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ESL forum >
Teaching material > Beginners v Elementary Textbooks
Beginners v Elementary Textbooks
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colibrita
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Beginners v Elementary Textbooks
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Hi Everyone
Just wondering your opinion on this: how successfully can total beginners be taught by going straight to an elementary textbook instead of starting them on a beginners � one?
Have a lovely weekend!
Colibrita
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18 Sep 2010
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blunderbuster
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Colibrita,
I went from first semester Spanish at university straight to third semester. That was okay, a little harder at first, though. I was 25 when I did it and it happened because I wanted to. Total beginners, I don �t know, I �d give them at least 4-5 90-minute lessons......
Regards
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18 Sep 2010
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anitarobi
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Depends on the group and situation. I �ve had a bad experience with forcing the beginners course, because people got demotivated (they passively actually knew most of the stuff and felt they lost time and money, although I enriched it with extra wss), and a good one with using the elementary book immediately, but a colleague of mine had quite the opposite - a group who claimed to be �false beginners � and wanted the elementary course, and then got really stuck on basics, because they just thought they knew stuff... Perhaps trying a simple placement test would help you decide - maybe give them the final test from the beginners book to see if they cover at least 70% of it well... |
18 Sep 2010
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crisholm
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Well, you could do it, and fill in all the gaps you discover they have with the wonderful worksheets on this site - it really depends on your students, as anitarobi said - if they are willing to bridge the gap and bright enough they will, and they might even get bored with a starter �s course; in my experience, good placement tests are difficult to find, since they don �t account for different approaches to vocabulary and grammar and you would have to fill in anyway - of course you would detect people who have no idea, but that �s all, I �m afraid. |
19 Sep 2010
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colibrita
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Thanks for responding to my thread everyone. I �ve always skipped beginners � courses till now as they generally seem so simple, perhaps even patronising, and put my students straight into an elementary course. But as you say it really depends on the student as some real beginners are just overwhelmed by the elementary textbooks.
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20 Sep 2010
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