Favourite textbook?
 

What's your favourite textbook and why do you enjoy it / find it useful?

Re: Favourite textbook?
 

Hello, I use Michael Swan when I have a doubt, but for the most part I teach children and I like the idea of teaching grammar through absorption, repetition and practise rather than by giving an academic explanation. I use games to teach grammar - which works very well for children.

I have taught mostly with no course book (although I'm not against them at all), exclusively using games just with a few picture cards.

To make your life easy, you can follow a course book anyway, to save you worrying about which language to teach, but you can teach the language in that course book with games, and not using the book itself - it's just your guide.

Re: Favourite textbook?
 

What a broad question!
I like The higher 'Let's Go' series just because of the level of the sts. I do modify the book - mainly by changing the American English.

Re: Favourite textbook?
 

I like English File, published by Oxford.
The lessons are broken down into nice bitesize pieces and the supplementary materials are great. There's a grammar practice and a communication activity for each lesson, and the occasional song as well. The vocab file is extensive too.
A nice alternative to a somewhat dreary 'Headway'.

Re: Favourite textbook?
 

I like using Interchange (for low level classes) and Business Basics (for business classes) and for some other conversational books as well depending on the level.

Re: Favourite textbook?
 

My favourite textbook is the World Link series published by Heinle. I used it with my uni students.

I really enjoy teaching it because all the activities are useful AND fun. Every page has pair or group work activities that actually start natural conversations about interesting subjects.

On top of the fact that the student and work books are good for the students, I like the teacher's book. It's well organized, the pages of the TB have the same page numbers as the corresponding SB pages (that's a small thing, but saves so much time and shows whoever put it together was thinking of the teacher), and there is so much extra material/ activity ideas and useful culture notes that the student's enjoy hearing about.

It's starting to sound like I work for them, but there's one more thing I like. Their student website has on-line dictations that the students can email directly to me, and other interactive activities to help them study vocabulary, etc. I swear I'm not being paid to rave on about them, I just really, really enjoy teaching this book.

Re: Favourite textbook?
 

For sure I think there's no perfect textbook, they all have strengths and weaknesses but for me I like the Headway series. It's meaty and easily developed for greater application and extension.