Timelines for teaching verb tenses are great. Seriously. I’ve been telling teachers to use timelines for as long as I can remember, but, strangely enough, they’ve often played a lesser role in my own classroom practice. I believe this has a lot to do with my baffling inability to make sense of anything that bears [...]
ESL textbooks – the orthodoxy
Posted on December 7, 2010 Written by 5 Comments
What do modern EFL/ESL textbooks look like? Over the past five months, for a number of different reasons, I’ve been analyzing dozens of EFL / ESL textbooks (I’m using the terms interchangeably) put out by the mainstream publishing houses. For better and for worse, all these EFL / ESL textbooks have more similarities than differences, [...]
things textbooks ought to teach (3)
Posted on September 20, 2010 Written by Leave a Comment
The simple past right from the start.
things textbooks ought to teach (2)
Posted on August 30, 2010 Written by 6 Comments
another, other and others Has there ever been an elementary/intermediate student who didn’t say things like: I saw other person. I have others things to do. Can I have other piece? I need to get out and meet another people. I have never seen these words formally presented and contrasted in any textbook I’ve ever [...]
