ESL Teaching Books Geared Towards Asian Students

[actualstarfish]

Does anyone have any suggestions for ESL teaching books aimed at Asian learners or at least that have a section for Asian learners? Lately I've been reading through some of the popular ESL books like The Practice of English Language Teaching by Jeremy Harmer, How to teach grammar by Scott Thornbury, Dialogue Activities by Nick Bilbrough, Learning Teaching by Jim Scrivener but I find them lacking in this area.

While some of them have a couple good activity ideas that I can tweak for my students, I find that most of them make basic assumptions that the learners are willing to actively participate and create, aren't concerned with losing face, etc. I currently teach middle schoolers and for the most part encouraging active participation or asking open questions is like pulling teeth.

I was recently tasked with creating a lesson for middle school students teaching the past continuous tense and after flipping through each of these books for ideas, I realized that the best I could come up with was some relatively boring role play to introduce the grammar followed by a minimal pairs exercise, then finishing with an equally boring dialogue halves activity. Not bad I suppose, but still no "WOW" factor or anything unique about it.

Anyone know some books or websites from respected ESL teachers with teaching suggestions and activity ideas that work well for Asian students? I read through some of the stickied threads in this forum but I didn't find them particularly useful or practical.

[제이]

I'm totally with you on this search. The vast majority of stuff published seems to be from professors working at ESL programs. Not very appropriate for our context.

"Language Activities for Teenagers" (Lindstromberg, 2004)has some EFL appropriate suggestions, but I think assumes your students have a fair amount of proficiency, motivation, and discipline, which is a bit of a problem at my particular school. "Teaching Large Multilevel Classes" (Hess, 2001) is the same. "How to teach English" by Harmer, 2007 is one of the more practical books.

Honestly, the most helpful tips for teaching Korea I've gleaned are from this website and the web in general.

[actualstarfish]

As I mentioned before, I went through the stickies and found links like this:

http://kimchi-icecream.blogspot.com/2009/03/tesltefl-teaching-method-and-theory.html

But I've learned to be skeptical of book recommendations unless at least a couple teachers in Korea can put their support behind it. Any recommendations or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'm really trying to change up my teaching style this year.

[robandrew]

I've heard good things about this book, but can't seem to track down an available copy: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2369635.Teaching_English_To_Children_In_Asia

I've been teaching for over 5 years, so i brought lots of my own materials here. In terms of of korean public school, i can use about 5% of them, and even those must be heavily adapted. It's actually a really big gap in the market for publications helping with large classes of korean young learners. Few teachers are given top down help with their lessons, and many lack qualifications and experience when they arrive. I was interested in trying a pilot project with the local ecucation office, in developing some kind of speaking skills syllabus and materials for teachers in public school. But instead i decided to quit. Someone needs to rise to the challenge sooner or later though, to stop the constant cycle of teachers arriving and leaving without focusing on methodology with academic principles (not candy, games and flashy PPTs), and get it enshrined as part of a productive skills syllabus.