A coursebook in English

I want to write an officially edited coursebook for Russian students with an audio course, so I want to create (adapt from the mass media or just invent) some academic texts and then I need to cooperate (corrected) with a native English speaking teacher to create an audio for the coursebook. I am just a tutor at university and I have no idea how it could be possible. Now it seems to be very unrealistic, but it's a dream. Could you give some advice as to what I should start with and where I should try to address.

What's the book going to be about?

You might be able to use authentic texts if you clear them with the copyright owners.

englishhobby said:

I want to write an officially edited coursebook for Russian students with an audio course, so I want to create (adapt from the mass media or just invent) some academic texts and then I need to cooppperate with a native English speaking teacher to create an audio for the coursebook. I am just a tutor at university and I have no idea how it could be possible. Now it seems to be very unrealistic, but it's a dream. Could you give some advice as to what I should start with and where I should try to address.

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You got a bit over-excited with the letter "p" there!

teechar said:

What's the book going to be about?

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It's going to be a coursebook with grammar and phonetic rules as well as texts on various topics (like Family, Appearance, Character, Studying at University). It's intended for students of English as the second foreign language.

emsr2d2 said:

You got a bit over-excited with the letter "p" there!

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Yes, and, coincidentally, it's the key word in my message.

Tdol said:

You might be able to use authentic texts if you clear them with the copyright owners.

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That's why I call it unrealistic. I have no idea how to talk it over with copywright owners. It seems an easier (and a bit more realistic) task to find a native English speaking teacher who would agree to help create these texts, so that there were absolutely new texts, not somebody's property. I remember when we had some native speakers come around to our university when I was a student, our dean always asked them to make a recording on various topics, e. g. to talk about their or their friends' families, their homes etc. We used this material for listening practice and I still remember a lot from these texts, because they were so authentic and so natural, even better than academic texts in regular coursebooks.

It certainly depends on the texts but usually it is not that difficult to talk to the owners. Find a text that you like, look at the authors' names and see if there is an email address, phone number or anyway to contact their owners or the publication. Good publications almost certainly have ways to contact them.

If you want to develop an authentic and unique coursebook, you need to hire a native speaker to do the work. You could air your advertisements on Craigslist. You could go on English forums asking for help. These days you can use email and Skype so communications across the Atlantic have never been easier. Remember though you need to pay people to do the recordings or writings. There are a lot of English teachers in America who would be happy to help but do not expect them to work for free. Ask them how much they want for their work and how much work they would want to take on.

englishhobby said:

I want to write an officially edited coursebook for Russian students with an audio course, so I want to create (adapt from the mass media or just invent) some academic texts and then I need to cooperate (corrected) with a native English speaking teacher to create an audio for the coursebook. I am just a tutor at university and I have no idea how it could be possible. Now it seems to be very unrealistic, but it's a dream. Could you give some advice as to what I should start with and where I should try to address.

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Hi. I'm setting up a small ESL Moodle site for my Spanish students so would be happy to record a few audios if I could use them as well. I was thinking of just getting friends to assist, thus a range of different voices. Hopefully I could get good enough quality using a conference facility but if not I'd record them when I'm back in blightie (every 3 months). As for authentic I was thinking of doing interviews about the helpers real lives so semi-authentic. Obviously some scripting would be needed to get the content right. And then as Piscean suggests further truly authentic material cold be added to complete the picture.

Maybe if you accrued a few volunteers and tested on-line recording it may be surprising what can be done. After all it only takes a few minutes once set up.

I'm from southern England, male and 64. I offer that as I guess you'll need a mix of ages, accents, sex.

any one else got an hour or so to help?

Cheers and good luck with it.

Nigel



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englishhobby said:

It's going to be a coursebook with grammar and phonetic rules as well as texts on various topics (like family, appearance, character, studying at university). It's intended for students of English as a second or foreign language.

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Hm.

Say "work with a native speaker of English" (instead of "cooperate with").

nigele2 said:

you'll need a mix of ages, accents, sex..

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Not accents, I need as much standard English as possible.

Tarheel said:

Say "work with a native speaker of English" (instead of "cooperate with").

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Why?

"Work with" and "cooprate with" mean different things. Look up cooperate.

nigele2 said:

Hi. I'm setting up a small ESL Moodle site for my Spanish students so would be happy to record a few audios if I could use them as well. I was thinking of just getting friends to assist, thus a range of different voices. Hopefully I could get good enough quality using a conference facility but if not I'd record them when I'm back in blightie (every 3 months). As for authentic I was thinking of doing interviews about the helpers real lives so semi-authentic. Obviously some scripting would be needed to get the content right. And then as Piscean suggests further truly authentic material cold be added to complete the picture.

Maybe if you accrued a few volunteers and tested on-line recording it may be surprising what can be done. After all it only takes a few minutes once set up.

I'm from southern England, male and 64. I offer that as I guess you'll need a mix of ages, accents, sex.

any one else got an hour or so to help?

Cheers and good luck with it.

Nigel
.

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It sounds great. I would appreciate the help of volunteers. But there are a few poiints I need to clarify. The objectives of our (yours and mine) coursebooks may be different. I already have the texts on the topics I need for my students to make recordings of and I have two options:
1) to ask a native speaking volunteer to change them using the same or similar expressions (ideas) as in the texts, create absolutely new texts and then record them, so that no one's copywright rights were involved.
2) I will change the texts myself (or create new ones using as much vocabulary we need to include). In this case, as I am not a native speaker, the texts will be unnatural and "frozen". The native speaker could help improve them and then record them.

So, yes, the texts will be more academic than authentic anyway, but we need academic texts, not just very natural authentic texts (we can always find proper authentic texts online, it's no problem these days. What I need is a big CONCENTRATION of VOCABULARY ON ONE TOPIC in every text.

I would be happy to include the volunteer as the author of the coursebook, so it could be published by him/her too.

But then again, there is one more problen:
I need as much standard British accent as possible (here in Russia a lot of people dream of mastering British accent, it's our national peculiarity, I hope our American friends won't be hurt).
It would be great to have a wide range of speakers, but one or two would also do perfectly well.
There is one more point as these are academic texts, I need very distinct comprehensive pronunciation with as little individual features as possible (as if read by Professor Higgins or Elisa Doolittle when she already learned to speak well .

Tarheel said:

"Work with" and "cooprate with" mean different things. Look up cooperate.

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I've looked it up here: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/cooperate

As far as I understand, I made a grammar mistake; a native English-speaking teacher and I could cooperate or I could work with them, right?

Piscean said:

Texts taken from published books, newspapers, magazines, etc, are, in my opinion, far better for learners than materials artificially prepared.

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My take on it is a bit different. There's no problem with authentic materials at all. We can always use them without asking for permission, just make a copy from an online newspaper for the lesson, no one will ever know and it's not prohibited to make printable copies from online sourses for one lesson. The problem is that we need academic texts. They may be less authentic, but they contain a dense concentration of the vocabulary under study (words and collocations) and using such texts helps students remember the vocabulary in context. In authentic texts the concentration of the vocabulary our students need for taking their exam can't be that big. And then we'll have to adapt our curriculum to these authentic texts. But we already have a very good list of vocabulary the students need to know and we want this vocabulary to be in the academic texts. Of course, it doesn't mean we're not going to read authentic texts, but the idea and my main goal is to create good academic texts to help students remember the vocabulary and to practice their pronunciation using standard British accent as a model.

englishhobby said:

I've looked it up here: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/cooperate

As far as I understand, I made a grammar mistake; a native English-speaking teacher and I could cooperate or I could work with them, right?

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It is always good to have plenty of examples of a word's usage. This one is a bit tricky. When two people cooperate they work together as equals. However, when one cooperates with another they are not seen as equals. (Note the example of the two-year-old that wouldn't cooperate.)

www.dictionary.com