Not that impressive
Teaching February 21st. 2008, 11:19pmOur school director told us that for the month of February, we’d be using a series of books popularized in Seoul. They were focuses on TOEFL IBT, which is my specialty in the school for middle school and upper level students. The difference was we’d be starting this with elementary school students, and that we’d only have a month to finish the entire book.
Any logic involved in this decision wasn’t run by me first, let me assure you. The book she chose seemed decent, if we had twice the time to teach it, it might even be “moderately good”. I should learn my lesson about judging books…
On the very first day, the VERY first set of examples had a typographical error. The teacher’s answers has mistakes. Sometimes questions don’t correspond to anything in the text, as if they edited the book heavily and didn’t correct all the subsequent changes. There are really lame pattern exercises that waste students time. The other material would be suited for a class twice the length I have to teach, so I spend most of the time skipping pages and assigning it for homework.
Today, the publisher of the book came to show us the “Online” portion of the book. This was completely unannounced. I had set aside time to grade papers, as I needed to turn them in before the secretary ran out of things to hand back to students. This guy shows up and does a demo on the school’s computers. Instead of doing it with one computer and the rest of us watching his tutorial, he tries to have us all log into his system and try it for himself. Instead of a quick five minute demo, I lose 20 minutes of paper grading time. Not a nice start to my day.
I admire the effort of creating an online component to an otherwise subpar book, but this was a huge waste of time. His demo didn’t work. He wanted us to record the sample dialogs for the students to listen to. I’m not sure, but I think that would be the book PUBLISHERS responsibility, not mine. I didn’t see any cash being offered as an enticement to get me to do voice work. I’m not offering my voice to some random shady guy that tells me to record something for him. Also, if FOUR teachers are supposed to record in a room right next to each other, how will that even be comprehensible to a listener? Think about the limitations of the system a little bit please?
His website to show off what the student would do to submit an answer didn’t work. There is no way for us to know what he was going to do with any of that information, and no way for US to utilize or grade the materials either.Maybe there was, but once he started blaming the slow computer connection on what was clearly a poorly designed website, I got tired of his excuses. If you don’t have a working demo ready, don’t call a meeting. Don’t these people have ANY business sense?
I took up the issue of the very poor editing and typographical errors in his book. He gave me a smarmy answer about how they’d catch and fix the errors. I wish I had kept up with my hobby of catching the errors in the book and circling them in red pen. Then I would have had something to throw at his head when he said this. Claiming to improve future editions is fine and dandy, but seeing as I never intend to EVER choose this book series again, it’s moot.
However, I think the “program” has a little more lasting power than I knew about before today. I’m a little nervous some sort of deal has made them a partner to our school. Our school’s logo is now featured on their site, and if that means I’m going to have to continue to work with this awful program I’m going to be a bit annoyed. I haven’t seen any advanced copies of the next book in the series to see if it gets better, but I really want to hold onto the autonomy that I usually am given to choose books at our school.
4 Responses to “Not that impressive”
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February 22nd, 2008 at 10:49 am
For intermediate and advanced students this is a great book series from Compass Publishing: Building Skills for the TOEFL iBT: Beginning (Paperback)by Adam Worcester (Author), Lark Bowerman (Author), Eric Williamson (Author), Developing Skills for the iBT TOEFL: Intermediate CD Set (Audio CD) by Paul Edmunds (Author), Nancie McKinnon (Author), Mastering Skills for the TOEFL iBT: Advanced CD set (Audio CD) by Moraig Macgillivray (Author), Patrick Yancey (Author), Casey Malarcher (Author), outside of using actual ETS materials.
I spent what seems like days inside English Plus and Kim and Johnson’s trying to find decent replacement texts for the mistake-filled, rip-off one’s my franchise is supposed to be using. You would think that with what seems like billions of English textbooks out there for ESL use, that there would be a set or two that could stand on their own. The series I use most often are Magic and English Time, Get Together, and American Start with English in conjunction with each other.
I want to be able to support my fanchise’s, or another franchise partner’s, books, but they aren’t worth wiping my rear end with. Good texts and materials are half the battle when teaching any subject. It’s just too bad that the South Korean system is more about making money than in actually providing a quality education for the future of this country.
The U.S. system also has many faults as well though. I still can’t believe all the class time I lost teaching that much needed skill of cursive writing in today’s keyboard-driven society, or that the educational system hasn’t kept up with the changing times. I don’t have many answers, but I know staying stuck in the past (because that is the way it has always been done) isn’t good for the kids’ future or the country’s.
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Building Skills for the TOEFL iBT: Beginning
I’ve taught this series! I picked it out for last year’s classes. While the content in all the books is good, the layout and format is some of the worst I’ve ever encountered. The book is designed by a madman, and everyone that had to use this series disliked the organization. If they reorganized this series, I’d TOTALLY use it again.
Unfortunately, it seems we’ll be forced to use the terrible book series I’ve been using this month long term. We’re partners now. FUCK.
February 23rd, 2008 at 3:07 am
I agree. The layouts for this and most other ESL books suck big time. However, I like this book because it doesn’t totally overwhelm the students like ETS’s materials do, and the reading and listening sections introduce students to a very wide variety of collegiate English words while utilizing various English accents for the listening section. Mostly I use it to give them practice and confidence before I turn them loose with actual ETS books. Also, I teach in a very poor area, so the reasonable price is a selling point for me (coupled with a ton of material).
In the beginning book, most of the readings are three to four simple paragraphs that run the gamut of extreme courses a student might encounter in colleges of various specialties, and each topic is a jumping off point to discuss these unique situations that most students in Daejeon have no idea even exist yet as they are still young middle school and elementary school students with little knowledge of life outside this town or their local PC Bangs.
For sections that I don’t use, or are useless, in texts, I just tell the students to “X” them out. They love that. There is one section in American Start With English 3 that deals with telling time with out-dated terminology like twenty to three or a quarter after five. Absolutely useless in the digital age when it is 2:40 or 5:15. Come on…a quarter for kids used to won, pesos, rubles, or yen. Unbelievable.
If I wasn’t leaving the profession (and South Korea) six months from Monday, I would actually look into trying to merge some of the better books into one super book. I wonder how hard it would be since most of them are published by Oxford.
The reason I returned for a second year at my hagwon was because I could pick and choose my own texts and sources to use in class without having to have the franchise pressure me into using their pitiful excuses for learning materials in my class. I even use the Amazing Race Asia to show how important knowing, and using, more than one language is in this world of ours. But outside forces, and the wonderful South Korean legal system’s (much better than the North’s) treatment of foreigners here over their own, are forcing me out this business, and country, for the sake of my health due to the fear of incarceration for sticking up and protecting my students, fellow teachers, and boss from an awful situation that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
February 24th, 2008 at 12:37 am
Wow, so it’s the same way in Korea, too. I sat through a similar vendor demo while on a teaching observation. It was part of a high school social studies department meeting. The website didn’t work and the textbook rep did not have decent answers for any of the teachers’ questions. Admittedly, the crowd was hostile to begin with (at after school meetings on Fridays, teachers are not in pleasant moods) but even so, vendors should make sure they’re prepared.