The textbook I will be using this semester is the Four Corners book by Jack C. Richards and David Bohlke. I am using the second edition level 2 book. I will be using this book in order to frame my lessons but not use it to solely teach the lesson. This book introduces the vocabulary for each unit and is age-appropriate for my students.
The book I have chosen has a wide variety of activities. There are class activities to do as a group, one on one activities to do with a partner, as well as individual work. One group activity I think would be fun to do is, role-play. In Unit 5 of my book, students are asked to separate into two groups. Group A is supposed to ass Group B how they feel, and Group B is supposed to pretend they have a health problem and tell the other group about it using expressions learned earlier in the book. This is a good way for them to talk with each other as well as practice their English in a fun way.
This book has many good things as well as a few that are not the best. My biggest flaw in this book would be that it doesn’t not provide detailed explanations on the information being given. For example, it does not have clear vocabulary list and does not explain how the grammatical structures work. As the teacher this book would just be good for being a guide as far as structuring the lecture and explaining the lesson, I would do most of the work and planning. Another thing this book does not do is it does not encourage the students to compare between their L1 and English. As far as culture in this textbook, it does not ask the students to look at their own culture or compare between the two cultures. It does, however, gives examples in ways they can use English beyond the L2 Classroom
Overall, this book will be great for being a baseline of lesson plans each unit. It has many different activities and comes with an online self-study link which can be beneficial for students to practice with. This book will be a great resource and starting point for creating an interactive lesson as it provides very basic activities that can be adapted for multiple scenarios.
Sample Chapter
Unit 5: Health
The goals of this unit are to identify the parts of the body, say how you are feeling, healthy habits, and wishing someone well. The goals are very easily laid out on the front of the unit page. In this unit, the students will be using imperatives, adverbs of manners, and HOW questions. This goes along very well with the goals and objectives for this unit because it is asking the student to describe how they are feeling. Using the ‘How’ word allows the students to gain an extended form of communication with native speakers.
This unit starts of very simple with activities that ask the students to match vocabulary words to the corresponding picture, circle the correct verb forms. As the unit goes on, it becomes more difficult where in the end its asking students to read articles and answer question correlating to it, think about their own lives and write about their own situations.
The activities of this book are relatively controlled in the sense that if the students are expected to do group work, they are told exactly what to do. However, they do have free range when working in groups in the sense that the students are asked to look at their own lives and how the lesson applies to them. In unit 5, one activity that demonstrates this is where the students are asked to work in pairs and talk about how they manage stress. The next activity is to ask their partner for tips on managing stress.
this unit allows the student to do an array of different activities including multiple writing, reading, speaking, and listening activities that all broaden the students’ knowledge on the topic.