Headway course!

[Conchita]

[Yankee]

I agree with Conchita, Jamie. Your analogy is quite good.

And what I can also imagine (unfortunately) some of my more stubborn students saying is:
"What?!? 'Clothes' has only one syllable??? That must be American English. I received the pronunciation for 'clothes' in two syllables."

Oh, the joys of received (or should I say "perceived") pronunciation!

Amy

[Jamie (K)]

[Marahnow]

Hi Basel,
I'm Marah from Syria
(kteer mabsota l2yt fi 7ada men Syria metli)

[Zim22]

In my mind Headway is quite good course. At least I like it. I learn English, using this course (New Headway 3rd edition, Pre-Intermediate level).
The student's book is interesing, full of coloured pictures and it's include modern description of stories, things, films.
And including audio-course help me with prononciation. However, I think also, that Headway is hide some grammar rules...
For example, in Headway Elementary says, that word "Yet" uses only in negative sentences or questions. For positive sentences we must use word "just".
But in some literature I found "Yet" in positive sentence and I don't know how translate it...

[Jamie (K)]

[Zim22]

Jamie (K), thank you very much for your explanation!
I've got extract from book "The Talanted Mr Ripley" with using "Yet" and I hope you will help me recognize, which of cases is Yet("but" or "not yet"). I think it's a first case(yet = but). Am I right?
---
...Tom remained standing, his hands at his sides, his head high. In a large mirror on the wall he could sec himself: the upright, self-respecting young man again. He looked quickly away. He was doing the right thing, behaving the right way. Yet he had a feeling of guilt. When he had said to Mrs Greenleaf just now, I'll do everything I can...

[Jamie (K)]

In the literary passage you give, the word "yet" is used as what I call "surprised but". You can think of it as being similar to the Russian word "a".

[Zim22]

I've just found russian translation of this story (it's my native language), and author did strange translation, because he/she translated sentence "Yet he had a feeling of guilt." as question: "Откуда же это чувство вины?"
In my opinion russian word "но" or even phrase "как ни странно" (something like "strangely enough" in English) match more bigger, than your version (Russian word "a").
Anyway, your "surprised but" describes meaning of "Yet" exactly as is.

[Jamie (K)]

I think that's a good Russian translation of the original sentence, but in the Russian the "surprise" may be a bit stronger than in the English. The Russian word "a" is often translated as "and", but it really means in English something like "but on the other hand...", which is close to the meaning of "yet", but without the surprise.

"Как ни странно" gives too much surprise, because besides "strange", the word "yet" often conveys the feeling that something is ironic or disgusting, depending on the context. It means something "but here's something you wouldn't expect in this situation." Sometimes it means that something is surprisingly good.

[Stew.t.]

hi Hercules

I have used Headway, and must agree with Jamie K that the diversity of accents was good, as well as the unsuaul articles.
What was lacking was a clear indication of tasks and chapter sections. Often my students got confused when I was not following the order of tasks on the page. This was usual in my lessons and not to the liking of my students.
I used to work for a school that exclusively used Headway for students from Intermediate to Advanced.

While it is good to have a book as a skeleton and a security net for a course, it may not give you the variety necessary for the aim or dymamic of the group.

I now prefer to be less book orientated. Headway is quite good though, as is the Reward series.
_________________
Please meet Stewart Tunncilff

[Stew.t.]

hi Jamie K

The "in joke" amongst my colleagues during our teacher training was that RP stood for Rather Protentious.

I think the move in the UK away from Oxford English is all for the better. However some training for employees to tone their accents down would be a good thing. Butr it is also the case that people underestimate how hard they have to listen.
I guess meeting on common ground would be mutually beneficial.
_________________
Please meet Stewart Tunncilff

[Jamie (K)]

I can see what Stew is talking about.

One of the problems with Headway and almost every other series of language textbooks using the "communicative approach" is that they often give interactive tasks that don't elicit the desired communication, or else the tasks aren't well suited to the class. They may be too childish for a particular group of students, just not interesting, or even embarrassing. Some of the tasks don't work because they are trying to get the students to use a certain grammatical structure, but the students are already in the habit of using some other structure (sometimes a wrong one) instead. They won't produce the desired structure unless the teacher constantly nags them to do so, which then impedes communication and defeats the main purpose of the exercise.

For this reason, the instructor has to come up with alternative tasks for the students to perform or must ignore large portions of the chapter.

Another problem with this type of book is that it is not suited to self-instruction.

But for a class, Headway is a pretty good series anyway.