ANOTHER textbook?!?

[Raoul Duke]

Hey all,

I'm about to start a new contract for an old customer. It's a factory, not a hotel, and they just want general conversational English at this time. I've done assessment interviews and the fluency level runs from advanced-beginner to advanced-intermediate. I will probably teach them in 2 separate class groups.

My weapons of choice for this kind of general class are New Interchange for mid-levels and Passages from the same author for upper levels...not perfect books by any means, but not bad and IMHO by far the best mass-market English texts available in China.

However, a few of the students in the upper group studied a few chapters of New Interchange 2 before; they joined the end of another course I had brought into this company. I do believe that NI2 is the appropriate level for the bulk of this group, including the ones that got a taste of it before. But because a few students had a small exposure to NI2, the department manager has asked if I have another suitable text book available.

I'm going to make a strong pitch for staying with New Interchange, but I do at least like to try and attempt to make a customer happy...especially this customer who has shown me tremendous kindness and loyalty. I'll spend some of tomorrow digging around the local Foreign Languages Bookstore. Any of you know a good substitute for New Interchange 2?

I've always hated No Concept English but hear it's better these days. I'm skeptical...

I can only use books easily bought in China...preferably I can go into just about any Foreign Languages Bookstore or Xinhua Bookstore and find it. Some writing assignments are nice (these guys will be writing international e-mails, tech documentation, and so on...) but I can improvise these if I need to.

Thanks in advance for advice and opinions!

While I'm at it, my original partner for this company took a real job and bailed out on me. If any of you have engineering field experience with microchip manufacturing equipment (substrate wafer microslicing, ball bonding, chip package testing, etc.) please let me know. I can make us both a LOT of money...

[Raoul Duke]

Uh-oh. I seem to have Stumped The Band here...

[Dajiang]

I've used 'Speak Up' Intermediate before, and it was quite nice to work with. The green book that is, but uin some cities they're hard to get a hold of cuz they werent that popular.

Speak Up does have some mistakes in it, and so you'll have to get these out as you go through it. Good exercise for the kids.

I'm using Senior English for China, Student books 1 and 2, for senior middle schoolers now. And I'm suprised at the user friendliness. Quite a few nice speaking activities.

Dajiang

[con's fly is open]

I don't mind mistakes in textbooks: when we correct them in class I look smart.

[Raoul Duke]

mmm, except that in China a lot of students will trust the book over you...

[Lotus Eater]

I've used Oral Workshop:Discussion. They also have 'Listening' and a something else book in the set - 3 different levels. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press (FLTRP).

Not too bad but on the whole I prefer writing my own stuff. Easier to get the levels right and make it interesting to the students.

[Raoul Duke]

Thanks, guys. More ideas welcome...

Writing my own? Aaaaaaiiiiiiiggghhh!
Noooo...nooo...please God, no...

I'm already doing more than plenty of that. I don't want to do all that much more. I'm really only interested in taking that on when a) decent materials don't exist and b) I can make a shltload of money on the resulting classes. Basic English generally doesn't fit either criterion.

And frankly, while my lovely Lotus might be qualified to write basic English texts, I'm not sure I consider myself qualified to do so. I'm comfortable writing specific-function English like hotel books, where I'm teaching the language of specific jobs rather than teaching the mechanics of the language. I don't think I'm really ednucated enough on teaching the mechanics.

[Lotus Eater]

I wouldn't call it a text book - just my stuff of what I do in class, plus the resources I used. Totally NFP - just for me!! Although I did pass on the material I wrote to a colleague who was taking over my class when I changed universities. Don't know what he did with it.

[Raoul Duke]

Last call...anyone else like any other titles?

I'm under some serious pressure to change textbooks. I'm pretty sick about it and really not sure what to do...

[Decurso]

The latest edition of New Concept 4 has a lot of the same functions as New Intercheange 2..but New Interchange is far more fun to teach IMO.

[Raoul Duke]

Mine too. I've never liked "No Concept English". Really stiff, archaic, irrelevant. I hear it's better lately, though...

[Mr Nobody]

The one that annoys me is No Hope English. Reading standard too high for the students, and the information is just crap.

I guess it would be useful for vocab, but not much else.

[Noodles]

I have to give a little bit of a pitch later to try to make a company choose New Interchange over New Concept.
Whilst i have seen Concept i have never had to teach it. I have found interchange to be ok for general English, not perfect but ok, so i am definatly trying to steer the company in this direction.

So, from some of your posts i gather concept is not as fun and interesting as interchange and more boring.

Anything else?

[Raoul Duke]

Sure.

New Interchange (NI) is indeed a lot more fun and a lot more relevant than No Concept (NC). Not perfect, indeed, but still far closer than anything else out there.

NI is a much better balanced book than NC. It integrates speaking, listening, reading, and writing pretty well.

NI also offers vastly superior support compared to NC. The Teacher's Edition lays out a very good program of activities and projects relating to the text. There are also more options- workbooks, sound files, and so on if you want them.

IMHO there's no comparison between these two books. However, I've heard ugly rumors that the distributor of NC in China pays kickbacks to school owners who buy quantities of NC books...so you may have a hard fight ahead.

[Raoul Duke]

Oh, one other thing...NI is based mostly upon American English. NC is based more on Commonwealth English...and who the hell wants to learn that?