Korean Job Discussion Forums

coolsage · Posted: Sun Jan 16, 2005 6:39 am Post subject: Good textbooks for Uni students

Not being a KOTESL kind of guy (I'd never belong to a club that would accept me a a member), I am curious as to the books that other uni teachers are using. I've had the usual experience with Interchange in all its incarnations, Person-to-Person, Springboard, Get Real, and Fast Lane, among others. Any feedback about these or other useful conversation books would undoubtedly benefit many people who are fresh off the boat, as well as those who have been here a while and just need a change is useful. Anyone?

italianstallion39 · Joined: 10 Jan 2005 Location: The planned city in the south

I used Firsthand 2 for my freshmen classes with relative success. The system is set up where the native speakers on the tapes speed up as the levels increase. Another benefit is that the cassettes are actually interesting dialogues, not some of the staged dialogues with actors putting on accents like the Headway series, which I've also used.

Tiger Beer · Joined: 07 Feb 2003

italianstallion39 · Joined: 10 Jan 2005 Location: The planned city in the south

I use them for conversation classes. There's a ton of information in each unit, so it's quite adaptable to courses with mixed levels as well.

SuperHero · Joined: 10 Dec 2003 Location: Superhero Hideout

Firsthand 1 or Firsthand 2 are the best books on the market for the University level freshmen class in my opinion. Unfortunately I am required to use a different book for my classes.

ohfamous · Joined: 10 Jul 2004 Location: Off the beaten path

I'd also like to know of any good conversation books that are very adaptable to mixed levels.

JacktheCat · Joined: 08 May 2004

ajstew · Joined: 04 Feb 2004 Location: Korea

I've got to disagree with the poster suggesting using 'A Conversation Book: English for Everyday Life'. I found the students didn't care much for it (them).. meaning the red (1?)or green (2?) books. Perhaps it could work in a one hour class, but not for longer. The students just find them boring... especially the red book.

I found the Gateways2 book worked well with Freshmen classes... much better than the Headway books. Perhaps because my students were not the brightest students in the world and Headway was way over their heads.

I'm also a big fan of the 'Talk, Talk, Talk' and 'Let's Talk' books. Actually I like integrating the two of them using excercises from 'T,T,T' for a warmup, followed by a chapter from 'LT'. I also found for those 3 hour classes you may have... like I had for senior students.. that using a tv drama for the final 50 minutes of class, with essay projects to hand in at the end of the semester, offered a nice change of pace for the students. I worked through most of the first series of Smallville and I was very happy to see the students, who found the actors spoke to fast in the beginning, catch up to the speed over time. Of course I played them with English subtitles and also prepared a page that looked at all of the idioms used in each episode beforehand.

It was nice to have the freedom to develop my own courses... but I'm to a new job now where texts have already been chosen, so I'm just hoping they use student friendly ones.