Animating your Coursebook
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Made with wordle.net
What is the secret message in the Wordle above?
Have you guessed it?
If you are pretty happy following your coursebook page after page and exercise after exercise without omitting anything, then this post may read somewhat strange to you.
If on the other hand, you have spent the best part of every book exhibition hunting for the perfect course book for your class, here is what the message above says:
“There is no one ideal coursebook! Even the one you yourself wrote for last year’s class will probably not be good enough for next year’s class!”
Resign to this idea
no coursebook is perfect!
You might be interested in exploring a principled way of looking at and ‘fixing’ coursebook faults.
But First things First!
Learn to …
- · Analyze it
- · Evaluate it
- · Keep the good stuff
- · Throw out the bad stuff
Then, learn to…
Animate it!
You might ask “Why? Is is dead?” (yep – pretty much 🙂 )
Photo Credit: Hartwig HKD via Compfight
Well, if your course book is not motivating your learners to talk, if learning English is a chore for them and for you, if your learners cannot contain their yawns, even if they are motivated adults, if they have better things to do in class, like send text messages or tease their friends, you might as well have brought a dead cat in to teach your lesson!
The ideas in my presentation are good for making a coursebook come alive but, hopefully, you can find them useful as ideas for overall good materials design whether it involves adapting material you have found or material you are creating from scratch.
Here is a short version of my seminar which I presented as a Pecha Kucha at the Virtual Round Table Conference in 2010
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHbzOdhKzUo&w=100&h=100]
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29 Responses
Hi Marisa,
Looks I missed a great workshop.Great powerpoint presentation, great tools… I loved it very much and I’m so glad that I have a chance to meet a like-minded person via twitter. This feeling is great. This is the comfort zone we are enjoying very much nowadays.
Congratulations and keep inspiring us.
Eva Büyüksimkeşyan
Hi Eva,
Presenting it at ISTEK was great but it meant I missed two slots with concurrent workshops by friends I would really have liked to see!!!
I am glad this made sense even to someone who was not there – I was a bit worried about it.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
Marisa
[riffly_video]3355A4363DF611DFBCA7C751272CF880[/riffly_video]
Jason!
What a great way to leave me a comment – I was hoping someone would soon!
Thanks for positive feedback here and on Twitter – I was worried this might look a bit thin as there were workshop tasks around it…
Anyway, I thought I should point out that these may look nice as guidelines for animating material but they are not bad to remember when you are writing original material, too!
Sorry you missed ISTEK – was looking forward to meeting you too – but there will be more opportunities I hope!
🙂
Marisa
A really useful presentation, Marisa. Wish I could have been there. Thanks for sharing it now.
Johanna
Thanks for comment, Johanna – I have a feeling that it won’t be long before we meet at some other conference!
This is great, Marisa. Thank you.
I use a lot of power points in class for lots of the reasons you mention and also because it give me more control over pace and gets faces up out of books so I can sense comprehension (or lack of it) better
But sometimes find them a bit time consuming to make and I’d love it if publishers produced sets of animated powerpoints to go with course books. Do you and others agree?
Hi Vicki
I like your idea of powerpoints.
To get faces out of books you need some other material – without powerpoint, you end up having to produce lots of other bits and pieces, lots of it probably on handout (more trees dying by the minute!)
Publisher prepared of animated ppts sounds fabulous – as long as they don’t follow the tradition of the book but take a more creative plunge into materials design.
T-prepared ppts are fabulous too – the teacher knows what she needs – right?
I will confess – and not in a whisper – that overhead projectors do just as fabulous a job and sometimes they are easier to handle – just a turn on/off function and you are in business. Not all schools have laptops and data projectors available in every class but OHPs are quite cheap.
[…] Achievement Really an Achievement? – Bridging Differences – Education Week 6 Tweets Animating your Coursebook | Marisa Constantinides – TEFL Matters I presented this workshop at ISTEK Schools International Conference in Istanbul on March 28 […]
Dear Marisa,
I was there and I remember you asking “Draw the image that comes on your mind when I say coursebooks.” The very first thing on my mind was “Boring” but I hesitated to shout out for it may sound weird. But I was quite amazed when I heard other people saying “Boring!” and drew a bored face! I really enjoyed the session not only it was useful and inspiring with a lot of new ideas but also the way you shared your knowledge and experience with us. I am really very pleased to meet you in person:)
Dear Esra,
It was great to meet you too and thanks for sharing your experience of attending my workshop.
I hope the ideas help you draw an excited face next time!
🙂
Great work , Marisa…. you`re absolutely right in the fact that, as teachers, we ought to supplement our coursebook with interactive activities that come either from technology or from communcation games. … so as to promote authentic interaction in our Ss` TL….
Dear Vivi,
Thank you for commenting here – I know for a fact that you do your very best to make your coursebook come alive!
🙂
Dear Marissa,
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to have access to this highly informative and important presentation. No doubt , how beneficial it is for us teachers even while selecting the right coursebook for our learners.I’d like to have your permission to share the presentation with my lead .
Regards,
Sunita
@Sunita,
Thanks for commenting – you might find this useful for your Module I DELTA exam
Of course I don’t mind you sharing it but not sure what you mean by your “lead”…
Good evening Marissa,
I meant my supervisor:).
Thank you so much and good luck for your presentation at Harrogate. i’ll be following online.
Best Regards,
Sunita
Dear Marisa,
I couldn’t have the chance to attend your presentation at ISTEK(no tickets left:), thanks for sharing it with us. It has many practical ideas in it, I’ll share it with my colleagues at Bahcesehir K12 Schools.
All the Best,
Candan
Dear Candan,
I was a pleasure to meet you at ISTEK and thanks ever so much for your kind comment. Please send me any feedback and comments from your colleagues.
Best
Marisa
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[…] Your Textbook Come Alive: Animating your Coursebook is the title of an amazing post, and slideshow presentation, by EFL teacher Marisa Constantinides. […]
[…] Animating Your Coursebook by Marisa Constantinides- I caught this presentation at ISTEK. Marisa (@Marisa_C) provides great research and ideas for bringing the coursebook to life. Some ideas include improvisation activities, digital storytelling resources, and adding creative captions! She provides so many ideas that really you will have to read the post about it. […]
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[…] Animating Your Coursebook is a slideshow by Marisa Constantinides that I’ve posted about in the past. […]
Marisa,
Thank you for sharing this presentation. I teach at British Side in Istanbul, but I missed your live version. This sparked some more energy in my EFL brain center and now I have you to thank for that. I wrote out four new ideas for activities with specifics, so your efforts were worthwhile. If I ever venture to Athens, I hope we can meet over some good Greek coffee to exchange ideas and experiences. Always good to meet more EFL colleagues!
Kind regards,
Franklin
[…] Marisa Constantinides – TEFL Matters – Animating your Coursebook Source: marisaconstantinides.edublogs.org […]
Thanks Marisa… so interesting to see you in action! I am such a newbie to blogging… so learning loads here!
M x
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[…] Marisa Constantinides – TEFL Matters » Blog Archive » Animating your Coursebook(The author) presented this workshop at ISTEK Schools International Conference in Istanbul on March 28 2010. The topic is a real favourite of mine and forms the basis of a lot of training work I do – teachers, after all, do have to use coursebooks, despite the arguments against them, and they have to have the tools to make the most of them.So, without further ado, here is my powerpoint presentation, with a little bit of added zest here and there for the benefit of those who were not at that fabulous conference!!! I would appreciate any feeback to the ideas in this presentation – whether you were there or not, please write comments, especially if you have tried any of the ideas in the powerpoint presentation. […]
Thanks Marisa,
I am from Kyrgyzstan and found this PPT from our webinar resources of Shaping the way teaching English and it is so useful and interesting. I got new ideas how to enrich out textbooks and boring text.
Could you please inform me if there will be other your interesting presentations.
Thanks,
Gulnara
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