Hey Reddit, I hope you all doing well. I'm looking for a bit of advice from you all.
I often get adult beginner students who have little to no English skill. They've all but forgotten everything they've learned in school and suddenly want to learn Eikaiwa because they've got a client in Florida or something that they need to meet in 4 or so months.
In all my years of experience I've yet to find any resources that provide something step-by-step that they can use to pick up the very basics and start using basic English. In my mind, the material should teach the following:
- Basic grammar (all the SVO stuff, third person singular, and so on) with
- Grammar in practical use through reading, writing, speaking, listening. (I'll be primarily be focusing on speaking and listening though. I'd prefer natively spoken audio so the students can get used to hearing what real English sounds like).
- Real world themes and situations that students may likely encounter
- and some "nice to know" phrases that can get the student started.
- fun!
Any good recommendations? Thanks in advance!
Also, If you're interested, here are some of my recommendations:
- Now You're Talking! (EFL Press)
- Passport to Work (OUP)
- Let's Chat! (EFL Press)
- The Grammar in Use series by Raymond Murphy
by NegotiationOk4292
3 comments
I would focus more on situational tasks that are going to be required for their trips abroad. Work it input to output and use grammar as a supplement. I think paul nation has a list of phrases needed to be used abroad. The students can memorize those probably fast but getting them communicative and turned into actually language beyond just memorized chunks would be a good use of class time. Personally any textbook is gonna just add so much unneeded stuff and derail them from a rather straight forward goal. Though if you have a bunch of textbooks its not a bad idea to steal good activities from them.
Check out CengageJapan.com, they have some decent materials.
Start with a needs analysis. Find out what exactly they need to do in English, and THEN you can pick materials.
Course design begins with analyzing needs –> formulate course aims –> create syllabus —> find/create materials. You are trying to start with materials, which is exactly backwards.
And don’t base lessons on discrete grammar points. That approach died and was buried long ago, but in Japan it somehow keeps coming back to life like a immortal zombie.