Textbooks

There are so many texbooks for the teachers and the students and sometimes it is not easy to choose the right one. What kind of books do you like to use? Do you use the books which were written in your country or do you prefer books from Great Britain? What is the most important thing which decides for the books?

In our school, we are using English textbooks called Cambridge English Worldwide. They were written by Andrew Littlejohn and Diana Hicks and published by Cambridge University Press.

What I really like is the fact that we can add a lot of topics according to our needs. The books are thin with a lot of pictures and a lot of things to do. What is really good for the teachers is the MAP at the beginning of the book which shows curriculum links, topics, language focus and optional units. Every Theme is followed with a song. The lyrics are at the back of the book. It is very important that the topics are interesting for the teenagers but they are not undercutting. They make the young people think about serious topics as well as they give them a lot of fun.

It is easy to combine the book with the projects in the eTwinning and it is very important for us.

The books were published in 1998 for the first time and there was no eTwinning at that time. The thing which is included in the book is so called THE PARCEL OF ENGLISH. I remember when I started teaching from that book that we were in contact with a school in Egypt which was using the same textbook and we used to send them a parcel with English letters and some pictures and photos twice a year. When I remeber that time I think that Cambridge English Worldwide was one of the first swallows in international cooperation. I am happy that we can use the eTwinning web page now, it is more flexible and of course cheaper, too.

What about your textbooks? Are you satisfied with them?