It is an overly simplistic idea that coursebooks are doing a great job of meeting the needs of our students. No publisher or book author knows your students like you do. Look at nearly every single business English book. There are loads of stuff in there that will not help anyone. I've yet to have any students who could make full use of one of those business English books.

I mean there are entire units talking about Advertising, Marketing and Investing. My business English students were managers at Colgate in China or managers of a Japanese electronics firm in China . They were managing the factory. They had nothing to do with Advertising and Marketing. Actually, what they really needed was Manufacturing English. Where is the book on that? Sure there might be one or two but those are usually outdated and still too general. I need a book on electronics manufacturing and one on fast moving consumer personal care goods manufacturing. I had an IT English book that explained what a "floppy disk" was. Can you imagine going over the definition of a floppy disk with an IT manager?

The most popular coursebook in China is New Concept. It was first published forty years ago. Is it still a "new concept"?

Dear Students,

Here are some ways you can develop some listening and speaking exercises to improve your oral English. It is a great way to learn English that is very interesting. I call it the 3-2-1 approach.

THREE

Visit www.voanews.com or if you are in China try www.unsv.com. There are thousands of interesting stories there on all kinds of subjects. You can choose something that interests you. All of the stories are in "special English" which is a little slower and simpler English that is much easier to understand. Find a story there. DO NOT READ THE STORY! Listen to the MP3 THREE times until you think you have a pretty good idea of what the story is about.

I have a sort of Krashenistic view on learning. I like to have tons of material to offer my students and let them select what particular items appeal to them. Although Krashen is focused on reading books, I think in our multimedia world we can extend that to films, TV shows, podcasts, etc. One problem is finding enough material to offer that is i + 1. Where do you find lots of material that is a little easier for students to understand? This is a constant problem for teachers and whenever we find such a thing it is a real goldmine!

Here is a website with some "old time radio" shows. (http://www.radiolovers.com/) The English is a bit about the same speed as VOA Special English but slower, clearer and simpler and much more so compared to normal speech or movies. It would be suitable for mid to upper-intermediate students. Not all of the shows are at the same level.