The secret to writing EFL textbooks

“Thanks to… McVities’ Jamaica Ginger Cake and PG Tips”

From the contents pages to Innovations Pre-Intermediate by Hugh Dellar and Andrew Walkley. I’m missing one of those two, which is why I’m here knocking on people’s doors with my freebie worksheets like a Jehova’s Witness rather than living on a yacht and writing New Newer Newest Headway, I guess…

Be interested to hear if anyone has used Innovations Pre. My reaction to the original (Intermediate/ Upper Intermediate) Innovations textbook was “Wow, it’s real language” quickly followed by “Wow, it’s really only used by native speakers and really only of use if you want to sound like one”. I’m not sure if there is any way round that little conundrum- the Natural English thing of using the language of speakers of the next level up was nice in theory but caused a horribly bitty book in practice.

If you are looking for more serious (not that a lack of builders’ tea isn’t serious!) advice on getting into ELT publishing, have a look at:

My ELT publishing articles and links page (plenty of articles on getting into the ELT pub biz, plus updated links)

Jason Renshaw of Raven English’s recent posts on ELT materials design

btw, if anyone who has ever been published, has self published, or has never been published and is feeling bitter about it fancies being interviewed, leave a comment or contact me via button of that name at top right

Tags: Quotes

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 9:38 am and is filed under ELT publishing, Materials, TEFL, TEFL reviews, textbooks, Writing ELT textbooks and materials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.