Maybe for a change use some original thought gained through experience? A bit radical I know.....

Your question is not properly focused. It depends on what level you are teaching, what age-group, in what country, and why the students want to learn English. I will be able to help you once I have that information. If you just want general information and a list of about 10,000 books, you canjust Google "ESOL textbooks".

There isno such thing as having one book. Teaching from a book has been so passe for many years. Today, good Esl teachers use a variety of sources and materials to make lessons interesting and relevant for the students. The problem with textbooks is this: 1. The topics are generic (one size fits all) and they may/may not be relevant to your students. 2. Topics are culturally bound with most textbooks published in Britain or North America and the students might not be able to identify with aspects of those cultures. 3. Topics/Chapters are seasonal, so if you start a book in, say, March, and the chapter on Winter/Christmas is in August or Halloween in May those will lose their timeliness. 4. Vocabulary is also culturally diversified and British, American, Canadian, Australian books will have vocabulary variants. It's OK to use a book, but you have to know when to and when not to use all or parts of it, when to suplement and what to suplement depending on the students age, interests, background....Better yet, check out eslcafe.com for many ideas on teaching ESL

One of the ESL books, I recently came across, is Inter_Active. This is a book approved by the MELS program (Ministère de l'Éducation du Loisir et du Sport). The themes treated in the textbook can lead to the development in an intercultural and critical perspective. The key principle of this textbook is to compare the theme in a familiar situation with examples from not always familiar context. Grammatical exercises and practises do not reinforce prejudice and stereotypes. With the help of interesting topics, this book presents historical aspects, through which, students can compare and contrasts river expeditions and, at the same time, discover new regions of their own country. Moreover, they learn about space travel and discover ‘Canadian heroes in space’. The textbook deals also with multiculturalism and implies on student the appreciation, acceptance and promotion of multiple ethnic cultures. Overall, an excellent resource and I strongly recommend.

For ESL teaching, I recommend using Kick off. It is a book that is very availabale in Quebec' institutions and is approved by MESL program as well. In this book, students get to practice the three competencies instored by the mels, they also get the chance to do a lot of group work which is very motivating for learners. Kick off is mostly for secondary three students although some excersises can be adapted to other levels in secondary. Even more, it is an excellent book for a new teacher that needs assistance throughout his or her lessons plan.

Like someone said previously, there is no one perfect book for teaching ESL. Many of the teachers I know and have observed teach by using more than one book. They use different material from different books and mix and match as they please. If they are teaching a unit about a certain subject from one book and find interesting activities on the subject in another book or online, they won't hesitate to use it. One book that I think is good for teaching ESL at a secondary level is high5. The units are interesting and seem like something students wouldn't mind reading and using.

I also recommand Inter-Active textbook. After doing a textbook analysis on this book, I came to the conclusion that it provided students with a great cultural experience throughout the unit. Students are asked to do tasks and learn new vocabulary according to their culture. Since this textbook is made for French learners of English, they are presented with cultural aspects that surrounds them in their daily routine. There are also some bigger projects that requires research on cultural aspects of societies. Then, students have to present it to another class, which I think is great. This textbook does not only provide students with activities, but they are activities that seems meaningful, related to their reality. Furthermore, it is easy for the teacher to follow the process during the units. Evaluation sections are cleared presented and the lesson plans are easy to follow to lead the units.

During one of my course at university, we had to analyze ESL textbooks.This is when I discovered "Inter_Active", for secondary cycle one students. It was great because it included a lot of cultural content about Quebec, but also about other countries such as the United States, Greece, etc. For example, there are some activities about Space travels, sports, recycling, the fall of the twin towers in New York, the discovery of Quebec...I also liked this ESL textbook a a lot because it included group activities. Finally, it was a very colorful textbook with very nice pictures (of real teenagers!).
Another textbook I analyzed was "Lunch Box" for elementary students and what was cool about it is that it included a lot of flash cards, which help you save time! It was also using the same characters all over it.
If you know other cool textbooks, please write it!

I personally believe that teaching with textbooks is quite boring. Even though we are forced to do so by the MELS, it does not mean that we can't vary our teaching approach. There are many ways of introducing subjects and conveying knowledge to them. We need to use the resources that we have at our disposition. For example, we can watch movies, tv shows, documentaries or any other kind of audio-visual material to expose students to authentic natural language that will truly help them improve. It is not by working in the textbook that fluency will be achieved. The only way to learn is to speak it in a context that forces you to use strategies and be autonomous. There are many ways to teach. Let's escape from the boring world of the basic English textbooks from time to time!