Personally, I think that textbooks and student books are boring and are not adapted to our class reality. I have always wanted to build up my own didactical material using a lot of resources and adapting it to my students. I think that it would give them a much more meaningful learning experience. I want to use handouts, the board, smartboard (interactive whiteboard), authentic readings, television shows and everything possible in order to be as much appealing to my students as possible. Also, I would like my students to get involved in their target language by taking part into a play (or a short movie) and by having them build their own notes on grammar and didactical stuff that we could share to the upcoming cohorts.

Do you think this is a possible project? ow would you do it? do you have any suggestions?? Thanks!

I agree with you that it is easy to give examples of books, but it is a little more difficult to find alternatives to the traditional tools that can be used in the class, so I decided to share my personal experience. My suggestions are suitable to oral interaction and oral comprehension activities.

First, I want to share with you my experience of using a series of audio materials by L.A.Hills “Stories for reproduction”, Oxford University Press. http://www.ciao.co.uk/Stories_for_Repro ... l__6721712
The material consists of a book and compact cassette. There are various levels – introductory, elementary, intermediate and advanced. Each book contains short, amusing anecdotes, followed by a set of comprehension questions.
I use them for oral or written reproduction in class. Students listen to the recording. They can take notes and ask me the meaning of unknown words. Many students usually need listening two or three times. Mostly they do oral reproduction, but sometimes they do written summaries.
I must say that students like this kind of work because stories are full of good humor and wisdom. I encourage students to add the story with their own continuation, but the basic plot must remain unchanged.

As for the Video activities, I found them also very interesting and useful for oral interaction and comprehension activities. I personally used Opportunities and Headway series for students with different level of English proficiency (for adolescents and adults). Each video is dedicated to a certain topic or theme, focusing students’ attention of grammar patterns, lexical units. The thing that I found important is that these video courses help proficient learners to master the suprasegmental features of language: intonation, stress, rhythm and pitch. Students learn how to understand not only the information of the message, but also the emotional state of the speaker, the form of the sentence (statement, question, or command), the presence of irony or sarcasm or the emphasis on a word or an idea that is not necessarily reflected in grammar or the choice of vocabulary. With younger children I started with A Grand Day Out about Wallace and Gromit’s exciting adventures. The video is organized into six manageable episodes, which present specific grammar points, functional language, and vocabulary that you work out with your students. Children adore such activities. They are very easy to adopt, and this activity book gave me an idea how I can use movies or cartoons with younger children. After the successful use of the video activities, I was able to create my own exercises using episodes from cartoons and family movies. You can find more information about it on the official site of this Video Activity Book. http://elt.oup.com/catalogue/items/glob ... anguage=en