Archive for the ‘General English textbooks’ Category

Bored of Xmas before it’s even arrived as usual, so here comes with the New Year theme ones instead:

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When I think back on the many conversations I have had in the teachers’ room about English language textbooks, photocopiable resource books etc. over the years, I can remember quite a few amusing ones (e.g. the American teacher stunned at having to teach the “stupid American tourists” listening and the “Why British food is so great” reading in Headway all in the same month), many impassioned speeches, a bit of polite disagreement and a lot of commiserating. I can hardly remember a single example of learning something new about the textbook we were talking about or having my opinion changed, however. In a similar way, the CTEFLA session I gave where we taught the trainees how to analyse a textbook in detail and then they all chose their favourite just from appearances was without a doubt the least productive input session of I have ever given. So, is it possible for a conversation or written review to be any more helpful in deciding which TEFL books are better for your classes or school than a “my favourite model is better looking than yours” blog entry or a “my team is better than yours” chat down the pub? (more…)

With my TEFL.net Reviews Editor hat on, I will be giving a workshop at the Tokyo ETJ Expo and Tokyo English Language Book Fair at Toyo Gakuen University at 3:30pm on Sunday 4 November. When I say ”hat on”, I don’t mean that literally, despite the photos on TEFL.net. In fact, for people who only know me from here this might be your only chance to see me without a hat! (unless there are spotlights, in which case I might have to wear a hat to save too much shine off the bald patches). (more…)

A few posts ago I promised to dish the dirt on the world of the reviews of English teaching materials, a part of the biz that I have been involved in in various ways for 8 years or so now. Apart from the difficulty of knowing how much that person’s opinion should matter to you in your teaching situation (something reviewers can try to deal with by stating at the end of the review who the materials might be suitable for, but that of course is just an opinion too), if you don’t know much about the person writing the review and/ or the publication it is in it isn’t as easy to choose the suitable pinch of salt as it is when reading the Guardian (take all their views, move 15 degrees to the right and there you have the truth) or right wing radio shows (mirror image of same). Here are some of my own experiences that might give you some idea of how that kind of research might be worth your while before trusting the reviewer and buying a new textbook:

In the worst example I have been personally involved in, a well known TEFL magazine contacted me to ask me if (more…)

Sorry that it’s all worksheets worksheets worksheets recently, but what can I say- that’s exactly how I’m starting to feel writing them all…

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets-ielts-speaking-sports-verbs-play-do-go-go-to/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets-ielts-speaking-subject-questions/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets-ielts-speaking-tense-review/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets-ielts-speaking-work-prepostions-nounprep-collocations/

As well as practising the exam, the worksheets are all designed to fit in with the syllabus of Face2Face Pre-Intermediate, which is a textbook I hate much less than any other I’ve used recently!

So, Takeshi Kitano wins another film award at an arty festival, along no doubt with a whole load of other unwatchable crap. There are a few specifically Beat Takeshi points worth making here, such as: if the judges just watched some Japanese TV before watching his films they would realise that meandering plots, lack of action, bizarre switches from drama to comedy and characters who don’t express their feelings are not fabulously avant garde film making tricks but available for you to watch, should you be M*, on any Japanese TV drama.

There is also a more important and generalised point to make about film critics. If you really want to read through their reviews and awards and find something you are going to like, you need to learn to predict what they are likely to enjoy.

Let’s analyse them together for a bit, shall we? The average movie critic spends most of their time watching hundreds and hundreds of movies in a cinema round the corner from their house, when quite often they would quite frankly rather be sitting on a hillside thinking about their own life or putting their backpack on and going somewhere new. So, when you read their review, as well as the possibility it is actually a masterpiece you will appreciate too you also have to take account of the possibility that they only like it because:

• So little happens that they do indeed get time to think about their own lives as if they were sitting on top of that hill (e.g. Hanabi)
• There are lots of references to other films that they like because it makes them seem so intelligent and makes all that time watching movies seem worthwhile, but us ordinary mortals will miss (any Tarantino film)
• There is a plot so fiendishly difficult and bizarre that even they can’t work out what is going to happen, but leaves the rest of us just confused (Memento)
• They get to see something else, maybe exotic, that they’ve never seen before (e.g. the Forbidden City in Last Emperor) but that the rest of us who are not trapped in a dark room would do much better just going and seeing in real life
• Because they don’t get time to read books they use subtitled films as a substitute

As I’ve said, the really difficult bit is not dismissing a review just because it does fit into one of those categories (I like one of the ones in brackets above), but I still find it helps me totally dismiss a good 70% of glowing reviews as something I am unlikely to enjoy.

Although I started this post mainly as an excuse to heap scorn upon “the man with two names involving Takeshi”, the same technique actually works as a rough and ready analysis of theories on how to teach a language. For example, if we look at the kinds of people who come up with wacky new ideas on how to teach English and those who then going around spreading the “good word”, we find that many of them have already been teaching for far too many years to be healthy. Of course they need something new to revitalise their classroom routines after 20 years, but it doesn’t mean the rest of us need it too… There are many examples of this, of which Scott Thornbury’s Dogme is probably the most obvious example of something only for people in the 40s or above.

We can then narrow the focus down to proponents of specific theories. For example, if you look into the dark past of many of the teachers who now preach TBA (the Task-based Approach), you will find they were once converts to a hard-core version of the Communicative Approach which involved no actual teaching of grammar at all. If you like that, might be worth a look. If not, you have to ask yourself why such people are so keen on it.

And for my final trick, I will narrow it down to one man. If you want to understand why the Lexical Approach has resulted in page after page of theoretically useful but painfully dull teaching material (e.g. the most unteachable parts, amongst many, of Cutting Edge), try looking at Michael Lewis’s earlier theories on how to teach grammar. Enthusing to a teacher (I was a believer too!), especially a logically-minded one, but totally unmotivating to the learners.

I rest my case**

* A fabulous “Japanese English” expression, meaning the “M” from “S&M”

** Yes, I see the pun on my name. So not funny!

“(Rod Ellis) recommends holding off teaching grammar to beginning students because the early stages of acquisition are primarily lexically rather than grammatically based and because of the evidence from immersion programs that learners are able to acquire word order and ’salient inflection’ without direct instruction” Nick C. Ellis in Form-focused Instruction and Teacher Education- Studies in honour of Rod Ellis
Makes a lot of sense to me. This might be a good place also to make a mention of New Inside Out Beginner (Macmillan), which I had a thorough look at yesterday and was mighty impressed by. It manages to fit in easy bits that are often missed out even at this low level (e.g. colours) and useful language that doesn’t usually get covered properly at any level (e.g. What is your favourite…?/ What is your dream job?) without having the usual bittiness of books that try to fit too many points in (e.g. Natural English).

New article of mine on www.developingteachers.com

How the future of textbooks has to be

Looking back on my 12 years of teaching English, if it is not just old age speaking I could swear that the first couple of years after I did my initial certificate (CELTA) were a golden age for EFL textbooks. It’s not that they made your lessons any easier or taught the learners the language any better than the textbooks coming out now, but there was just a feeling in the air that books like Cutting Edge and Innovations were the beginning of a new wave of books that was going to fundamentally change the way we teach forever. You could call that period the Modernist Age of Textbooks.

But modernism leads inevitably, it seems, to post-modernism. Since those optimistic days the ELT publishing industry seems to have given up that radical mission as if changing the world was just a hippy dream. Not that the world of textbooks has entirely stood still, but even the most different-looking of the new bunch (e.g. Natural English) only concentrate on what we should teach rather than how we should teach it- which is strange, because the conclusions that lead people to look for new ways to teach have been backed up by more and more research and have gone from controversial to commonly accepted during that time.

The three most fundamental parts of our newly certain knowledge are:

-What we teach is not the same as what students learn

-There is a long delay and many stages between coming across the language for the first time and mastering it

-People learn differently and so learn different things at different speeds

Until a textbook deals with the points above (and I have yet to see a teacher’s book that even mentions all three in full), whether we teach more natural English, more collocations, more international English etc. is not really a question I can get excited about. The question is how we teach any of these points.

Below are my initial ideas on how to create a textbook that takes the three factors above into account…

Read the rest of the article here and maybe another interesting article about teaching in Japan here, and then comment here:

100 comments on the blog!! Thanks guys, keep them coming.

Not satisfied with that level of fame and fortune, am going to attempt to jump on not one by two of the biggest bandwagons of our time at the same time. Try to picture that as a literal, physical feat and I think you will be impressed! The two stories being: Harry Potter and the Chinese economy. The IHT beat me to it with a story about such great Chinese ‘creations’ as “Rich dad, poor dad and Harry Potter”, but there is of course an EFL link too:

My collection of Chinese rip-off English language textbook names

• Market Reader (for stock analysts?)
• English Fire (for the emergency services??)
• Catting Edge (all illustrations replaced by photos of cute kittens)
• Catty Edge (bitchy English?)
• Heedway (Scottish English?)
• Feedway (English for Farmers?)
• Fedway (English for Farmers Level Two?)
• Headwii (interactive version?)
• Headohvei (Yiddish English?)
• New American Steamline Departures (makes more sense than the original name!)
• Luggage to Go Elementary

Any more gratefully accepted:

Still not loving teaching the 18-20 year olds. Passing on my wisdom is all very well, but I prefer to have some passed back my way too. At least I’m having to research some stuff about Oz (where most of them are going next year) to plan their lessons and so getting some culture that way. Well I guess you could say culture, if you could also say Shane Warne is the Leonardo di Vinci of the antipodes. 

An almost entirely positive point about the classes, though, is the textbook they have chosen for me. Am loving teaching with Face2Face Pre-Intermediate and Face2Face Intermediate (both Chris Redston and Gillie Cunningham, Cambridge University Press). Seems to suit my way of teaching down to the ground. Bizarrely, also gives much more useful language for the IELTS exam than the designated book for that course- being the almost completely pointless book Step Up to IELTS (Vanessa Jakeman and Clare McDowell, also CUP). I also hear daily complaints from the other teachers about Achieve IELTS (Marshall Cavendish). Are there no decent IELTS textbooks out there????

Anyone else like these, hate them or want to know more about them?