Saturday, June 6, 2009

Book Review 2: "Smart Choice" by Ken Wilson

I've used Smart Choice 2  for the past semester and am generally pretty happy with them. Interesting topics, easy to understand, a good workbook to go along with it. However, I've noticed 2 major weaknesses that make me almost not want to use the book again.

1. The dialogues. They are good enough for the students just to read and speak to each other. But for the students to insert their own ideas? It just doesn't make any sense in most cases. They are either too specific or complicated. And to me, doing dialogues where the students don't build on it with their own ideas seems like a waste of time, so I just don't do it.

2. The review sections. Singing? Filling in the blanks in a comic book? It's very lame and all the teachers in my program just skip right over it and do their own thing for the review days. It's almost like another author wrote it, it's so bad in comparison.

Does anyone else use this book and have some thoughts about it? Ken Wilson...have you found your way to this post? You can also check out my first review of this book.

No comments: