[marie777]

Hi

The last teacher had his own laptop I think. He was American, had a lot more experience and could speak fluent Chinese, he was very popular with the students, although some have admitted he spoke too much Chinese in the classroom. The students are used to the American accent and not the English accent.

The students ages are 17, at one school the teacher said I do not need to use the book, the students are at a lower level of English at this school and last week the topic I covered was describing people, this went down well as they thought it was funny describing each other.

This will definately not work with the other school who are a little of a higher level and seem to not be so easy going in what I teach. Maybe I will speak to the headmistress and say the students don't want me to teach the book and gage her reaction. After trying the game that seemed to flop so badly and having to think of topics that they are happy with for a year, I am not looking forward to the year ahead, with no photocopier, printer or computer and 60 teenagers it feels very difficult.

Thanks for your advice, its very much needed with my lack of experience.

[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.