Help- advice for teaching English!!
Hello all,
I would like to seek your advice on something...
I conduct English lessons for adults once a week as part of my job. There is a beginners class and an intermediate class.
From January onwards I am doing a bit of an overhaul of my classes. I will not be using a textbook for the intermediate class. The students seem to want to practice their public (English) speaking skills so we will be running the classes with a different student making a presentation on a different topic each week.
However, I am currently trying to decide whether I will use a textbook for the beginner-level class, or just compile my own book of activities, games, grammar lessons etc. and print this for each student.
The students in the beginner's class range from those who can barely string together a few words to those who are quite capable of carrying on a conversation about everyday topics.
I would like to seek your expertise-- if you know of any good Beginner-level English textbooks, or other places I can find resources to use in my classes, I would be very grateful if you could jot them down. If you want to add any textbooks that you think are horrible (which I shouldn't use), that'd be helpful too.
You'll be helping me so much!!
Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu!!
Madeline
Kate knows all about this - maybe mail her directly :-)
mike
Personally, the best books I've ever used are called 'Cutting Edge' - I have the Pre-Intermediate one and the Intermediate activities book if you're interested in having a look at them.
Can you use whatever you like, or do you have to use an Govt. approved textbook? As far as I know, Cutting Edge are some of the most popular ESL books there are - but they are entirely in English. I'd say that was a definite plus, but perhaps a little daunting. So let me know if you want to have a look!
Cheers,
Alice x
Hi Mike- thanks for the suggestion- I've got in touch with Kate.
Alice, I looked up the Cutting Edge books on the internet. They looked really good but I'm slightly worried that the level would be too advanced for my beginners class (even in the starters book, which is easier than the ones you have).
What levels of children/adults have you used the Pre-Intermediate and Intermediate activities books with before?
Also, I was hoping for a bit more of a focus on speaking and listening-- although I guess this is hard with a beginner level text.
I can pretty much use whatever I like- it doens't have to be govt. approved or anything. I even considered putting together my own materials in a book, but now I'm thinking that that would take a lot lot lot of time which I maybe don't have.
Would love any other hints you may have- even the names of not-so-good texts, or those you've just heard of. I'm a real novice!
Thanks!
Mad
One that I used in conjunction with the Cutting edge books in Dubai was the Headway or New Headway series. Again these are only textbooks so they don't do any of the real work for you, all they do is give you a very logical progression for teaching grammar and some basic listening reading and writing exercises. For your very beginner class you might want to look at Beginner level or Starter level books... definately nothing past elementary level (its goes Beginner> Elementary > Pre-intermediate > Intermediate > Upper Intermediate and then by the time students are that good in Japan they can quite easily become teachers of english but there are other levels above this).
I know this probably hasn't helped all that much but anyways another good series you might want to look at is 'Headway'.
Tom
If they are literally completely beginner, then your probably better off making the first few lessons activity based and quite slow moving. For example, greetings (have flashcards with different times of day to get them used to Good Morning, good night etc), and simple objects, which again can be done with flashcards or real objects.
As they're all Japanese (or at least I assume they're all Japanese), you can also introduce key phrases like 'My name is...', I come from - then they'll have built up to basic introduction (i.e. Good morning, how are you, my name is, i come from, nice to meet you etc ).
The biggest advice I would give is keeping it as much in English as possible, which you can do since you have them from the very beginning. Teach them words like 'verb' etc - it'll make your life much easier later on!
I think that sort of thing for a while before introducing textbooks would help. Hope this helps in the slightest, let me know if you want any more ideas! Tom and I both have a CELTA qualification, and Tom got his pretty recently so he has loads of ideas!
Cheers,
Alice
Hi Guys,
Thanks so much for all your help!
I had my first 2 English classes for the year yesterday and they went really well--
I'm not sure whether you've heard of the Talk A Lot Books by EFL Press? www.eflpress.com I decided to go with it and it seems pretty good so far.
I appreciate all your advice and will take it on board!
Mad