Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Yu_Bum_suk]

This fairly new series is hailed as 'a groundbreaking new series that offers a fresh approach to teaching and learning North American English'. I've been trying it out this week and last week on some of my academic HS classes. Some observations:

- The listening excercises are fairly good and can be easily adapted or tweaked.
- Some of the materials on the CD ROM are OK if you can figure out how to download them.
- The lessons use dialogues a *lot*. The dialogues are realistic and don't use too much non-core vocabularly.
- There are a lot of words on each page for the amount of activities you can actually do with them.
- The grammar points are not always that clear for the students to follow and sometimes rely upon an idiomatic knowledge of the language. In some cases they seem to spend a lot of time with things that are of little consequence when making oneself understood.
- There's little opportunity to practice writing.
- Many questions are vague and require subjective answers which are difficult to check in a large class.
- There are a lot of 'discuss...' and 'talk about...' activities which, as we know, often don't lead to much discussion or talking (in English) in a Korean high school class.

But my biggest observation has been:

- The lessons are pretty boring. Quite frankly I've found them a bit boring to teach, so I can only imagine how the kids feel. The lessons are very much geared towards adult learners with little in the way of teen interest.

In short, this looks like yet another book developed for adult learners in L2 immersion environments being billed as a good all-round textbook for Asian classrooms. It doesn't seem to be. In fact Cambridge's Interchange, while it moves along far too quickly, still seems much better suited to Korean teens. I do believe that Touchstone will be going on the shelf for the odd time I want a listening excercise about a particular topic.

[branchsnapper]

Yeah, it is groundbreaking in that it brings in corpus linguistics. I saw the authors talk about it, and they think that's a very big deal, but my students didn't give a monkeys that people say "yeah" seven times as much as "yes".

The woman who co-wrote it gave a lecture as dull as dishwater. I think they were so busy with the academic bent they forgot about making it interesting.

[Easter Clark]

http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/viewtopic.php?t=107818&highlight=touchstone

[branchsnapper]

Which books have pictures and colours that are intimidating EC?

I do agree that Touchstone is basically OK, but to my mind you need to jazz things up a lot, and with the must-pass-formal-exam mentality of Koreans it isn't a natural choice to get a book focused on idiomatic chat. (unless you crusade against the grain, which some people like to do)

[Whistleblower]

[Yu_Bum_suk]

[Yu_Bum_suk]

[Easter Clark]

[Rteacher]

I like both, but I prefer Top Notch to Touchstone - mainly because of the interactive CD-Rom that comes with each book. It's also more Korea-specific in its multi-cultural references and examples.

For lower grades, the 3rd Edition Let's Go series has also been enhanced a lot, I think, by the addition of interactive CD-Roms.

[i4NI]

I'm trying to search for a topic about a good grammar reference book, but still haven't found one.

So incase I can't find a related thread, could someone suggest a good grammar reference book please?

thanks

[bassexpander]

Our uni uses Touchstone 3 with our Freshmen. We've been using it for a year now, as you can see from the previous thread.

We will likely stick with it, mainly because we don't want to re-invent the wheel for next year, and we're pretty happy. We find level 3 is borderline too difficult for our students (on the conversation side). We will probably split them up and give level 2 to the lower-level students (or another book).

My thoughts:

1. Some chapters are good, but about every 3rd falls flat.
2. Use the workbook along with it (I give it as homework).
3. The audio CD has one older guy in it that speaks too quietly compared to everyone else, and it bugs me. Otherwise, the CD is OK.
4. There is a Testers CD with a program that you install on your computer to create your tests for you. Very useful, but make sure you collect all of your used tests from the students so that it doesn't get out in the open if you use it again next year.
5. The draw of Touchstone and similar book series, like New Interchange are that they include tons of materials for the teacher -- including the lesson plans in the teachers manual. They're easy to follow, and if taught properly, work well.
6. Cambridge made a big push about "the corpus" when they came, and to be honest, we pretty much ignore it, other than in the small areas where it's highlighted in the book. A corpus provides some interesting facts, but the amount of time they spent deifying it as such a big deal was, in my mind, sort of hilarious.

The difficulty is making sure you make them conversational, rather than just filling up the time with as many lessons as you can fit in. It's easy to become "teacher-centered" just trying to get everything done. It's better to slow down and use the speaking quizzes found in the back of the teachers manual. Put the kids with partners, and have them learn those.

[Paji eh Wong]

We use it at my University and everyone hates it.

It seems to be more of a ESL book than an EFL book. You have to supplement with a lot of speaking exercises.

Like someone said, it is also as much fun as a porcupine in the pants.

[NoExplode]

[bassexpander]