What’s the best textbook you’ve used in the classroom and why? The worst?

13 comments

1. Any Berlitz people will shudder at the mention of Mimi and me. Theft pure and simple. They were introducing something new as I was leaving. Seemed much better

2. Best:

   * Grammar Lab (OUP) for children/teens -seems to have been discontinued. The characters and jokes were good.
   * Reading Explorer 3 and 4 (NatGeo) for uni students. Interesting content, well presented.
   * The Fluency Course for JHS -I wrote it. Very active classes, no wasted time.
   * Potato Pals for kindergarten. Songs were good, flashcards etc. good too.

   Worst:

   * Side by Side for low-level adults. It actually works quite well with false beginners with no hope of acquiring English, but makes the teacher lose hope after the first couple of lessons.
   * Pathways by Tohoku University for university students. My department made it, it is an abomination. Not so much a textbook so much as a bunch of random lists of words and activities loosely gethered into an overpriced waste of paper.
   * New Horizon (lol). The topics, the texts, the activities. Sorely lacking. Yes, a skilled teacher can make something of it, but it isn’t going to be used by skilled teachers most of the time.

3. Interchange is pretty good as general English books go. You’re never short of material. On the other hand, if you’ve got a dud unit then you’re stuck with it.

   The worst was an in house one I got which was written by the school owner. She could communicate in English alright but got very sketchy when writing. All the mistakes your eikaiwa students make were in there. She asked me to point them out, but then would challenge me to explain exactly why. Every time. I gave up after a while.

   In-house uni ones as well, some of those have been pretty dodgy. They make them to sell obviously but sometimes they’re not well honed yet. You realise that the Cambridge etc books go through a lot of revising and testing.

   I used to use one called Outcomes, not in Japan, which was based around the Lexical Approach, or in other words students learn chunks of language rather than grammar. The authors are these British guys who are somewhat infamous in the ESL world. It was hilarious at times, I remember one discussion question was “when was the last time you got beaten up?” It was trying to use realistic phrases and all that.

   There was another one called AZ Discussions, which was about 20 individual lessons each on a different theme. But it would get quite deep on philosophy, history and moral dilemmas. The nature of lies, the meaning of love, and so on. Definitely for more advanced students. When a lesson from that worked out it was fantastic, really involving.

4. For JHS New Horizons was the best of the required books. Though normally the best one is also the one filled with the least amount of shit. They tend to fill them now with more and more BS that has to be covered because “the parents paid for the books”. The best one would be one that’s a supplementary grammar and activity bank to use while you fill the class with more communicative lessons.

   Generally hate textbooks I can’t mold to the students. Personally would take more planning time and going semi dogma to having a textbook.

   Qskills writing was decent. Same with English Firsthand

5. Unfortunately, all textbooks are overly general as they need to appeal to a wide variety of students as possible for sales purposes.

   And while they claim to be based on communicative approaches, they still mainly use a grammar-based syllabus and neglect or outright ignore the other aspects of communicative competence. These are supposed to be brought into the lesson by the teacher, but the teacher using the textbooks might not recognize this or know how to do so.

   Keep in mind that, in general, textbooks neglect vocabulary building, listening skills, proper reading and writing skills, and pronunciation. Those are sort of tacked on to each unit, but are never explored in depth. Again, this is left up to the teacher to add, since textbooks cannot cover everything, and textbook writers expect teachers to fill in the gaps on their own – so keep that in mind, and don’t lean on the text for everything.

   As an example, outside of texts meant specifically for teaching listening, there are very few textbooks that teach listening as a skill unto itself. Yes, textbooks “do” listening, but mainly use it as a mechanism for presenting grammar rather than actually teaching students how to handle the speech stream. Instead of an explicit strategy-based approach, comprehension questions are used (which just test listening) and metacognition is never mentioned. While you do see top-down processes addressed (such as listening for the main ideas) bottom-up skills are mostly absent, despite research showing that bottom-up segmentals and suprasegmentals are vital for listening comprehension. These need to be added, or there are good textbooks out there that explicitly address this, such as those by Richard Cauldwell (https://www.speechinaction.org/speech-in-action/about/).

   And yes, there are fill in the blank exercises, but keep in mind that there is far more to teaching bottom-up skills than having learners listen for a particular grammar point and fill in the missing words. Again, these are just a grammar exercise disguised as listening. To be clear, I’m not saying they have no value at all, since the more listening practice a learners gets the better, even if imperfect. The main point I’m trying to make here is that textbooks all need heavy supplementation to get the balance right.

   I would recommend using the the recordings and reading texts and make up your own instructions, but also add outside materials that will help reach the course aims.

   Of course this also isn’t always possible since so many schools focus heavily on grammar and translation, and eikaiwa usually only allow teachers to use their in-house text. It’s very frustrating. We all just need to do our best.

6. The best that I found for elementary school kids is called **Big Show** by Lucas Foster. It goes from level 1 to level 5. It has a textbook and workbook. I like how the units are set up with a key phrase and then new vocabulary. I also use another book with that called **Phonics & Spelling** Book 1 to Book 4 by Donald, Robert and Michael Kinney. It is a great supplement to Big Show book especially if your students are just learning to read and write. Another great supplement to Big Show is the **Compass Reading Series** called **Super Easy Reading**, **Very Easy Reading** etc… My kids really seem to like this one.

7. My favorite is the breakthrough series. Also if you have higher level students who are ready to discuss interesting and sometimes controversial topics (although you should definitely leave some out) Impact Issues can be great.

8. I forget the name but there was this bloody book (with an accompanying CD) that tried to expose people to different accents. However it was just Americans doing farcically fake accents.

   Sigh. Some teacher at the local school (American) tried using it to teach people ‘Aussie’ accents too. One day I rocked up to class and people were proudly telling me that Aussies spoke like [blah – insert American pronunciation with a strange tone added to it]. In response I modelled some real Aussie English and got them to use it on him (no C-bombs in there I promise). The guy hated me for life as he thought he was really good at accents, and didn’t realise there was a real Aussie in town.

9. I like all the Welcome To Tokyo books. Relevance is important for the students.

10. I use Cambridge’s Ventures textbook here in the US for ESOL. I actually like it.

11. I liked the TBL based book called Widgets when I used it. But some chapters are a little difficult to use for lower levels so I usually cut a unit or 2.

    On Task is another really learner centered book.

    Recently I just use inhouse texts (which are decent and free to students) or specific skills books which are only a small part of the class as supplementary materials.

    I didn’t like Interchange when I used it. Too rigid and I don’t feel like the learners get enough practice.

    I used English Land when I did kids classes. Those books were fun and the kids loved the Disney characters and earning stickers.

12. The good: the Impact series by NatGeo/Cengage, I’m lucky enough to teach it to an advanced JHS group and it’s a blast.

    The bad: Landmark Communication English. High School textbook for 英語コミュニケーション. Except it’s a series of nationalistic articles (read about this great Japanese person… read about la Sagrada lafamilia and how a Japanese artist is tenuously connected to it) with a few questions and a “discussion” which is actually a recording of a teacher asking students the same question and played back at half speed. It’s so poor.

13. JHS

    The best : Sunshine 1,2,3

    The worst: New Horizon, and it’s politically-fueled agenda.