I’m really interested in hearing how people rate this series
I’m in my first job and I have only been able to peek at New Horizon for a few days but I feel like it was better and far more challenging for students.
Sunshine seems to lack decent grammar explaining and ignore more useful phrases for practice. For a book published within the last year I am amazingly dissatisfied. If there are any teachers who can offer advice that would be great.
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Oh, I thought the conversations were interesting for students.
The less focus on grammar the better. Students will have no shortage of grammar lessons between juku and Japanese teacher English classes.
From what I’ve seen from the perspective of the local JTEs, the old Sunshine was simpler and easier to get through.
The latest New Horizon for JHS 1st grade is good, but the 2nd and 3rd grade textbooks have a sudden incline in the amount of work and preparation to get them to a level of competent understanding.
We have a mix of young motivated teachers and soon-to-be-retired old dogs, and they all say the same thing.
I’ve worked with three textbooks: Sunshine, New Crown and New Horizons.
Personally, I like New Horizons the best. It feels the most natural and least textbook-like. New Crown, however, was terrible. It felt VERY stiff and unnatural. And Sunshine ends up being in the middle.
Isn’t Sunshine the one that had the story about the poor elephants that Ueno Zoo couldn’t feed because the Americans would just bomb the heck out of the zoo anyhow?
That always… bothered me. Absolutely zero context as to why there would be bombing, as I recall, although this was many years ago.
Sunshine does a great job of teaching Japanese students Japanese culture in a foreign language. Where else are they going to learn what a *karesansui* garden is?
It really harkens back to those days we spent in *my* junior high school French classes learning about the Declaration of Independence.