We have talked in class about the advantages and disadvantages of the course book, in contrast with the "realia", the authentic material.
The course book can be a useful material to practice some grammar or lexic aspects on the last step of the language focus. But to start talking and building sense around the language, the authentic material is more motivating.
In addition, the course book is the same for all students, so, as they have the same information, there are no information gaps to fill, and no information to share.
Authentic material could be a set of material objects, pictures, videos, or ... also books! We can talk about real books in the real world. We talked about James Joyce because Stuart showed us a book of James Joyce. He told us that he was dead, and we started to talk in the past tense.
Real books of real authors in real libraries
There where I live, the Trinity College, is surrounded by books, real books. There are so many, that they don't seem real. Isn't the old library like a magical and fictive place?
How many books may be there?
Who wrote them?
When were they written?
What are they about?
Who did the magical work of sorting, ordering and puting them in those infinite shelves?
Did the students read some of them?
In which books were they more interested?
What did they learn about them?
One of those students might be the philosopher George Berkeley (1687-1753), who was a student and scholar of Trinity College and one of its senior academicsis widely
regarded as Ireland's greatest philosopher and among the world's top
philosophers. His most influential philosophical thesis,
"Immaterialism," has, since the eighteenth century, attracted
considerable attention in the fields of epistemology and metaphysics.
The main influences on his early work are generally regarded to be John Locke and Nicolas Malebranche, and in later life he was influenced by writers in the Platonist tradition. He had considerable influence on the works of many important philosopers including David Hume and John Stuart Mill.
There is a library next to the old one, that is named after him: the Berkeley libary.
It is in this one where now the students read and study in the present tense, in the present continuous, in a very different way as Berkeley and his colleges did, about very different subjects, but, I'm sure, with the same emotional and theorethical problems and questions.
A last question: Why did Arnaldo Pomodoro make this sculpture called 'Sphere with Sphere' (1982) to illustrate the entracnce of the library?
The course book can be a useful material to practice some grammar or lexic aspects on the last step of the language focus. But to start talking and building sense around the language, the authentic material is more motivating.
In addition, the course book is the same for all students, so, as they have the same information, there are no information gaps to fill, and no information to share.
Authentic material could be a set of material objects, pictures, videos, or ... also books! We can talk about real books in the real world. We talked about James Joyce because Stuart showed us a book of James Joyce. He told us that he was dead, and we started to talk in the past tense.
Real books of real authors in real libraries
There where I live, the Trinity College, is surrounded by books, real books. There are so many, that they don't seem real. Isn't the old library like a magical and fictive place?
How many books may be there?
Who wrote them?
When were they written?
What are they about?
Who did the magical work of sorting, ordering and puting them in those infinite shelves?
Did the students read some of them?
In which books were they more interested?
What did they learn about them?
One of those students might be the philosopher George Berkeley (1687-1753), who was a student and scholar of Trinity College and one of its senior academicsis widely
regarded as Ireland's greatest philosopher and among the world's top
philosophers. His most influential philosophical thesis,
"Immaterialism," has, since the eighteenth century, attracted
considerable attention in the fields of epistemology and metaphysics.The main influences on his early work are generally regarded to be John Locke and Nicolas Malebranche, and in later life he was influenced by writers in the Platonist tradition. He had considerable influence on the works of many important philosopers including David Hume and John Stuart Mill.
There is a library next to the old one, that is named after him: the Berkeley libary.
It is in this one where now the students read and study in the present tense, in the present continuous, in a very different way as Berkeley and his colleges did, about very different subjects, but, I'm sure, with the same emotional and theorethical problems and questions.A last question: Why did Arnaldo Pomodoro make this sculpture called 'Sphere with Sphere' (1982) to illustrate the entracnce of the library?
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