Thinking outside the book

One thing that students and teachers really struggle with is boredom. Maybe I'm just easily bored but I have yet to find a book or teacher that really keeps the student's interest from cover to cover, it doesn't matter how good they are.

Sometimes I think that the way English teaching works is that we often trap ourselves into thinking "inside the book". Publishers have little interest in helping teachers think otherwise and because we often lean on manufactured materials we always wind up with a book.

We are basically teaching the same way Socrates, Plato and Aristotle taught thousands of years ago except for the addition of the printed book invented by Gutenberg.

Of course, there are guys who have rebelled against the book. You can find a bunch of them at Dogme. They have a Yahoo group and their leader has published in The Guardian newspaper ELT pages.

But to me, they seem more readily identified for what they are against than what they are for. And from my experience, it really helps to have a course or plan for students as otherwise the training can seem a bit aimless to the students.

So how can we escape the book but still have a plan?

First, let's brainstorm a list of all the new tools and technologies and other things that are available to us since the days of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Gutenberg. Without much order, here is my list:

Computers
Email
Telephone
Phone messages
PowerPoint
YouTube
PDA
Chat rooms
Blogs
Websites
Fax
MP3
MP4
Video
Email spam
Voice spam
Television
Shopping malls

Perhaps your list is longer. Now, just as a thought exercise to stretch us "outside the book", what if you assigned yourself the task of using each of these to provide some part of a training course.

There was once a game called Majestic by Electronic Arts. They described it as "The suspense thriller that infiltrates your life through the Internet, telephone and fax, then leaves you guessing where the game ends and reality begins." To play this game you had to check websites and periodically you'd receive frantic phone calls with clues or cryptic faxes.

I think something so pervasive would be an exciting way to teach and learn. What would a "Majestic" English course be like? The student would be receiving training from so many directions at so many times. Of course, not all of this is possible with every teacher and every student, but employing some of these technologies could really get us "out of the book". Consider the possibilities that a ficticious Chinese student named Jerry Liang would experience:

- Jerry gets a daily Email that has a short lesson, story or MP3. This Email is pumped out to Jerry and all the other students by a program similar to those used by spammers.

- Jerry also receives a daily SMS phone messages that reminds him to study an assignment, do homework or join some activities that the teacher has organized.

- Every week, Jerry is directed to watch a certain TV program or movie which all the other students and teacher will be watching. Jerry doesn't have to participate if he is busy that night but he does need to participate in at least two per week. Jerry tunes in the program and starts the chat program on his computer. While he is watching the program on his home TV, other students and the teacher are watching it and chatting with him about it, about the story, actors, what they like or don't like, etc. ("Don't go in that dark room!...don't do it!...Ugh! I knew it!!!")

- Jerry posts assignments on the blog.

- Jerry gets SMS phone messages with new vocabulary on set days. After first contact with the new vocabulary in a lesson he receives the vocabulary in a message on day 2, 5, 12, 19, 33, 63. He has a look at the words and reviews them.

- He has some specially recorded lessons made by his teacher or other teachers in MP3 format in his MP3/MP4 player or PDA which he listens to throughout the day.

- When Jerry visits the popular local mall he takes a walking tour via MP3. The teacher has made a short recording and guides the him through the mall, describing interesting things about the mall and shops and introducing more new vocabulary. ("Starbucks took its name from a coffee-loving character in the famous American novel called 'Moby Dick', a story about a man hunting a whale. Starbuck's strategy is to become people's 'third place', the main place people go outside of home and work.")

- Sometimes Jerry receives a phone call from the teacher to practice his speaking, but more often than not, the teacher (randomly?) assigns Jerry and the other students speaking buddies, other students, who he calls to practice a particular speaking activity. Every week Jerry recieves an Email with a speaking lesson to practice and his speaking buddy's phone number. Sometimes the buddy is in his class but most of the time the buddy is a student in one of the teacher's other classes, perhaps a manager in a company. It's interesting to have this way to talk to various professionals that he wouldn't normally meet (and Jerry thinks it's always interesting to talk to girls).

- Twice a month, Jerry is given a phone number to a company in an English speaking country that provides information about their services along with one or more questions that he needs to ask about. For example, he once had to call Trump International Hotel in New York to find out if they allow dogs in the room. (They do if the dog is under 10 pounds but the guest must pay a non-refundable $200.) This provides a real English challenge and practice for Jerry.

- Etc, etc, etc.

All of this is possible with current technology but will never be offered by a book publisher. It just remains for the teacher to sort out his content and figure out the different ways to deliver it.

A student, going through a course like that, would have an experience they've never had before. But as I said, maybe I dream up this stuff because I'm the kind of person who is easily bored.

Two-course strategy to teaching IELTS

My strategy for teaching IELTS is:

1) ENGLISH SKILLS: If there's enough time, work to improve the student's English level through English training.

2) TEST PREP: Help the student gain an understanding of how the IELTS test functions. There are various books that deal specifically with the IELTS, how the speaking part works, the two tasks of the writing part, etc. (I always teach my students how to do a 5-paragraph essay for the 250-word Task 2.)

I think of it as two courses and think it's best taught as two courses. The first one is actually teaching English and the second one is teaching how the functions of how the IELTS test works.

ENGLISH SKILLS TRAINING

I have found that Interchange by Cambridge Universtity Press hits on almost all of the types of content that IELTS does such as the environment, education, work, news, movies, food, people, etc. In addition, it is teaching skills for reading, writing, listening, speaking. There are some examples below from New Interchange level 3.

IELTS TEST PREP SKILLS

The second course can be a short and it's rather easy for the students to get the point of how different parts of the test work. Once they have this test-prep course they should understand it. I believe this one bit of training can help a candidate improve their score by one band level. I suppose some people would question that assertion so let's look at it another way. This training can help a candidate avoid making mistakes that could cost him one band level.

Now if they should fail to get the score they want in IELTS they do not have to take this second course, the test-prep course, again. Not scoring high enough, means that their English level is not high enough and they need to work on their English skills which is a much bigger job.

For this effort I have used various test-prep books for IELTS. All of the ones I have tried have been useful but I guess I wasn't relying on them so completely, using them more as a framework to work from, as I have a lot of things about the test that I have learned and use that as a resource when teaching IELTS. So I have no strong recommendations to make on IELTS test-prep books but am interested to hear other's recommendations on those as well.

SOME TOPICS INTERCHANGE COVERS:

DESCRIBING PEOPLE
Personality types and qualities; relationships; "turn ons and turn offs". Describing personalities; expressing likes and dislikes; expressing agreement and disagreement; complaining Relative descriptions of people; making inferences. Writing about a best friend. "Friends Again – Forever!": Reading a narrative about friendship. "Personality types": Interviewing a classmate to find out about personality.

TALKING ABOUT WORK, JOBS, EMPLOYMENT, CAREERS
Unusual and exceptional jobs; job skills; summer jobs. Giving opinions about jobs; describing and comparing jobs Gerund phrases as subjects and objects; comparisons with -er / Writing about career advantages and disadvantages. "Strategies for Keeping Your Job": Reading advice about behavior in the workplace. "The best and the worst": Finding out about classmates' summer or part-time jobs.

DISCUSSING NEWS AND CURRENT EVENTS
The media; news stories; exceptional events. Describing past events; narrating a story. Listening to news broadcasts; listening to a narrative about a past event; making up stories. Writing a newspaper story. "Strange but True": Reading tabloid news stories. "A double ending": Completing a story with two different endings.

DESCRIBING COUNTRIES AND CULTURES
Cultural comparisons and culture shock; customs; tourism and travel abroad. Expressing emotions; describing expectations; talking about customs; giving advice Noun phrases containing relative living listening to descriptions of and opinions about customs. Writing advice for a visitor to your country. "Culture Check" Reading and completing a questionnaire. "Culture clash": Comparing customs in different countries.

DISCUSSING THE ENVIRONMENT AND GLOBAL PROBLEMS
The environment and world issues. Identifying and describing problems; offering solutions. Listening to people talk about problems, solutions, and accomplishments. Writing about local issues and offering solutions. "The Threat to Kiribati: Reading about an island that is sinking into the sea. "Community planner": Solving some small-scale environmental problems.

TALKING ABOUT THE PAST AND HISTORY
Historic events and people; biography; the future. Talking about historical events; giving opinions about the future. Listening to historical facts; listening for opinions about public figures; listening to predictions. Writing a biography.
"The Global Village": Reading about political and technological changes. "History buff": Taking a history quiz.

DISCUSSING PERSONAL LESSONS AND EVENTS
Milestones and turning points; behavior; regrets. Describing yourself in the past; describing regrets about the past; describing hypothetical situations. Listening to descriptions of important events; listening to regrets and explanations. "If You Could Do It All Again": Reading about three people's life choices. "If only . . . .": Imagining different possibilities for yourself.

Best book: "Interchange 3" by Cambridge University Press

Photo: Cambridge ELT Week, Guangzhou, China

Sometimes teachers ask my recommendations on textbooks. NEW INTERCHANGE - I would rate it as #1. I like it so much I became a teacher trainer for Cambridge. Rather than just calling it a coursebook I'd call it a system. There are four levels: 0-3. I like it for 6 reasons:

1. Sound teaching approach and progression with built in revision units to make sure the student learns and doesn't forget.

2. Pre-made photocopiable quizzes every 3 units for additional revision.

3. Colorful, clear uncluttered layout and good illustrations. Some of the pictures look like high level clip-art (which is a little annoying for me) but most of them are great and I recently learned were done by one of Mad Magazine's artists.

4. It has the widest range of optional support material that I have ever seen for a course:
a) Student and classroom audio tapes.
b) The teacher's book includes all the student book pages inside it so you don't have to juggle 2 books when you're teaching. The book also includes additional activity units. There are "unit summaries" for the teacher with a single list of all the vocabulary covered in the unit. (Some vocabulary is taught directly and some is taught indirectly as the student proceeds through the unit.) A list of 20 or so additional activities and games that you can toss into your course if you want.
c) Student Workbook to provide additional practice (or homework) if needed.
d) VCD and short video stories to go along with each unit. There is also a workbook to go along with the VCD and a teacher's book to support the video story teaching units.
e) The book is very easy to use but for teachers who want to improve their skills or who are not familiar with how to use the internationally accepted modern approaches there is a 15-hour teacher training course complete with video (showing real teachers in real classrooms) and workbooks. This is ideal for the Chinese teachers who are unfamiliar with these methods or native English speakers who are new to teaching or some experienced teachers who would like a refresher course.

5. Finally, I like New Interchange 3 for IELTS prep. As a former IELTS examiner and current IELTS instructor (the British Council wouldn't allow me to do both) I have searched the world for 2 years for a good course that would not only teach students English but would feature subject content related to IELTS topics, i.e.: writing, reading, speaking and listening about world social issues or writing a letter to complain or discussing important qualities in a friend. New Interchange 3 is ideal for this purpose and I suspect that if a student passes an New Interchange 3 course they could get Band 6 or 7 on the IELTS test.

6. They are not so expensive. The books were printed in China on high quality paper in full color. They are more expensive than normal coursebooks in China but much cheaper than imported books.

What do I not like about it? As I said some of the illustrations are not as good as they should be. I wish there was a self-study book with the answers for students because I often recommend IELTS students to study and sometimes they can't join a New Interchange class. Also I wish they had some interactive support on the web to help diagnose a student's needs and give additional training for them.

New Interchange doesn't present any brand new experimental methods. It has just taken all the best methods out there and put them inside of two covers. Of course, you can't please all of the people all of the time. But in just a couple years 200,000 New Interchange student books have been sold (the number of pirated books is unknown) to students in China and the number is growing quickly.

If life as a teacher "is a beach" then New Interchange is the ocean. You can get into it as deep as you want and need and feel comfortable with. It's easy for the students and teacher to kick around in the shallow parts as it is a great course simply using the student book, tapes and teacher's book without any special training. But if you and your students want to go for a good swim or even deep diving there is plenty of material which all interacts together and supports each other. Cambridge spent 7 years developing this course and it shows.

And now there is the updated version called "Interchange 3".

IELTS - A two-course strategy

I have found that New Interchange hits on almost all of the types of content that IELTS does such as the environment, education, work, news, movies, food, people, etc. In addition, it is teaching skills for reading, writing, listening, speaking.


Of course, as I have said, New Interchange is all that I have been able to find that fits the the need of teaching skills and content so well for IELTS. But I really would like to hear the titles of other books that are also good in a general way or covers some specifics. I heard Headway is similar to New Interchange although perhaps it is not as comprehensive with so much supplimental material.

TWO-COURSE STRATEGY

At this point I would also like to clarify my strategy for teaching IELTS.

1. ENGLISH SKILLS: If there's enough time, work to improve the student's English level through English training such as we have been discussing.

2. TEST PREP: Help the student gain an understanding of how the IELTS test functions. There are various books that deal specifically with the IELTS, how the speaking part works, the two tasks of the writing part, etc. (I always teach my students how to do a 5-paragraph essay for the 250-word Task 2.)

I think of it as two courses and think it's best taught as two courses. The first one is actually teaching English and the second one is teaching how the functions of the IELTS test works. The second one can be a short course and it's rather easy for the students to get the point of how different parts of the test work. Once they have this test-prep course they should understand it.
I believe this one bit of training can help a candidate improve their score by one band level. I suppose some people would question that assertion so let's look at it another way. This training can help a candidate avoid making mistakes that could cost him one band level.

Now if they should fail to get the score they want in IELTS they do not have to take this second course, the test-prep course, again. Not scoring high enough, means that their English level is not high enough and they need to work on their English skills which is a much bigger job.

For this effort I have used various test-prep books for IELTS. All of the ones I have tried have been useful but I guess I wasn't relying on them so completely, using them more as a framework to work from, as I have a lot of things about the test that I have learned and use that as a resource when teaching IELTS. So I have no strong recommendations to make on IELTS test-prep books but am interested to hear other's recommendations on those as well.