The end is near - Next year's textbooks.

[jehall]

First off, I teach grade 3 and 4 elementary, so this if for people that teach those grades too.

So the teachers in my school had a meeting today to pick out the textbooks for next year. They asked me to look at the English ones. I walked into a room and what did I see. Over 80 textbooks spread across the table. Well, these were for grades 3-6 so it was really about 20 books for each grade. But still... They wanted me to look through them and help narrow down the list to about 5 companies. So if all the schools are doing this (which I think they are) then there will be 20 textbooks spread out across the country with different chapters. Of course there's some overlap. Every grade 4 book has a chapter about telling time, but other than a handful of chapters, they vary across all the books. This means less people on this site will have the same book so there will be less people who can collaborate together.

And on another note, the books sucked. None of them had 16 lessons. The most common number was 12, (which is what I guess we have now if you take out the 4 review chapters). Many even had 10 lessons where you are expected to do 6 periods on each lesson. I don't know about you but the 4 periods we do now for each lesson is enough for my kids. Maybe some people will disagree. Also they cut back on reading and writing. Many writing sections were just fill in the missing letters. And all of the books had less game cards in the back of them. I don't play all the games suggested in the current textbook, but the cards are great for helping the kids learn vocabulary and setting up different games. Also many of the books are going for a weird "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" vibe mixing in real people into animated surroundings on all of the pages. It's weird.

Anyone else had any experiences or thoughts on these new books.

On a final note, one of the books has a chapter called "Where is a butterfle?" where this "butterfle" character is indeed a butterfly. I really hope that's supposed to be his name.

[allansuwon]

Hi, I've also wondered about this problem.  Hopefully this site will just reorganize itself according to the text book because I would hate to see people stop using this collaborative site. 

[moys]

First off, I teach grade 3 and 4 elementary, so this if for people that teach those grades too.

So the teachers in my school had a meeting today to pick out the textbooks for next year. They asked me to look at the English ones. I walked into a room and what did I see. Over 80 textbooks spread across the table. Well, these were for grades 3-6 so it was really about 20 books for each grade. But still... They wanted me to look through them and help narrow down the list to about 5 companies. So if all the schools are doing this (which I think they are) then there will be 20 textbooks spread out across the country with different chapters. Of course there's some overlap. Every grade 4 book has a chapter about telling time, but other than a handful of chapters, they vary across all the books. This means less people on this site will have the same book so there will be less people who can collaborate together.

And on another note, the books sucked. None of them had 16 lessons. The most common number was 12, (which is what I guess we have now if you take out the 4 review chapters). Many even had 10 lessons where you are expected to do 6 periods on each lesson. I don't know about you but the 4 periods we do now for each lesson is enough for my kids. Maybe some people will disagree. Also they cut back on reading and writing. Many writing sections were just fill in the missing letters. And all of the books had less game cards in the back of them. I don't play all the games suggested in the current textbook, but the cards are great for helping the kids learn vocabulary and setting up different games. Also many of the books are going for a weird "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" vibe mixing in real people into animated surroundings on all of the pages. It's weird.

Anyone else had any experiences or thoughts on these new books.

On a final note, one of the books has a chapter called "Where is a butterfle?" where this "butterfle" character is indeed a butterfly. I really hope that's supposed to be his name.

Which one did you end up choosing?  I have to choose as well this week.  Let me know.

[moys]

I really like the Daegyo textbook.  My co-teacher likes YBM Si-sa, let's see who wins.  I saw the butterfle mistake, hilarious.  We had a good laugh about that one.

[jehall]

All I have right now are my notes that I took. Since all the books have the same title "Elementary English 4", I wrote down the first author listed on the cover of each book. I found a lot of the publisher names to be so similar. I liked the book with "윤여범" listed as the first author. It had 15 lessons and many cards at the back of the book for games.

Yeah, I'm still in shock over the "butterfle" mistake. How can some of these books not have at least one native speaker as an author? That just seems like common sense to me to have both native Korean and native English speaking authors when trying to write a text to teach English to Koreans.

[drkhv7]

One of the textbooks I saw (maybe YBM???) had 2 native speaking authors.  One was Isaac, a Korean TV personality, and the other was some guy whose name I didn't recognize.  Neither of them had a grad degree in curr. development or education unfortunately...

[jehall]

Yeah a few of the 20 books I looked through had English authors. I don't think it's that important that they have masters in education since the Korean authors usually do. It would just help prevent "Butterfle" mistakes from happening.

[lindsayforrest]

Struggling to choose the texts as well..... anybody have any thoughts as to if there is going to be a most common one??
Also, I was told not to choose for the grade 5 and 6 classes I teach.  Is the old curriculum staying the same for those grades (making the new texts optional)?
I'm feeling very confused..... 

[SoKo]

I have also been asked by my co teacher to help choose the new textbooks but only for 3rd and 4th grade. 5th and 6th grade will be changing next year. I think there edging towards the YBM books?? Not sure if thats good or bad. Im so confused as I had about 30+ books in front of me.

My co teacher is really stressing out as it will be her who will get into trouble if the books are not up to standard! (Her words). We have until Friday as my other co teacher is absent so we have extra time i've been informed.

When did your school have to make its decision and any more information on which books to choose would help alot especially if theres a common/ popular textbook!

Thanks

[Hollylove]

I've been looking at them with my co-teacher and I really like the 한순애 (Han Soon-ae) book the cd is adorable easy, fun and interesting to watch

[Hollylove]

I liked the book with "윤여범" listed as the first author. It had 15 lessons and many cards at the back of the book for games.

but we actually decided to go with the book Jehall listed here. The cd was really good. It came with a lot of supplementary material that could be tailored to either higher level or lower level students and the layout of the book was nice (when they teach they different topics)

[teacher_del]

We have to make our final choice by tomorrow evening.  Between the Will of the Co-Teachers and me, we've narrowed it down to three: 

1)  the super-adorable 대교-published books.  I find the book is okay and the CD-ROM is really appealing.

2)  the Happy House books.  Overall, we all agree that we like the books, but I think the CD-ROM interface is horrible to work with and I'm not a big fan of the audio content.

3)  the 천재교육-published books.  I haven't had a chance to look at these.  The first author is 김덕기.


My head is swimming from all the material we've gone through in the past two hours.

[pwhite]

I posted this in the theory subforum.

I'm not sure, but has the Korean national government decided that next year, individual schools will have the choice to select English text books?

The week before Chuseok I had the chance to investigate roughly 28 different books for 3rd and 4th graders.  I did this on my own, even though it had no impact on which texts would be selected.  If the curriculum fractures, it doesn't bode well for this site.

Even though a large number of books were presented, each had its short comings or otherwise left me disappointed. Initially I blamed the fact that 90% of the authorship is Korean, with a single Western name printed in Latin characters on the cover, but the similarity in structure in the majority of the texts suggests that all of them were written according to a government specification.  I had hoped to find a book which would address most of the issues that have cropped out from the current curriculum, but most of them reinforced the current "Zeeto" standard.

While I don't presume to know the perfect system or systems of English education, I have only taught a couple years in Korea, but I do believe that every native English teacher here in Korea has identified some issue they wish were addressed.  I can read antimoon.com all day and accept that text books are a crutch for poor teachers, but each year 700+ native speakers come here to the front lines with substandard equipment.  We can instantly identify problems and see the same mistakes cemented in the system and perpetuated to the next generation.  Private academies will not be going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, much of their success is thanks to the use of native speakers in the creation of text books.

The only way I see any change is through an extensive critique of the system with simple hints on how to improve it.  For example, the lack of proper handwriting stroke order instruction severely inhibits students' writing abilities later.  The use of words that Korean has borrowed from English for phonics drills does not teach correct phonemes.  The fact that the English text books have fewer English words than Korean words on every page is not encouraging.  What can I say about roleplay, but that I never do it because I have more effective and interesting speaking activities.

The list goes on, but ultimately I think a text book written by native speakers and used by native speakers is the solution.

[roymelling]

I've found that even though the kids are shy about role play they love to do it.  Maybe, there are more effective speaking activities but I always try to keep things nice and simply to encourage student confidence.

Anyway, the book I put in first place was the one by Frances Sohn.

The question about 'why are all the authors Korean?' because we are in Korea.  In the States the authors would be American.

Anyway, good luck with the new textbooks.

[nzer-in-gyeongnam]

For those of you who seem to think that a change in the texts will not bode well for this website, take a look at the middle school section. All middle schools have different textbooks, as do all high schools.

Basically you must go through and pick and choose what is relevant to what you are teaching. Its just a case of look and evaluate.

As for the book choices... there are many different choices, and they are all rather confusing. The fact that they spent so much time and money revamping the textbooks that are used this year in elementary schools for grades 3 and 4, to find they are going to individually chosen books for schools next year, it makes not sense to me.

Having said that, when choosing the books there are a couple of things you and your co-teachers need to take into consideration.
1) What level are my students? Will the level that the books are set at challenge them all?
2) What is the material like? Does it present in an appealing manner for what our students like?
3) What is the content like? Are there grammatical errors which could confuse students later on?
4) What is the target vocab which is to be taught like? Will this vocab benefit our students later on?
5) Do WE like the textbooks? Remember, you will be using and enforcing them. You'll always have a student or two who doesn't like the books, but you've got to like them.
6) What do our students think of the books? If you're having trouble narrowing down the books you and your co-teacher/s like, have a handful of your students have a look at the books you've narrowed it down to and have them tell you which ones they like. That might help you decide which one will be best to go with.

Good luck guys. Its not easy. I had this discussion with my co-teachers at my elementary schools a few weeks ago. We followed those simple steps and each school chose books that they liked. I can't recall now which ones they were... just that (as someone pointed out earlier) they all have the 'generic' English 3 or English 4 on them.