Wow. I'm disappointed in the lack of views and the zero comments this thread has. I guess in most cases, we're excluded from the selection process but still, I had hoped more of us would be sticking our noses where they're unwelcome and taking control of this situation in our schools.
Well, for those who are interested, here's the results from my school. We've (I've) selected 천재교육 (green grade 5, pink grade 6) by 윤여범. The details are all below. I hope I've made the right decision. I don't claim to be an expert, just someone who cares a lot, has learned Korean from 4 different schools/teaching styles and is in his second year of teaching.
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
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Review of New 2012 Elementary School English Textbooks
Grades 5 & 6 - 2011-09-16
After reviewing the available textbooks for 2012, we have decided that the 천재교육 books written by 윤여범 are by far the best books. Below is a list of the reasons we have chosen this book and a list of general reasons we have dismissed the others.
천재교육 by 윤여범 [RECOMMENDED]
General Comments
Books are consistent between 5 and 6 grade. (teachers and students who study this book in grade 5 will be familiar with the teaching style in grade 6)
Textbook
1. Textbook is speaking focused.
2. Korean written content is minimal. Instead it uses simple to understand pictures to convey meaning.
3. Attention is given to pronunciation.
4. Activities/games are simple and focus on speaking.
5. No irrelevant filler activities.
CD-ROM
1. NO SPOKEN KOREAN ON CD.
2. CD contains a wealth of information beyond that of any other textbook.
3. Easy to navigate.
4. Multi-level activities. (easy, medium and hard)
5. Video and animations are clear, crisp, relatively interesting and of good quality.
6. Songs/Chants/Dances have multiple ways of learning.
Teacher’s Guide
1. Very easy to follow.
2. All activities are explained well, CD-ROM content is referenced within the lesson plan.
Reasons for Rejecting the Others
There is no other textbook/CD combination that I am prepared to recommend. In some instances there were textbooks that I liked, but in these cases, the CD content was so terrible that it made the book unusable. As most of these reasons can be applied to all of the rejected books, I have listed them together.
Textbooks
1. Useless filler activities.
Some textbooks, notably a YBM book, includes simplistic maze activities with no language involved. Why waste the space?
2. Grammar/Writing/Reading focused.
We need to teach spoken English, written English will come later and grammar is already taught too much in middle school, high school and university. Reading should be delivered separately through more interesting material (eg: Dr. Seuss books)
3. Overcomplicated Games
Games with complicated instructions usually require more explanation time than language learning time. Books with these games were rejected. Many books tried to get around this by including spoken Korean language explanations on the CD, this is bad as it switched the student’s brain back into Korean mode and breaks the English only classroom.
CD-Roms
1. CD-ROM uses spoken Korean.
This is the worst possible crime to commit in the classroom. By using spoken Korean the student’s brains will never truly switch into ‘English mode’ and the Korean teacher will be encouraged to use additional Korean. This reason alone is almost an instant fail.
2. Video Quality is Abysmal / Over-dubbed
Some videos were of extremely poor and laughable quality not suitable for use anywhere. For one of the YBM CDs, they had taken old video and dubbed new dialog over them. In this case, the spoken speech did not match the lip movements.
3. Spoken dialog was unnatural.
In some cases, spoken dialog sounded ‘childish’ or ‘cartoonish’ and not natural.
4. Boring Videos/Activites
5. No useful content
Some CDs contained activities that had no use in the classroom. Simplistic matching games and little more than that.
6. Horrific songs/chants
Teaching with music only works when the music is good.
7. Navigation difficult/slow.
