Task 5: Jane Howes' talk

Last Friday, we had a talk about the use of text books in English learning. It was very interesting because we can learn more about how we can use them in our lessons and how they are organised.

The speaker was Janes Howes. She is a teacher at our university, so she trains future teachers. Moreover, as she wants time for her family, she writes books at home; in this way, she can work as the same time as she is spending time with her sons. It gives her more freedom. She sometimes works with kids in order to know more about nowadays situation and to check the effectiveness of her methodology.

During the talk, she explained us the organization of her books and the importance of a type of text at the beginning of the unit. It also includes some CLIL lessons. Furthermore, she introduce us the teachers' book which contains ideas for lessons and different related activities that we can do apart for the ones in the book.

In addition to her presentation, we did different activities which her book includes. We did as a child and then we evaluated the structure and objectives. It helps us to think about how we can related them with other kind of activities and what themes of the language can we work with them. Personally, I really enjoy the one about doing a poem with an animal. It was the first time that I have thought that writing a poem is easy!

To sum up, I would like to say that I have changed my point of view about text books because, in some subjects, we have talked about teaching without books; but thanks to her speech I have realise that we can prepare original and dynamic lessons including text books. More people like Jane should write these books in order to increase their effectiviness.