Teach English in Winchelsea - TESOL Courses

This is about course materials. The authentic materials we might use are everywhere, from menus to songs we hear to cereal boxes to magazine articles. I am constantly finding essay in the New York Times or local paper which I might use with my writers. The problem with authentic materials can just be that they are more random and not designed for a certain level, necessarily, so you have to really figure out if beginners can handle them. Often times you would need to be more intermediate or advanced to handle authentic materials from magazines and newspapers. As for created materials, these are more like the games and worksheets that teachers come up with all the time out of necessity. These could be crosswords or word searches or even slideshows. They can be role-play cards, like the excellent telephone dialogues from the BBC. The idea there is that each student in a pair has a specific bit of information and then they put it together in a telephone conversation and watch the magic. I want to try to this one early and often. Sounds very fun and engaging. Finally we have coursebooks, or what we might call textbooks. One thing I have learned over the years is that textbooks will definitely kill a story. Whenever I can, I introduce a book or story through the most singular, appealing looking book, and then if I want students to find it in a textbooks, that might be for follow up work, but not for the introductory or, hopefully, opening inspiration. Quality coursebooks are very useful in that they have lessons with specific purposes and levels and you can work through them. They done much of the work for you, but I heartily agree with the lesson here that they can make you lazy. I think it is still very important, of course, to engage with the class and introduce concepts and skills in very authentic ways, and then control and adapt the usage of the coursebook to study/practice time. We shouldn't let the coursebook ever stand in as the teacher.