For me…
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# The best:
**1)** *Interchange* (Cambridge) for adults: It’s very communicative and the units all follow an interesting theme ranging from movies to different countries’ foods. The only three gripes I have with Interchange are:
\-Some of the exact examples used in the books aged like milk. For example, in the movie unit, none of my students knew any of the movies listed. This can, of course, be changed in the actual lesson plans that the teacher creates.
\-The writing sections. I find that they’re sort of crammed in and don’t fit the flow of most lesson plans. Most students don’t want to do them, either, unless it’s for extra homework (there is a separate homework book).
\-I had little success with it in private lessons for beginner students. It really seems to work better in group lessons, being communicative.
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**2)** *Oxford Discovery* for returnee children: I love this series. It’s easy to plan engaging lessons with the pages and the children all genuinely seem to enjoy the unit themes. I remember once, when I was teaching the “Living VS Non-living” unit, a student tried to argue with me that water was sentient. What a blast! My only gripe:
\-The difficulty curve between some of the unit readings is massive at times, especially when it goes from stories with just a few sentences to *”Stone Soup*” which has two full pages of prose. Oof!
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**3)** *~~New Horizon~~* ~~for public JHS:~~ Yes, I am an Ellen Baker fanboy. ~~I think New Horizon has glaring weaknesses, but I think the main issue is not the textbook but the teachers teaching it along with what the board of education is expecting (seemingly nothing).~~
Removing Ellen Baker was objectively a mediocre choice, change my mind.
^((EDIT: I’m a weeb who let the cute characters cloud my judgement; New Horizon is bad.))
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**4)** I regret that I forgot the name of the textbook, but *whatever CELTA uses in it’s course*. Fantastic textbook with enticing unit themes and well thought-out activities. Might be too difficult for beginner students, I never taught that level with it during the CELTA.
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# The worst:
***1)*** *English Time* for children: Jesus Christ. This series uses a seemingly audiolingual approach disguised as TPR with “listen and point!” activities. Sometimes within two pages you’ll have 3 or 4 of these.
The unit themes are dry, if you can call them themes at all. A unit may proclaim itself as a unit on camping, introduce some camping vocabulary, then do nothing with it. If you take a look at the teacher manual, it does not advocate any activities that explore the units’ themes. Just more listening and pointing.
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**2)** *GrapeSEED* for young children: It’s so bad I don’t even want to talk about it, really. And it’s not even a textbook, so I shouldn’t talk about it. But I will:
Whoever created this curriculum did a good job at writing the pamphlet for it — Really makes it sound, to the layman, like they know what they’re talking about. But they really, really, really don’t know anything at all. Whoever thought that “student-teacher-student” flashcard drilling was somehow student-centered is missing more than a few braincells. Though I must admit, having zero assessment strategy built into the curriculum and also advocating that students should not skip, repeat, or be sent back to prior units depending on their level? That’s some marketing genius right there. Garbage teaching though.
13 comments
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
I like all the Welcome To Tokyo books. Relevance is important for the students.
I use Cambridge’s Ventures textbook here in the US for ESOL. I actually like it.
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.
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.
JHS
The best : Sunshine 1,2,3
The worst: New Horizon, and it’s politically-fueled agenda.