Natural English Intermediate
… is pants! Based on a dubious theory and with everything based on that theory rather than interesting content or things tying together properly, I haven’t seen anything this bad but commercially successful since (old) Cutting Edge. If you are cursing the fact that you have to use it too, your luck is about to change. New on TEFLtastic is a page of worksheets, games, lesson plans and such like to help you and your students survive this book, available here:
Natural English worksheets, lesson plans and ideas
Anyone else used these or thinking about it?
November 28th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
I once tried to use the Upp Int book with a class that had stubbornly refused to reach advanced level after doing Cutting Edge and Inside Out. We just had nothing else to turn to and so despite some misgivings I gave it a shot. For the most part it just didn’t work well. Every idea seemed to be half done and there were a lot of topics and exercises I didn’t want to inflict on them (or me).
I usually steal the best ideas from text books and tinker with them, finding better pictures or providing the language input so often lacking in Cutting Edge (for example). But I didn’t steal anything from Natural English.
As I wrote in my other comment about textbooks, there doesn’t seem to be any good ones any more…