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Fishead soup
Joined: 24 Jun 2007
Location: Korea
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 Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2011 5:23 pm Post subject: |
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| winterfall wrote: |
| PatrickGHBusan wrote: |
Great if you are able to judge what a good textbook is and how it can better help your students learn.
Many people have no idea about this (through no fault of their own mind you, they simply do not have experience).
Great if you can then use said textbook and plan effective lessons that will foster learning and engage the students.
My comment about "doing your own thing" was about that fact that while an experienced teacher should have more leeway an inexperienced teacher should be wary of doing their own thing without checking with another more experienced teacher. Simply put, its about the students learning right? |
I disagree. In general inexperienced teachers are more willing to take risks, think outside the box, and learn the extra things they need to teach their students. It may or may not always pay out. But compared to experienced teachers who usually rely on textbooks. And being able to evaluate a textbook isn't always a skill or even a good thing. Since textbooks are the lazy man's solution to making a curriculum.
Even good textbooks like Side by Side also don't work by Applied Linguistics standards, there's far too many new vocabulary words per lesson. And the formula for the lessons is actually pretty hard for someone new to language. |
I find Side by Side has far too many Substitution drills this can be really boring and tedious for the students. I even have the powerpoints downloaded from EFL Ning they work slightly better than the textbook.
The problem I run into with Side by Side is that it has a tendency to demotivate the students.
Interchange has more real life dialogues I also find the grammar focus far more useful for drilling than the Side by Side Substitution activities.
The fill in the blanks activities that follow the grammar focus are also a good way to review in the material.
Recently I've been using the peer dictation activities from '' Tell Me More"
by Andrew Finch. These activities the students actually enjoy doing. It gets them out of their seats and active they are dealing with vocabulary that is way over their heads but they are staying on task plus there is a photo on each activity that displays a Traditional Korean custom that all the students are familiar with. |
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ESL Milk "Everyday
Joined: 12 Sep 2007
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| Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2011 5:40 pm Post subject: |
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| winterfall wrote: |
| Since textbooks are the lazy man's solution to making a curriculum. |
Hmmmm.... I wouldn't say 'lazy'... there are really only so many topics that you can actually cover with lower level students... and there's no sense in trying to reinvent the wheel every time.
I would agree that just going through the book is pretty lazy, though.
Oh yeah, and my school is great in every single way. |
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ThingsComeAround
Joined: 07 Nov 2008
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| Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2011 6:07 pm Post subject: |
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school was fine until the third year.
the other FT at my school went back home, so I'm alone with the head teacher and she is a micromanaging dolt. she will talk until my head hurts about nonsense, she does as little work as possible and yet has the audacity to tell me she 'isn't pushy' but she wants me to run classes like her   |
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