[HUE]

We've all had to work from bad or boring textbooks at one point in our teaching careers. Being a native English speaker, you should have options and ideas that non-native teachers maybe haven't thought about... or don't feel confident enough to pull off.

I like Susan's idea to incorporate the book as homework. This is one way to use the book, but not use the book (if you know what I mean)! Also consider extending the activities listed in the book. For example, a textbook that I have to use at my uni had the following activity: With a picture of New York, the students had to imagine a vacation there. They were to write sentences, and then present to a partner. I didn't like this very much. It was also too hard, because it didn't have enough prep work for the students to give some interesting sentences. So I did the following:

1) I gave a listening exercise of eight sentences about a trip to New York. It had some basic ideas, as well as some interesting/funny events. Everyone listened, and answered comprehension questions at the end.

2) Next, I had the students image their trip to New York, and write about it. They had a worksheet with some of my sentences from the listening, plus a few more, to help them along. The students took that info, added to it, and created a story of about fifteen sentences. They did this in pairs, then presented their vacations in groups of four.

3) Lastly, they chose a place they wanted to visit, imagined a vacation there, and told about it to a partner with only a few minutes to prepare. The partner could also ask a few questions in order to generate a conversation.

With the above activity, I still used the book. I also covered the grammar/target language of the unit. But by expanding on the idea, using my experience as a traveler, native speaker, and teacher, I created an activity that was a lot more interesting and rewarding for the students.

In your classes, I would suggest the same: take a grammar point from your textbook, and expand on it with speaking activities. If it's one thing I've noticed in my years teaching, it's that non-native English teachers are less willing to stray from the book -- use that to capture your students' interests.