ESL Speaking Textbook Reviews

ESL Speaking Textbook Reviews

If you're looking for some advice about which ESL textbook to choose for your next class, check out:

ESL textbooks for children--I talk about my 2 favorites, mostly because they are an actual, well-though out series, unlike most of the other fluffy stuff filled with pictures and other crap that is kind of useless if you want to actually teach something.

ESL textbooks for adults--I preview my 3 favorite 4-skills textbooks that place a heavy emphasis on communicative speaking activities, which is just my style. These ones are also solid, minus all the fluffy stuff.

Four Skills Books for General English Classes

It's all about my favorite ESL Textbooks for general, 4-skills English classes. I'm only reviewing books that I've used in my own classes (of course!). For even more of my ESL textbook reviews, check out another site of mine, ESL Textbook Reviews.

The Four Corners Series

If I had only one choice for a 4-skills EFL textbook, this would be it. There are no "throw-away" chapters like in so many of the other books and the activities are interesting and engaging. It's so well designed actually that it's almost impossible for students not to participate. It's communication centered and focuses heavily on speaking, although it does hit the other three skills. Trust me, you won't be disappointed if you choose this book.

The Touchstone Series



I used the Touchstone series a number of years ago and remember hating it: text-heavy pages that were just overwhelming for me, and even more so for the students. However, I'm using it for my conversation classes these days (I had no choice!), but I have to say that they've made the second edition significantly better. There are some solid listening and reading activities, as well as some communicative "free-talking" activities at the back. By book 4, it's serious English so if you have quite high level students, check it out.

The World Link Series

I used this book for about 3 years at my old university and while I was a bit burnt out on it near the end, it really is a solid book. The units are interesting and engaging and are on the simpler side if you have lower-level, or multi-level classes. There just isn't that much text on the page, which is something I appreciate in an ESL textbook. The supplementary teacher's activity book was excellent and I used almost every single activity in it, so make sure you get that as well.
World Link: Teacher's Resource Text Bk. 1

The Smart Choice Series

I used the Smart Choice series a few years ago at my old university for a supplementary program and really enjoyed teaching it. It's grammar, but in a very simple, easy to understand way. It made teaching easy and very minimal prep was required because the book was good enough to just teach straight from it. The students usually seemed to enjoy the topics and it was easy enough to build natural conversations from it.

The Interchange Series



Interchange is one of the most popular 4-skills English as a second language textbooks and for good reason: it's solid. Jack Richards is one of the best ESL textbook writers out there and anything with his name on it is sure to be a good choice. If I was an admin of a program of some kind, I'd look closely at this book.

ESL Textbook Reviews

One question that I often see tossed around on the Facebook groups related to language teaching is what textbook other teachers like.  I have a site called ESL Textbook Reviews that talks about my specific choices and I'll also list a few of them here. 

General 4 Skills Textbooks:



Academic Writing



Public Speaking and Presentations

Touchstone Series: a Short Book Review

I used the Touchstone Seriesyears ago at my previous uni and remember hating it.  Like the pages were filled with all these "speak like a native speaker" sections which were just bizarre, and each page had so much stuff crammed into it that it usually stressed me out.  Maybe part of the problem was the program I was teaching in; I "shared" the book with other teachers and was assigned 1 or 2 pages/class so had to teach the pages I hated instead of just skipping over them like I normally would.

Anyway, it seems like a new edition has come out and Touchstone is not as terrible as it once was.  Plus, I usually just choose 1 or 2 pages out of each chapter and then add in my own material so the I just don't use the pages that I don't like.  I still much prefer a series like 4 Corners or World Link but I don't have any major complaints about Touchstone for a general, 4-skills kind of textbook.

Test-Teach-Test

The test-teach-test (TTT) methodology is not my usual style of teaching, and most days, I lean more towards PPP (presentation/practice/production) or task based teaching.

However, for simple grammar concepts or vocab that students have probably studied before, TTT could work very well, so I decided to give it a try with "Be" in the past and other regular/irregular past tense verbs, since my students should already have a decent grasp of the basics.  The unit in my book that I was covering was 4 Corners 2, Unit 9.  And here is the "test" that I prepared, with some vocab/names of people thrown in from the previous unit:  The Past Tense Test.  In addition, I pointed out the pages in the book that they could refer to if necessary.  I gave the students about 10 minutes to work on it and then we checked answers together (teach phase).  I went quickly over the easy ones, and pointed out some of the tricky stuff (ie: negatives/questions actually use the present tense verb).  

Then, for the final "test" phase, I made a Past Tense Board Game, which the students played in small groups (again recycling vocab from Unit 8 in the book).  And, of course, I walked around the class checking for accuracy.

Overall: it went well!  ALL the students, even the ones who don't actively participate in class seemed to enjoy the board game and they put in a good effort on the test and were referring to the relevant pages in their books, etc. Success!  I'll definitely be doing it again for easy things that the students probably already know, but just need a bit of review on.

Check out Jeremy Harmer's "The Practice of English Language Teaching" for more details on methodologies.

Life in Cities Intro Activity

This is the perfect way to introduce the "Life in Cities" unit that you find in most conversation or 4 skills textbooks (Four Corners Level 2, Unit 8 for me).  I hand out the questions (see link below) and put the students in groups or 2 or 3.  I give them about a minute to read the questions before watching the video.  Then, they watch the video and take some notes.  The video has a wee bit of the cheeze factor going for it, but it's graded appropriately for Korean University students.  At the end, I give them 3-4 minutes to compile their answers in their group and make one "good" paper to hand to another team to check.  The teams with the highest number of correct questions get a stamp in my class (my reward system, which equals grades), or you could give a prize of some sort.  It takes around 20-25 minutes total for a big class (30 students).

Life in London Questions