THRee DIFfereNT ThiNGS YOu CAn DO WiTH YoUR TeXTBooK
Whether you consider it a life-preserver or a block of concrete sealed around your ankles, your text book is an inescapable reality of your job. I have yet to work at a school that didn't have a textbook, and I've only worked at one school that didn't encourage the teachers to stick to the books as much as possible.
Is that good or bad? Well, maybe it's a straightjacket to all the things you could do, but let's fucking face it -- you aren't getting paid nearly enough to make up your own lessons. Oh sure, it might be fun to sit there and tell them about your backpacking trips around Asia and your life back in America for a while, but what about after that's done?
Then, it's back to the book.
Anyway, the book is about the only thing that provides any sort of coherence and continuity between levels in most schools -- going from Level 3 with a Cockney smack addict to Level 4 with an Australian surfer to Level 5 with some 55 year old former Tool and Die maker from Chicago who met his wife on the Internet doesn't provide much of that otherwise.
Now of course, just going through the book page 1-2-3-4-5 bam bam bam is going to piss off most of the students. You have to add your own shit in there eventually. "Personalizing the lesson" as the theory has it.
So that means you've got to do a lot of extra work, photocopy a lot of shit, and bring in a lot of your own materials right?
FUCK NO!
ONE: THE PICTURES
You've got a book there. It sucks ass. It's full of boring readings, stilted listening activities, dry grammar exercises.
Yeah, okay. Sure. BUT: It's also full of pictures. And there are a lot of things you can do with those.
Take the pictures. Not what you'd call an unlimited resource, but there will be a lot of them -- usually of smiling white British people and a squeaky clean landscape or two.
And baby, that's all you need.
Now just because you're using the book 1-2-3-4-5 DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN'T SKIP AROUND TO DIFFERENT PICTURES. Suppose you're doing a unit on describing what people look like. You do the usual-- talk about the people in the pictures in the unit, talk about some people in the class, then maybe talk about a famous person or two. Then you're finished.
But what about putting the students in pairs, telling them to flip through the book looking for different pictures of people, and asking their partner what the people look like? Say, that's the lesson stretched out a good fifteen minutes right there, and you didn't have to spend your precious drinking time cutting out pictures from magazines.
Pictures from other chapters can be used for a lot of things -- describing appearances, describing clothes, describing actions -- particularly useful for present continuous practice. "What's this nice white British person in the picture doing?" "He's smiling! How odd!"
Maybe there will be pictures of other things to describe, too -- useful for practice at low levels. "What's this?" "It car!"
So don't forget that shit.
TWO: THE WORDS
The other thing are the words. Now you're probably not so stupid that I need to point out that books are full of words. Apart from understanding the meaning of texts, you can have students practice with words.
For instance. Have two student look at a text together. Forget about reading them, just have them look for interesting words and ask their partners about them. Or have one partner close the book maybe. They can talk about not only what they mean, but how to spell them and how to pronounce them. And you can flip around in the book as much as you like. Vocabulary practice. Boo-ya!
And you didn't have to do a goddamned thing.
And the job just doesn't get any better when you ain't doing nothing.
THREE: THE CLUB
And last but not least: roll the book up into a tube and beat the shit out of a recalcitrant student or fellow teacher with it. Knowledge must occasionally be pounded into ignorant heads.