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Message board > "It īs in print, it must be correct"
"It īs in print, it must be correct"
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roneydirt
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"It īs in print, it must be correct"
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A famous statement from some co-workers. If you believe it than you maybe teaching incorrectly to your students. The mistakes in textbooks has gotten so bad that there are areas now charging fines to publishers for their mistakes, but still approving the use of those textbooks. As an example a well known publisher of textbooks put out a series of books in 2008 with not a few mistakes but 86,000 mistakes in that series and it was a basic math series of textbooks. It īs Spanish version was even worst. My full time job at this time is for a school owned by a well known school book publisher and the textbook we are using is a very poor copy of the original with the exact same cover on it. It is a problem we have to face while teaching, publishers or printers mistakes. So remember just because it is in print does not make it correct. Verify. |
6 Dec 2010
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zailda
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Only God is perfect. But I might be mistaken, of course.
EDIT: As foreigners teaching English as a second language, of course we check. At least 10% of my salary is spent in books. I𠐔e got the entire collection from Raymond Murphy and tons of books from Cambridge and Oxford Press. Of course there are mistakes, that𠏋 why we use grammar books (plural) and reliable grammar sites.
In Brazil some schools don㦙 allow teachers to use any worksheets without books reference. Here we have to present our own work, but in Brazil some teachers are only allowed to use sentences, examples and even exercises taken from books � and they have to give the sources. |
6 Dec 2010
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Errie
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Roneydirt, I must agree with you. Many English teachers here (Japanese) are totally relying on grammar books. Well, I can īt blame them of course. They are very surprised and angry, frustated you name it when I tell them to not always rely on them. A lot of teachers were asking me to check their work before teaching. I think the publishers have to do what they are payed for but it seems that even publishers go for the money instead of quality.
@zailda: You are very very wrong about God, but that īs another discussion  |
6 Dec 2010
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PhilipR
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To err is human (and to forgive should be human as well).
Even the major publishing houses (aka the Big Four) have the occasional typo or mistake. But if you buy their books, you īre usually more than okay. The problem seems to be more with local/regional/second-rate fly-by-night publishers who copy, rip off of make up very bad content themselves. The Gudingliesh company once published a book with 3 million mistakes. Believe it or not!
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6 Dec 2010
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nombasa
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I was once doing the bible reading in church and was a bit confused when I came to a bit which read, "sexual imortality". Mistakes happen everywhere. |
6 Dec 2010
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Errie
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Of course people make mistakes and that īs okay but those local/reginal/second-rate fly by night publishers as you call them and which I īm completely agree with you, are the problem. It seems that in Japan the schools don īt want to spend a lot of money on English books since the majority of the kids here only learn English to past the big test. Most of the books are brought out by Japanese companies full with katakana English. The ones who are teaching Japan know what I īm talking about I think.
I really wonder what happened with the Gudingliesh company. Making 3 million mistakes, I mean...WT  Have people not complained about it? Is the company still out there or the books? |
6 Dec 2010
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miss K.
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Seems like there are more typos in printcompared to what have been before. And yes, only God is perfect. |
6 Dec 2010
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blunderbuster
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I have never found a real mistake in an English book that I was teaching with: Oxford, Cambridge, Macmillan, Longman, Langenscheidt, Hueber, Cornelsen......That goes as far as the exercises are concerned. Occasionally I accepted aditional solutions. The transcripts have had typos in them, sometimes the wording in the key is a bit different than in the exercise...I can live with that...Typos are one thing.....
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6 Dec 2010
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joy2bill
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You must be lucky, Blunderbuster. I have found errors in the New Cutting Edge series by Pearson- Longman, particularly in the test booklet.
With the cost of English textbooks I expect them to be as perfect as possible. I am very critical of my own worksheets and I don īt have a whole team of proofreaders.
Also nowadays with spellcheck and grammar check on computers human error should be less common.
The big publishers have a duty of care to teachers and students who depend on them.
Am I being tough?
Yes I am but like Zailda I spend a lot of my quite poor salary on teaching material.
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6 Dec 2010
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chud
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At the moment I īm having a booklet included in the popular Israeli short story series for kids open in front of me. I quote: "Yuval (a boy) and Keren ( a girl) are brothers..."  instead of "...are brother and sister" - which is an exact translation of Hebrew expression. That doesn īt look to me like a typo...
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6 Dec 2010
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It does not strike me so much in English , which is not my native language ( as you might have guessed!
) as it does in my own language with very basic mistakes that appear in text books for teaching some basics of reading , for exmple!