Teaching Special Groups in ESL

There are many different kinds of English as a Second Language (ESL) course books that are designed for students of all levels and ages. Advantages of Course books From the school administration and some teacher?s point of view, there are several advantages for basing the curriculum on a series of ESL course books. First, the course books have a clearly identified set of achievement objectives which include what the learners are expected to be able to do and what to expect next. These ready-made syllabus contain carefully planned and balanced selection of language content that can be easily followed by teachers and students . Second, when the teachers are teaching each unit in the course books, there is a consistency in the topics and genres in the four skills area (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). This allows for greater autonomy in the learning process. In addition, many inexperienced teachers may find ESL course books to be useful and practical because the ready-made activities and lessons are easy for the teacher to prepare.. Potential Problems From the researcher?s own experiences, there are a number of issues to consider when using ESL course books. First, most course books contain a lot of activities where students do \"questions and answers\". After a few lessons, many students may find the learning process boring and uninteresting. In addition, the reading selections in the ESL course books are often quite short and they often fail to present appropriate and realistic language models as well as fostering cultural understanding .. he second issue that teachers should consider is student motivation. Most college students expect their English courses to be something different from their high school English classes. So when we give them course books that are similarly designed as their past learning materials, the students may quickly lose their interest and motivation to study. This is because the similarities in the ESL course books may cause the students to feel bored due to the ?sameness? or ?repetitiveness? of the lessons and activities.