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The Uses and Abuses of Course Books

Introduction

With what adjectives do you associate the following phrases?

  • “follow the course book”
  • “supplement the course book”
  • “do your own lesson instead of what's in the course book”

What course books CAN do and what they CAN'T do

Write CAN or CAN'T against these ideas:

Course books...
  • adapt themselves to the needs of your particular class
  • answer all your students' questions
  • provide a “syllabus” of grammatical content arranged in a logical order
  • offer “authentic” reading and listening texts which stimulate most students
  • coordinate lesson content with homework through relevant exercises organised in a workbook
  • arrange lessons according to “themes”
  • organise materials and activities that match the length of your lessons
  • include “new” vocabulary which is useful and relevant
  • offer pronunciation help which is always relevant to your students
  • focus on the specific needs created by “transfer” type errors of your monolingual group
  • meet acceptable quality standards in terms of proof-reading and readability
  • develop students' ability to learn independently
  • offer a “balance” over time between language input, language practice, and skills work
  • chat about their weekend
  • make jokes

“Teacher, this is your course book. Course book, say “hello” to the teacher. Now, I hope you're both going to try to get along, because you'll need each other.”

  1. Try to summarise what, in an ideal situation, should be the job of the teacher and what should be the job of the course material.
  2. Which course books do you particularly like/dislike? Why?

Coursebook comparison

Your trainer will give you chapters from two different course books for the same level which cover approximately the same language area.

  1. Decide how many 1.5 hour lessons you would need to cover each chapter, and what activities you would choose (and in what order), for each lesson.
  2. Compare the two different books. What differences can you identify in their approaches, if any? Do the differences reflect differences in ideas about language learning, or are they simply organisational? Which approach do you prefer? Why?

Summary of course book “uses” and “abuses”

Uses

  • Do use the book. A course book is a tool that you need to “get the hang of”, and you can only do that by giving it a good go.
  • Do give preference to book material over supplementary material, unless there's a good reason not to (“makes a nice change”, “tried it before and it was a disaster”, etc.)
  • Do encourage students to exploit the full “suite” of material forming part of the course – coursebook, workbook, CD Rom, website, progress tests, extra listening material, etc.

Abuses

  • Don't skip bits of the book just because you lack confidence using them
  • Don't make decisions which jeopardise the short-term coherence of the material (i.e. Ignoring the reading from which is taken the examples needed in the grammar presentation).
  • Don't ignore the need for input which has long-term relevance (i.e. Learner training, skills development)
  • Don't waste time on coursebook content that really isn't relevant, perhaps because it's aimed at learners who are native speakers of other languages (i.e. “l” and “r” pronunciation).
  • Don't “skip about” too much in the book – there are lots of reasons why this is a bad idea, and few reasons why it might be a good one.

We hope that you find this material useful. As usual, please e-mail any comments you may have to:

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