From a (mostly) unbiased perspective, I'd have to say that the new books are much better than many other books I've used in theory. I've been at ET for 1 1/2 years, and today was my last day (for now, at least), so I feel free to speak... er... freely.
After the next batch of editing, if it's done properly, they have the potential be quite good. They do focus nicely on skills other books pass over, just as writing, guessing vocab by context, and prefix and suffixes. They often have clear examples, if not always thorough ones. However, I must admit that they are sometimes quite embarrasing to use in class. Whether it's because of an inappropriate topic or an exercise chock FULL of mistakes, I often feel like apologizing to the students for the books.
However, let me reiterate that with a good, professional editing job (which should not be done in-house, and if it is, certainly ONLY by native speakers), the books could be the best I've seen.
By the way, the problems aren't really the fault of the people who wrote them (except in some of the frightening examples). The mistakes are due to the speed that the management demanded they be shoved out the door.
My 2 kuru�.
COMRAD-IN-ARMS
I am sorry, but the new ET books are incurable! Not only are they unusable, but also smack of racism and fascism. I am not defending Cutting Edge, Headway or whatever, but they are proper EFL course books which reflect the recent trends in teaching English as a foreign language and they have been quite succesful. You cannot compare the c.rap ET books with them. They do not deserve to be called books, actually. You must be confused. This thing reminds me of a racist joke (sorry) about an Irish guy who hijacks a British submarine and asks for �1,000,000 and a parachute.
Please, do yourself a favour, give up, try opening a cafe/bar or something, before it is too late.
LINK
I am back at ET and have had a chance to look at the infamous textbooks. Much ado about hi� bir �ey if you ask me. It isn't the textbooks that teachers seem upset about; it's the block system. Teaching grammar chunks, reading, writing, listening, etc. seems to be an issue in that too much of one thing tends to produce bored students. I haven't started teaching yet, but I will soon enough and I will add my two cents then.
Teachers aren't complaining about the textbooks anymore, and neither, it seems are the students. Or at least, it is a whole lot less.
-ed
I just though you'd like to know that I have finally figured out the cut and paste feature here on geocities. Up until this point I had been retyping everything, because, when I tried to do Control-V/Controll C for my cut and paste, which works everywhere else, it didn't work here. Then I noticed the little clipboard icon at the top of the screen. Yes - I know. Slow on the uptake...