Transcript (auto-generated):
Hello, I'm Patrick Sherriff and I'm going to talk about why I use a textbook for teaching English.
You may think that textbooks are old-fashioned and a bit fuddy-duddy.
Maybe you have a memory, like I do, of secondary school and very tedious textbooks that you go through line by line.
Certainly that's how they do it in Japan.066
some of the more boring teachers just go through a textbook line by line or read it out and that's not what I'm talking about if you have a good textbook that's a topic of another podcast maybe what makes a good textbook but just take that for now if you have a reasonable textbook it gives you a lot of freedom in the classroom and a number of benefits okay
So I'm going to go through them.
I wrote about this in the freetalkteflsubstack.com number 18, bulletin 18, I wrote about this earlier in the week but let me just say in my own words what I'm thinking
and if you think it's worthwhile go back and read the whole thing but anyway let me just say okay there are a number of benefits I think I had seven but I'll just reiterate what they are there's no better way to ensure that you're teaching what you need to be teaching by having a textbook put it this way if you don't have a textbook you tend to repeat yourself you might teach the same lesson twice or
It's just a lot more work keeping up with a kind of syllabus, even if you do have a syllabus.
You know, you don't know what you're going to be teaching and you might think, well, that's good.
I can vary my lessons.
Yeah, it is good, but it's a lot more work and you might find that you're repeating yourself again and again.
If you have a textbook, you can see, oh, wait a minute, we've covered this topic three times, we don't need to do it again, or move on.
Or you can skip things in a textbook.
But having that textbook gives you a framework so you know what you should be doing.
You know, that's what a syllabus is, you know what you should be doing.
You can choose to skip ahead or ignore something, or redo something if you think your students didn't get it.
But it gives you the structure and the freedom to make that choice, and make a good choice So, it gives you some structure, okay?
A related point, if you have a textbook, it massively reduces the preparation time that you need for every lesson
Now of course you should probably think through what you're going to do with each lesson and having a textbook gives you, well, gives you a lot of power because you can always fall back on what's in the textbook and in fact I would recommend you do.
But, you know, the alternative, I mean, I have taught classes where I didn't have a textbook and it becomes really onerous, you know, really hard work trying to find useful stuff on the internet.
I mean, the internet's wonderful, but a lot of the free stuff is rubbish.
Or, it's not rubbish, but finding stuff that is good is really time-consuming.
And frankly,
You know, it's often not as good.
So if you've got it all collected together, collated and written by an expert, you know, somebody who knows what they're doing for the textbook, you know, why not use that?
You know, you don't have to reinvent the wheel every time you teach the same grammar point, you know, find it in the textbook, find a good one that's good and use it.
So that's, you know, it gives you, like I say, it gives you back your evenings actually using textbook and that's, that's worth it.
Other advantages for the students, they get a great advantage because they can see what's going on in the classroom, especially for the parents if they're paying for kids.
They can see what their kid is learning and that's good.
They know what you should be doing and they can check that their own kid is learning it, which you should be confident about and you should let the parents do that.
That's a great advantage.
Also, some students want to work ahead, especially adults.
If you have a textbook, they can work ahead and prepare.
If you're always winging it, if they never know what the next lesson's going to be, it's not as good, right?
What else?
What else can I say?
Yeah, just generally having a textbook makes your lessons and your school appear much more professional.
That was the reason when I first started out I used Oxford University Let's Go books for kids and what did I use for adults?
What was it called?
Something like That's Life or English for Life.
It was quite a good series.
But these days I have my own textbooks which you can find on the website actually if you
freetalktefl.substack.com and click on the top there's a section called books you can see what I've got they might be good for you but they certainly... I recommend having a look at it and imagining you writing the textbook yourself make it the way you want it
As that was often the case, I would, you know, using these Oxford University Press textbooks, they were good but they didn't have everything I wanted in a lesson and I would use like half of it or a reading and some of the questions and it never really, it wasn't structured well for what I needed.
The let's go is very good, has a good syllabus but again it doesn't, it was quite hard to use one lesson
Sorry, one point in each lesson.
It wasn't clear.
Well, anyway, I don't want to complain about that, but for me it wasn't exactly right, and so I rewrote it using what I'd learned from other textbooks and other materials.
At some point you'll be able to do that, and that's really valuable from a business point of view.
If you write the textbook you can then sell it to your students, which is what I do, and that's a nice little earner rather than sending all the money to the University of Oxford or whatever company you buy from.
If you write the textbook, you have literally written the book on speaking English.
That's a great marketing tool to attract more students to your school.
So, there are many reasons why I think you can still use a textbook.
And, you know, you don't have to use it for every lesson or every point or read through the textbook.
Please don't sit there reading every single word.
But the most important thing is it gives you something to work from, a framework, and you can either dive in and follow it exactly or step back and invent your own material to supplement the textbook.
but you don't have to, that's the point, it's there and provides structure which is really important and it just feeds back and makes you a better teacher makes your lessons better so I recommend it completely
OK, I've said my piece, I'm going to shut up now.
So if you want any more information go to freetalktefl.substack.com Every Monday I do give out a free lesson so you can see what it's like.
I think next time will be for little kids, it'll be a kindergarten lesson I think.
But I do something for all age groups at all times.
OK, thank you very much and I will talk to you next Friday.
Have a good week.
Good luck teaching.
Bye.
