About Textbooks...

In the near future, I need to choose textbooks for teaching. So what will I look for in the textbooks?

Since I am not the only one who needs to be able to work with them, it is more difficult to find the right ones. On the one hand, of course, I need to be able to work with them since I am the one who will explain and teach its contents to my students, but on the other hand, it would be no use if I thought the books were perfect to work with and my students had no clue what to make of them.

One thing I will definitely be looking for is whether the publisher offers an audio CD to go with the textbook. Usually, those audio CDs include all the units' texts and dialogues, and often some exercises for listening comprehension.

Apart from that, a good textbook needs to have a good balance of texts, grammar, and exercises. It should guide the teacher through the units and make it easy to prepare lessons. It should also have a good grammar section so that students can look up new grammar on their own, for example to repeat it at home.

Last but not least, the contents should be age appropriate. Younger students need young characters and settings that reflect their lives in the texts and dialogues. School settings are popular for textbooks used in regular schools. Adult learners, however, would soon be bored by those texts. They need to be able to relate to the characters and their lives. Settings could range from work environment, travel and family life to more serious topics like history and politics.

I am sure I will find the right textbooks for my purpose, but it may take some time and leafing through a great amount of available books. Thankfully, we have a big bookshop with a huge language department in Berlin.