I wish I...(had) had a good textbook!

[Andrew Patterson]

Laurikeet wrote:

I don't see why handouts would be difficult to file. A three-hole punch and a binder handle a lot of it. I tell my students they need a binder for my class. It's a cheap class because they don't buy a book, so they can spend for the binder

This is why I chose my words carefully, and used the word "disciplined" rather than "difficult". What could be easier than filing, you just punch the paper and put it in the right place in the file. Why student don't, do this is because it is a very disciplined task. It is an easy task but has to be done right again and again. When I wrote my reply I didn't have a lot of time, Revel perfectly described the scenario that I probably should have given as an example.

Laurie, I'm interested that you suggest three hole files. They don't seem to be available in most of Europe. In Europe, students either use two-ring binders or (Aaragh ) box files. I try to encourage my students to file properly by eliminating the step of punching for them. All my handouts come ready punched, and I always make sure that I've left a margin so that I'm not punching through text or pictures.

If you are able to ensure that students file their work well, I'd love to know how. When I was younger, I actually failed courses because of my inability to file well. I suspect that I'm not the only one.

Incidentally, one problem of kinesthetic techniques is that they may make filing more difficult. One should always make sure that one gives the students time to file.

[Duncan Powrie]

Okay okay I guess I was trying to wring too much relevance and insight from an isolated classroom incident (but I still think "notions" are the Cinderella of ELT - Lewis said something about 'em in his The Lexical Approach, I recall. Larryyy! metalll! ); perhaps all we need to do now is wait for Andrew to tell us which ringhole reinforcement circles are stickiest or strongest, and it'll be no more problemo no no!

Nicely worded comments, woodcutter - but wouldn't a better textbook (with those SPACES I mentioned, into which handouts could also slot) draw out the important human information that much better than haphazard teacher elicitation/half-assed and half-hearted student participation? (Oh, and there is no reason that a good textbook should make the whole class one whole "Heads down, mouths shut, punks!" sesh, is there (revel), this isn't micobiological minutiae we'd be asking the students to memorize for no apparent reason, if anything the students would see the relevance and be very eager to speak from taking a little time in preparing with a good - bilingual instructions? - book! Success ahoy!).

I'm in two mind about New Interchange - I myself wouldn't pick it (it doesn't cover anything like enough vocab, the phrases can be too idiomatically "stilted", the grammar focuses don't seem well-handled or true, and the topics/activities veer from personalizable to "Save the whales" types too much), but if a school insists I use it I'm not too upset by their choice...but I do wonder why students seem so willing to invest in, lap up and trust their recommended textbooks so much.

[revel]

Hey everyone!

In my case, students receive the book through a careful sales pitch before they enter in class, before they know who their teacher is. Naturally, I hand out the book in the first classes, but it has been sold at the time the student registers and pays for the same. It's a bit of a magic pill, or that special toothbrush that the receptionist gives you at the dentist's, free, with a little tube of special toothpaste, as she is making your second appointment when the doctor will get down to the real reason that you are there in the first place. The client expects a book, knowledge is imparted through books which are explained in the class and then go home and become references for study.

A current project of mine has a piece of advice for students in preparation to take part in an intensive role-play experience:

"Expose yourself to English at every opportunity. Listen to songs in English, several times, figure out what the song is about, not what the singer is singing. Watch films in English, maybe with subtitles, maybe even Spanish subtitles, or without, repeat films a couple of times. Count in English, say all of your numbers in English. Read a mystery novel, either in Spanish or in English either in original or in a reduced vocabulary study format. Flip through English class materials you have around the house, looking for material that might be of use on the Weekend. Organize your materials."

Books are great when everyone has to be looking at the same material at once. Turn to page 34 in your Activity Book and do exercise 7.1a. There you have it. Books should be accumulated into a small ESL or EFL or just English language reference library. An afternoon once a week flipping through that material would do wonders for most of my students! In the classroom, though, texts tend to slow me down unless I know the book like the back of my hand.

peace,
revel.

[Duncan Powrie]

So, most of us don't like using textbooks, can't really recommend any, are forced to use or address them by the sales pitch of the schools in which we work, and leave them to those students with absolutely nothing better to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon than just aimlessly flick through things without actually studying or learning anything? Wow...guess all we can do in this situation then is make our own courses up as we go along - IF we have the time to do a halfway decent job!

Some more weak areas in textbooks that I noticed in the past year or so:

1) Interchange (again!): Students "learn" and go straight into practising phrases such as, "Can/could/I was wondering if I could BORROW your...". Nary a mention of "Gingerly introducing the object as a topic", then "Leading into or clarifying the request by giving reasons for needing said object" etc. Have the writers analyzed any real discourse? What effect would being so direct have? The students might get what they were asking for, but at what cost to the relationship with the lender? Serious stuff, or just me blowing off again? I suppose the students can write scruffy-looking notes all over the page, but...either way, it takes TIME and familiarity with the book to become aware of its weaknesses and begin rectifying them, by which point several dozen students may have already "graduated" from your care! Are these textbooks more to help learners learn, or their teachers?! If the latter, then a total rewrite of the textbook to incorporate our "insights" (and often BASIC ones at that) seems to be called for.

2) Get Real! series (Macmillan, produced for teen/young adult market in Asia - taught in a private J-SHS): Had whole units with nothing but, "Can you play soccer?", "Can you play tennis?", "I can play basketball" etc ("Can" for "ability" ). That just didn't chime with my logico-intuitive BS detectors, and a quick search of my Seiko electronic dictionary's OALDCE examples soon showed that only around 5% of the examples had anything to do with sports at all...