. I have 20 min to get through two pages and the students don't have the materials and so we have to raid the kindy supplies to do it. I agree that kinetics are important and I try to incorporate them into my lessons where possible. Mostly through charades and mimes and for teaching preposistions I will use an obstcale course to teach them.

Yesterday I did some free talking about rain so we got out our umbrellas and went for a walk.

In defense of finding out 1 I think that it's really good for promoting phonemic awareness amongst the kids. Once we finished the books I made some worksheets to pracitice spelling words and yesterday my kids were spelling octopus.

CLG

[wendysue]

I also like the Let's Go books and I just started teaching with the Get Real series, which is ok but I don't have the teacher's CD for it so I can't do about 1/4 of the activities in each unit, which is frustrating.

I hate the Smile in Wonderland books and Up and Away is too basic at the upper levels.

[VanIslander]

I've the eleventh vote for the Let's Go series. Like camel96, I find them inadequate for beginners; however, I find they are good in combination with other series for older elementary students. But then again, I thought I had all the extras when I used the good tapes and great workbook. Flashcards? Extra grammar and listening books? Videos? Maybe I should've read the teacher's handbook more closely instead of getting turned off by the boringly obvious advice it can give in addition to - as katydid appreciates - its useful sections about games, quizes and other stuff. I was glad to hear ulsanchris mention a LG book is intended to take 6 months to complete because I had raced through one book in two months, followed by the workbook (because the previous foreign teacher had done it that way). Now I slow down and do extra stuff to ensure the lessons stick. And now I recommend that whatthefunk dip into his own pocket and splurge on the cheap workbook, and to do the workbook AT THE SAME TIME as the main book. That alone has improved the lesson learning. The main book by itself is short on exercises.

Another series I've had good success with is "Exploring English", published by Longman. For my middle school students, it has incredibly entertaining cartoons, great pronunciation and repetition exercises (with an accurate, well-paced tape), and good stories. With them, the students show energy and speak often. However, I find myself designing review and quiz-like games because the tests in the book are big and basically diagnostic. It's too easy for them to temporarily learn to parrot back a pattern for the time it takes to do the speech exercise. The limitation is the book's lack of feedback and test-like exercises. But then again, maybe there's a workbook I don't know about.

The Side-by-Side series, also by Longman, has very good repetition exercises, several good pages on classic topics, nice graphics and a compact layout. (It would be good to photocopy if it wasn't illegal to do so.) By itself, the book is extremely boring.

One supplemental series I need more of, much, much more, is the Oxford Storyland Readers. I discovered on the office's shelf the Level 4 thin storybook "I can swim" by D.F. Green OUP 1994. It has a long cartoon story broken up into segments with review puzzles and exercises, and a final quiz game at the end. The book lasted four classes and I'm presently going through withdrawl. Anyone know of where I can get a fix?

The other reading series I use sometimes is the "True Stories" series by Sandra Heyer. It develops good vocabulary and comprehension skills to students younger than TOEIC-studying age. I recommend the "Very Easy True Stories" and the "Easy True Stories" but I do NOT recommend the "More True Stories" and "True Stories in the News". The latter two books use many advanced words and phrases other than those focused on in the story questions. The reading level is often higher than that of my highest-level students.

The worst books and those for adult students I'll save for another day. G'day.

[rapier]

UP and AWAY: The pictures act as very clear translations for the vocabulary: useful for a new teacher who knows no korean. However there isn't much variation in the books' features which leads to the kids finding them boring.
DOMINO: Not so bad but tends to use a lot of irrelevant vocab. I struggled to get the kids through that chapter on the film set. Teaching words like "sound recorder, cameraman" etc.
NEW INTERCHANGE: great for teaching adults/advanced students. Lively and appropriate topics.
BEST FRIENDS: Young kids find this especially hard going, but some fun cut-out and paste stuff.

My advice: draw from a wide selection of textbooks,- using just one per class gets boring.

[ulsanchris]

I've used the exploring English series and i have to say that neither my students or I find it fun. We all find it quite boring. There are workbooks for the series. My school doesn't use them (which really bothers me) Actually I feel exploring english 5 is quite good. Don't know about explotring english 6 but 1-4 (especially 1) is not that good.

[waterbaby]

I started with Mr Bugs Phonics. the first book was fine and the kids liked it -stickers, writing practice, a little bit of vocab, a song at the end of each unit ... not bad for teaching the alphabet. Mr Bugs 2 is just awful. The students hated it, it was too hard for them (teaching things like ee & ea ... too difficult at their level) and they played up all the time... so naughty!

Now they've moved on to Up and Away - the first book was fine and they got through that with little trouble, but two is getting quite hard for them. But they're much better behaved now.

Up and Away is not an exciting book, that's for sure & the older kids I'm teaching the higher series to make fun of "Sunny" all the time... but I try to make as many games as I can, usually card games - I colour photocopy some pages, laminate them and make flashcard & various other card games to get them to speak English to each other.

I asked for Let's Go instead of Mr Bugs 2 for our latest intake of beginners. I love Lets Go. The kids really enjoy their "Let's Go" days too... the other days I teach from Scholastic Phonics A which is really boring but it has helped improved their reading skills - not good for conversation or anything. It'll take more than six months to finish. Yawn.

I also use Talk Your Head Off for some conversation classes. I think it's a really good conversation book and even though it's geared for adults in an ESL environment, it's got great topics and questions that are equally useful for my young students and we skip the chapters that I think are too difficult or inappropriate for them... things like job interviews.

[kimcheeking]

[Chonbuk]

I have a textbook question for anybody that is teaching conversation English to 1st year College Students- What books are you using? which did you find helpful?

I've used First Impact- without tapes and videos and it bombed somewhat, A Conversation Book- English in Everyday life- which bombed totally- too creative for my students, they had to think for themselves, which they can't do. Communicate 1- which was inanely easy and perhaps I may progress with #2 but I haven't seen it yet.

I'm also considering Side by Side- which I have always enjoyed teaching, and find a great series but I'm not sure if the students will get turned off by the drawings and find it too childish-

Any thoughts???

Enjoy the first day back-
the summer went by so quickly.

Cheers,

Chonbuk

[jajdude]

I had some success with "Chatterbox" in the past, but also some difficulty getting some kids into it. I liked the story line and characters. Overall not a bad series.

"Let's Go" is pretty good, and those cards are useful.

I liked "Best Friends" too. The students write a lot in the book itself, hardly need notebooks, but it gets hard around Book 4, so weaker students who haven't learned much by that point will not be able to do well.

"Exploring English" is good for Middle and High School or even adults.

"Open House" is good grammatically but most students I had with it found it boring. Some of the reading was too dull for them to get into.

I thought "New Parade" was pretty bad, but have heard some say they like it.

I actually liked one series called "Look!" (even though others said they hated it) because it was simple to do a 2-page unit of text and workbook in a 40-50 minute class. But it was a bit heavy on grammar, which can be boring. I don't like all that focus on "Do you have some....? " No, I don't have any.." "A few, many, much, a lot, "...etc... as if most of us all really speak that way.

"American English Today!" ..... terrible.....as bad as anything out there.

[the_beaver]

[em]

The Hurray for English Series really really sucks.

I like Go Go loves English for the really little guys, although it takes some octupus manoevering to employ all of their suggestions for each lesson. On the up side, it's because each lesson is designed to reach every type of learner, which is great.


In terms of teaching Vocab - nothing has worked better for me yet than homemade concentration/go fish cards. You can work it any way you like - just use pics and have the kids name the cards as they turn them over. Put on the name and picture so that kids learn to associate the two. Or just put on the name so that kids really focus on the spelling and the look of the word. When I'm using the ones with just the pics, I eventually ask the kids to spell the word before they take a pair (of course, we've already reviewed the spelling in class). The kids absolutely love it and don't even realize that they are learning.

I make my own cards but you can generally find images of anything that you need in the books you are using or online under "clipart" in whatever category. If you have the capacity to laminate, so much the better. I make a big set for each unit, which takes care of the games for that unit and I can always whip out the deck when I have to teach it again.

[ulsanchris]

I've said this in another thread but i will repeat it here. I hate fun fun. It has too many mistakes and, in places, expresses ideas as if they were translated literially from korean into english, instead writing it as an english speaker would say it.
As I have said above I don't like exploring English series. The reason Kimcheeking gives for it being a poor book is something I agree with. It seems as if the student doesnt' have to think hard and just fill in the blanks. I've yet to find a good book for middle school students. NOt that I have looked all that hard mind you.

I like Mr Bugs One and Two. teaching the kids that a_e make a long a is a difficult. To them it doesn't make much sence. How I approach teaching it is that I tell them the e kicks the a and the lets a long aaaaaaaaa. I make actions to go along with this I pretend to kick the a in the but and then pretend to be the a and let out a long aaaaaaaa and look resentfully and the e that kicked me. The kids all love seeing me do that. Maybe not the best way to teach the concept but it works to a certain extent. I never had a problem with kids not liking the the book, or finding it to hard.

[OiGirl]