Making the most of your Textbook by Neville Grant (Longman Keys to Language

Teaching, Longman 1996) ISBN 0-582-74624-8

Longman Keys to Language Teaching are full of practical suggestions for lessons
and activities which will help you in your daily teaching. They are written in clear,
jargon-free English so you can read them quickly and refer to them easily as you need
them. The authors are all experienced teachers who give straightforward advice on
basic teaching techniques.

Making the most of your Textbook shows that you can teach more efficiently and
increase your students' level of motivation simply by adapting the class textbook.

It includes:
- Chapters examining the ways in which textbooks present the four basic skills of
reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
- Examples from a wide range of textbooks accompanied by detailed lesson plans
which show you how to adapt any material to suit your students.
- Suggestions for general techniques and activities which you can use to supplement
your textbook and improve the quality of your daily teaching.
- Helpful summaries at the end of chapters for quick reference.
- Questions and activities which will help you to use new ideas successfully in your
own classroom with your own students.

Neville Grant is the general editor of the Longman Keys to Language Teaching
series. He has taught extensively on teacher-training courses in many countries and he
is an experienced author of ELT books.

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Contents
Preface
Introduction
- Who needs a textbook?
- Questions and activities
1. Students, teachers, and textbooks
- reasons for learning
- learning styles
- teaching styles
- different kinds of textbook
- the teacher's role
- questions and activities

2. Listening skills
- the aims of teaching listening skills
- using the course listening materials
- supplementing the course listening materials
- questions and activities
- references

3. Speechwork
- drills
- communication activities
- natural language use
- summary
- questions and activities
- references

4. Speechwork: case studies

- case study 1: turning language study into language use
- case study 2: supplementing drills with communication practice
- summary
- questions and activities
- references
- addendum: a sample lesson plan

5. Reading at elementary level

- basic comprehension skills
- reading materials and the textbook: some possible approaches
- more authentic approaches
- summary
- questions and activities
- references
- addendum: oral questioning

6. Reading at intermediate and advanced levels

- aims when using a reading text
- methods for teaching reading
- real-life reading skills
- reading for gist
- reading for information
- reading for study
- an efficient study method: P3RU
- summary
- questions and activities
- references

7. Writing skills at elementary level

- the writing exercises in the textbook
- testing and training
- personalizing exercises
- writing for a purpose: 1 functional, 2 personal, 3 imaginative
- summary
- questions and activities
- references

8. Writing skills at intermediate and advanced levels

- the teacher's decisions
- writing purposes
- an approach to composition writing
- summary
- questions and activities
- references

9. Choosing and evaluating textbooks

- evaluation --- a three-stage process
- choosing a textbook: questionnaires
- questions and activities