A recent critical incident happened while I was teaching an adult Intermediate class, during the first week of their course, when the students raised concerns about their coursebook and it’s suitability for their level. I did understand why they had problems with the book as the book in question is one of my least favourite ELT publications. Matters weren’t helped by the fact that only one teacher’s book was available for two classes. However I didn’t feel overly concerned as I would only be teaching that class for a week. As an EFL/ESOL teacher I consider both Intermediate and Upper-Intermediate two of my favourite levels to teach, as students often show dramatic progress and gain independence. As I had to think on my feet and use the materials available to me I adapted some extra reading materials from another publication of the same level. I used the same theme as the course book and chose a reading exercise about chocolate from New Inside Out Intermediate. As you can see below, the materials aren’t very colourful and with a full class on vacations I needed to add a little excitement.
I used the glossary from the text to create some bright cards to enable the students to encode the vocabulary by matching words with corresponding images. The cards were successful as when the students had completed the vocabulary exercises they worked diligently to answer questions from the activities attached to the text. The students took photographs of the cards for future reference.
