Korean Job Discussion Forums

[oskinny1]

My high school has asked me to recommend good books for the English library. I teach at a technical high school so they aren't the highest level but any suggestions you have would be more than helpful.

[summer33ny]

Woa.. for a techinal high school, I would only recommend simple graphic novels. Almost half of my tech students can't even read English! And the ones that do--would probably never pick up an English book unless it was a comic book.

But if they just want you to pick books and don't care if the students will ever show any interest or not, might as well just pick any. One of my advanced academic students was really angered by the book "Into the Bamboo Grove" because it is written by a Japanese woman during the war and contains lots of lies about Korea. It can be a huge source of curiosity for Korean students who are interested.

[oskinny1]

It actually isn't a normal type of technical school, maybe 25% will go to college and they all will need English for their future jobs.

I was just trying to think of what we all read in elementary school. I remember there being this great mystery book about a bunch of people living in an apartment building and something about a creepy old house on the hill. Anyone remember that book?

Edit Answer is The Westing Game.

[vaticanhotline]

"Animal Farm" by Orwell is a standard text for EFL I think (in one of those ironic twists, they used it to teach English in the Soviet Union). It's not a particularly difficult book; there aren't many complex sentences and the difficult vocabulary is at a minimum, so maybe it would be some good? Besides that, you could try "The Outsider" by Albert Camus. Also short, easy reading, and although the original is in French, the language of the English translation is even easier than Orwell's. Plus, they do teach it in French middle schools (explains a lot about the French).

[Countrygirl]

The English bookstores here offer the typical Highschool novel rewritten for ESL students. Ex. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, retold by xxx.

[sunnata1]

Watership Down.

[storysinger81]

Take a look at the Newbery medal winners and honor books: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/newberymedal/newberyhonors/newberymedal.cfm

They're good YA. Also, most of those authors wrote other books that are good to read.

The Twilight series, Harry Potter series, even Gossip Girl (though not dreadfully appropriate.

I second the graphic novel/comic book rec. A lot of those have surprisingly high-level English.

In general, I'd avoid ESL-targeted books unless they're thoughtfully chosen stories, rather than edited, watered-down versions of classics, but some people like those.

Short story collections (especially tall tales or fairy tales and whatnot). Greek myths.

Boys like nonfiction--real life stories, biographies, stuff like that.

Also, I've had a lot of recent success with plays. Kids like them 'cause they read faster and you can use them in conversation classes, too.

[morrisonhotel]

[seonsengnimble]

I recommend usborne readers. They're graded readers with a pretty big selection. They're also pretty well laid out. Most of the difficult vocabulary is introduced in the first couple of chapters and then used again throughout the rest of the "novel."

[ddeubel]

You won't be able to get away with readers. Even Penguin/Oxford bookworms level readers are too high.

Go HERE and download the readers. Hundreds of them with worksheets. Get them doing the D-F level readers. They can gloss the margins - meaning, write in the korean for a word so the next reader will have an easy time... create your own library. Just print, fold and staple.

DD
http://eflclassroom.com

[Reise-ohne-Ende]

Some of my favorite books, by difficulty -

Low Difficulty:
-anything by Roald Dahl (my favorite is The Witches). They're pretty easy, but they're dark and interesting and not too babyish.
-The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe series. My favorite is the prequel, The Magician's Nephew
-The Twilight series was mentioned above, and I'll echo that.
-Walk Two Moons is a great low-level book

Medium:
-The Secret Garden
-As mentioned before, Harry Potter
-The Hobbit

High (for ESL of course):
-The Princess Bride. It's superbly written and hilarious, but many of the sentence constructions are quite complex. The vocab isn't too bad though.
-Jane Austen and Edgar Allen Poe, if you're feeling brave.

[T-dot]

Captain Underpants

[seonsengnimble]

I'd also recommend using this tool: http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/eng/
You can type a passage from any book and rate its difficulty vocabulary-wise and judge whether or not its appropriate. Generally for ESL, k1+k2 should be around 80 or above. K1 words are the most common 1,000 words, and k2 are the most common 2,000 words.

[alpope23]

Get something that will make them want to read. Penthouse Forum.

[Mr. Pink]

I would suggest Holes which is typically a grade 6/7 book in NA. Also The Outsiders is a pretty good book for teens. They might have a hard time understanding the various groups, but I'm pretty sure there is a Koreanized version with vocab notes at the bottom of the book.

About Graphic Novels: are you kidding me? For ESL students? They are actually hard to read if you get high school aged ones. There is more involved than just reading words. I would suggest English Magna books. The kids can already read the graphics of Magna, so they only have to focus on the text itself.