Noah's Ark

It's time for a role-play:

Student A: turn to page 61
Student B: turn to page 64

It is somehow assumed that in all classrooms, all over the world, wherever there are people learning English that their teachers are teaching to an even number of students, every day.

Amazing, really...

Useful links related to this posting: 
Reasons I don't like textbooks (series)
ELTchat: Is using a coursebook such a bad thing?

Best,
Karenne
image credit: Cartoon about Noah's Arc by Gaspirtz

education

I love hearing from you!   Please add your thoughts if there's something you would like to question, add or say about this post - got any useful strategies or tips to deal with this dilemma, ones which don't involve making the teacher one of the partners and therefore no longer able to record errors and mistakes for feedback? 

Don't worry about perfection in your comment or agreeing with me: it's always a pleasure to hear from you and know your viewpoints.

Bottom Up vs Top Down English Language Teaching

They're really not getting it.

They think coursebooks can be student-centered.

Well, let me see if I can make it the slightest bit clearer: 

• if you walk into class with an objective that is anything other than extracting language from students and then building on that (scaffolding) whether you've got a book in your hands or not - 

• if you walk into class with an aim that is anything other than working with your students' needs, wishes and wants and working the kinks out of their grammatical weaknesses - 

• if you're building a sort of random lexis, based on the unit of a book, and you've no actual idea whether or not they will be able to put that language to use -

• if you're spending more than 50% of your class time in activities that don't require your students to speak to each other about themselves and their lives then you're teaching top-down.

If that sits good with you, so be it.

But if you want to teach English from the bottom up: Join the dogme group, read Meddings and Thornbury's book Teaching Unplugged and/or read my previous posts on dogme and those of my esteemed colleagues around the globe, do a google search on dogme ELT.

Because of all the things it is or isn't, it's not a "style."

Best, Karenne
imagecredit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunface13/415520633/sizes/m/

Interesting link

(There's a poll going on the Lexiophiles site to determine a list of the best language blogs, see my post about that here so if you haven't yet voted and you don't this is really totally tacky of me to ask, do please click and visit the site to let them know :-) thanks muchly).

Reasons I don't like most textbooks (7)

They're not about the learners.

So, er...mm.... why exactly are 2 billion people learning English?





To make their lives "better."

And er, what exactly must they do if they are to successfully achieve this goal?

They must learn how to talk in English.

About

• their lives.
• their jobs.
• their deals.
• their responsibilities.
  
• their interests.
• their hobbies.
• their families.
• their needs.
• their desires.
• their passions.
  
• their concerns.
• their ideas.
• their musings.
• their boundaries.
  

Anything else served up, which has an objective providing less than this, is less than enough.

Put the student in the book to get him out of the book.


Useful links related to this posting:
Reasons I don't like most textbooks, series 1-6
The dogma of dogme
F is for Fluency (Scott Thornbury)

Best,
Karenne

Reasons I don't like most textbooks (6)

They're too expensive.

Best,
Karenne

More reasons I don't like most textbooks?
(scroll past this one).


p.s. I'm going to do a Ken Wilson on you: there is a post... coming up quite soon, breaking down the real costs in the average production of the average course book and explaining how it all works... but in the meantime, d'ya think books are worth the price we pay for them? Why / why not?

How much do they cost in your country? How is this price determined? Do you or your school ever not buy books due to their cost?

Reasons I don't like most textbooks (5)

Take a deep breath.

Go on, blow out hard.

I'm bringing a unicorn into the balloon factory.

Although many of you will have read the following before, some agreeing and some not, many of you haven't.

Many of you intuitively know what I'm about to say is so true, so spot on - you've felt it for years but haven't put a finger on what it was that was bothering you so.

And for all of those who've thought about this and totally disagree, I ask of you to do one thing:

Before responding, answer not as a language teacher, not as an educator of other language teachers, not as a linguist or someone doing a masters in Second Language Acquisition writing up essays based on other people's theories... I ask of you not to respond as a materials writer, not as an editor or publisher.

I ask you to respond as

A Language Learner.


What's wrong with most textbooks that teach languages?

Ever gone on a lovely vacation to a hot country and thought to yourself, as you desperately ravaged the pharmacy shelves for that product you need RIGHT now and wondered to yourself if, in a feeble attempt to describe your present debilitating condition to the pharmacist who is looking down at you in bemusement, that really before you open your mouth you'd better use the present perfect or would a present perfect continuous be more suitable in this case - oh lord, how to explain what you've taken the last time you were struck: the past simple or past perfect or now, wait - will you add one of those demonstratives, is the verb reflexive??? Heck, how do you conjugate it? You need the bathroom.

Ever thought as you negotiated your taxes with a tough looking bureaucrat that perhaps you should have used a mixed conditional instead of that 3rd?

Ever whispered one of those slippery modals to a lover then pondered, as you lay back in discontent, whether or not your sentence adequately communicated permission, suggestion, past ability, the potentiality of possibility... worth trying again?

No?

Really, no? Me neither.



Why do we teach language like it's math?

What's wrong with most textbooks?

The grammar based syllabus.

Best,
Karenne

More reasons I really don't like most coursebooks:

• One
• Two
• Three
• Four

Reasons I don't like most textbooks (4)

One size fits all?

• The reason you can not make the perfect textbook is because our students aren't perfect: they do not fit into boxes or packages.
  

• Our students differ in their ages, occupations, wants and needs and we pay attention to that.

If you are a publisher or textbook author stumbling across this blog... I have more to say:


If you please, why do you write:

This course is the ideal choice for anyone who needs to make
presentations in English.

When, actually, what you mean is:

This course has been designed for young adults, probably between the ages of 18 and 23, studying Business. It will help them learn, in our seven-step approach, to develop an authentic style and apply these skills later on in their future working lives.

You make me look like a fool when I walk in to my managers and CEOs with your amateurish guide... you make me waste my and their hard-earned cash when you tell me that it's for anyone who needs to make presentations and you send me combing the internet for real advice.

Please... in future, please make sure the back of your books carry an appropriate and adequate description of its intended audience.

Also, while you're here - what are you doing to the CEFR: you know, that standardized guide which was supposed to erase all the confusion you created in what is a false beginner, what is elementary vs. what is pre-intermediate and intermediate knowledge of English?

Any chance you could all have a little sit down together and hash out an agreement so that the one size fits all could actually apply here?

Thanks.

Best,
Karenne

Useful links related to this posting:
Reasons (1)
Reasons (2)
Reasons (3)

Reasons I don't like most textbooks (3)

You have to be in ELT to get this...

• Whenever I go to a conference book stand or book fair I'm not looking for the almost exact replica of the book I want to replace. I am looking for something better.
  

• It is not possible to recreate Headway. It is not possible to sell as many copies as the Soars did in their heyday.
  

• There is no such thing as brand loyalty when it comes to textbooks. Most TEFL teachers have no idea who publishes what or by whom they're written and we don't care.

• Originality goes a really long way. Like all the way to over here.
  

Useful links related to this posting:
Reasons I don't like most textbooks 1
Reasons I don't like most textbooks 2

Best,
Karenne

NOTE: Due to the fact that I have linked Clandfield's latest book. I would like to state for public record that not only do I not work for Macmillan, nor have I ever, my relationship to Clandfield is: he observed me teaching once, took my four page feedback on his Straightforward book with good humour and I've attended one of his workshops.

Reasons I don't like most text books (2)

• cultural incompatibility

If we were to do a demographic poll of all textbooks written for the TEFL industry in the last 25 years, then we would probably find out that an outstanding majority have been written by:


1. people who look like Mr Bean and who share gender
2. people from within Mr Bean's age group
3. people who actually think that Rowan Atkinson is funny


And yet, were we to do a demographic poll on all the learners of English we would discover...


Best,
Karenne

see also: reasons I don't like most textbooks (1)
reasons I don't like most textbooks(3)

Reasons I don't like coursebooks (1)

• crowded pages.

Best,
Karenne

2nd reason