This thread is for discussing the new textbook. If you have any reviews or opinions on this text, please place them below.

Please note that Cheonjae has put out two textbooks for 2012. This is for the one pictured below.

Title: 영어5/6
Publisher: 천재교육 [1/2] (Cheonjae [1/2])
First Listed Korean Author: 함순애
First Listed Foreign Author: Frances Sohn
Chapters: 13

I had a chance to "review" this one, as it was shortlisted by my school.

Before I start, some disclaimers:

This is my quick and dirty personal set of observations, not the school's. As such, it is very possible I've missed something. I've intentionally focussed on listing the technical aspects rather than posting a review per se. These are those niggling type issues that will ultimately drive you up the wall. I've also intentionally refrained from making any overall judgements and not provided my opinions on the syllabus and topic order (my coteacher shortlisted some books based on this, and I'd rather leave those suggestions up to someone with greater experience), so you'll find the syllabus isn't touched on at all here. Please check over these books yourself if asked for an opinion, especially the syllabus pages of the teacher's guide. If your school is in a hurry to choose between two or three good syllabuses/syllabi, then hopefully these notes may help you identify a few things to look for in the CD and books that are easily overlooked and make a decision.

 * * *

Student Book:
Thin and very poorly bound. The spine tore to pieces on the first time I smacked it on the table to test. (1/5)
Not very many player cards in the back (3/5)
Plenty of English exists in the book, along with tracing and fully ruled sections for student writing. (4/5)
Typesetting is good: custom fonts exist to avoid confusion between classic typeface and modern handwritten lowercase letters. (5/5)
Layout is consistent between chapters. (5/5)
Above Average in content
Extremely Below Average in durability

Teacher’s Guide:
Comprehensive, but with a strong focus on listing English you may wish to use in class. All syllabus and pedagogical information is presented strictly in Korean. Shows a distinct lack of aids aimed at native speaking staff members, but this is unfortunately standard. (3/5)
Images of the student’s textbook appear throughout, although these are too small to read. (2/5)
Syllabus pages are double page and clean. Aims are monolingual (Korean). (5/5)
Above Average

CD ROM:
CD popped out of its jewel case without major difficulty. Ran perfectly on two computers at first attempt. (4/5)
A clickable book interface is available. Some minor delays occur when used. (4/5)
Imagery on animated segments is childish but tidy. (3/5)
Acting and voice work in live action segments is decent. (4/5)
Average.

Age Appropriateness:
Questionable. The imagery depicts characters mostly a little younger than the age of the audience. (2/5)
Below Average

Other Notes:
Compacts the course into 13 chapters instead of 16. The course is split 4/3/3/3 with review sections at the breaks. Presumably the semester breakdown is 4/6/3. Personally, I’m not sure how this works, I feel this would need a second look at if you are considering this text, or at the very least would be something to keep in mind when using it..

I'm going to follow Paul's lead.

5th grade book: The English is a little bit awkward and formal. 
The CD has videos that are not voiced-over, but are a bit boring and has bad acting.

6th grade book: There are a few Konglish phrases “Take a rest!” but the English is OK.
The CD is not voiced-over, but it has bad acting. The dialogues sound flat and boring.

I recommended this book to my school because it's not voiced-over and covers 5th and 6th grade.  My co-teacher is also eager to use this book because the 3rd and 4th grade equivalents have many materials on the Korean website.  She expects these books to have lots of materials, too.

Also, I heard from another teacher and my co-teacher that this book was written by school teachers.  The other Cheonjae book was written by professors.

I wasn't sure where I should share this but here looked like a good place.  There is a lot of good material out there for the national textbooks (videos, ppts, worksheets, games) so I wanted to see if I could use some of that same material with the new Frances Sohn textbooks.  I took the new 5th and 6th grade Frances Sohn textbooks and compared the curriculum with the previous national textbooks.  The attached word files are what I came up with.  Red means a new expression or a new chapter that has nothing to do with the old textbooks.  Bold means an old textbook chapter that has materials similar to the new textbooks.  Happy planning!  :)

I wasn't sure where I should share this but here looked like a good place.  There is a lot of good material out there for the national textbooks (videos, ppts, worksheets, games) so I wanted to see if I could use some of that same material with the new Frances Sohn textbooks.  I took the new 5th and 6th grade Frances Sohn textbooks and compared the curriculum with the previous national textbooks.  The attached word files are what I came up with.  Red means a new expression or a new chapter that has nothing to do with the old textbooks.  Bold means an old textbook chapter that has materials similar to the new textbooks.  Happy planning!  :)

very useful....thanks for posting :)

I wasn't sure where I should share this but here looked like a good place.  There is a lot of good material out there for the national textbooks (videos, ppts, worksheets, games) so I wanted to see if I could use some of that same material with the new Frances Sohn textbooks.  I took the new 5th and 6th grade Frances Sohn textbooks and compared the curriculum with the previous national textbooks.  The attached word files are what I came up with.  Red means a new expression or a new chapter that has nothing to do with the old textbooks.  Bold means an old textbook chapter that has materials similar to the new textbooks.  Happy planning!  :)

Thanks for the post. your work is much appreciated. I was looking for ways to recycle my old materials. This is PERFECT!!!!

Just found out today that I'll be using this book.  Also got to meet one of my new co-teachers for the first time.

Oh, Korea.

How are you organizing the book, ladies and gents?

I ask because I see that there are 7 lessons in each unit now, rather than six.  I teach at two schools.  At my main school I teach the 5/6 graders twice a week, at the second school just once.  At the main school I was doing the first four lessons in the book, and the first two lessons at my second school.

I think I'm going to condense the book exercises in Lessons 1 and 2 into a single class.  These listening activities look better than the book from last year, and I like using listening activities as a more organic way to introduce key expressions that call and response.  This also frees up some prep time as the two lessons together should fill an entire class, instead of the usual 15 to 20 minutes from the book, meaning activities only have to be added for the other lessons.

This should also free up some more classes over the course of the year for game days/reward classes/holidays/random lost classes/etc. as there are only 13 units for the year.

Thoughts?  Opinions?

The grade six teachers (who were not teaching English then and not now) got together last year and spent 20 minutes flipping through the many books available and decided on this one, despite my objections (why would my opinion matter? It's not like I was the only person in the room who would actually be teaching with the book the next year, right?).

At any rate, I've attached a word file breaking down the book by unit, target language, and the most applicable chapters from last year's book. If the chapter has a '~' in front of it, it just means there's a small aspect of the unit that's applicable. Hope it's useful.

Ok, since I am one of the lucky ones with extremely efficient and helpful co-teachers, here is a little help with the Teachers Guides, as they have shown me. Check the word document attached for a quick step-by-step for downloading the Teachers Guide CD-ROM's for the Frances Sohn books. Weblink is within the document, top of the first page. Screenshots of the process are included. This will help you to get the CD downloaded, running, (I just run mine from USB, you don't need to burn a disc) and help you navigate through to the section of the disc where you can switch from Korean to English. I've also noted which pages of your hard-copy Teachers Guide to look at for a rundown of the years lessons, target phrases and vocab, and examples of lesson plans, all of which have both a Korean and English example copy included. These books are actually pretty decent, at least compared to some of the others, if you know which parts to look at. Given that some KT's don't do such a sterling job of assisting NET's in this respect, I'm more than happy to share what my KT's have shown me, and what I've discovered myself through a bit of messing around clicking random buttons.

I had the same problem.. I was using the 6th grade CD and no options for language change. I've been clicking all over creation on that cd.. got nothing >_<;;;