Winter is drawing to a close and most of my fruit trees are either budding or beginning to flower. Today was very mild though dark clouds have been looming all day and weather reports claim that a drenching is in sight. I am not so sure, given our relative distance from the coast.

Thinking as I have been about ESL texts lately, I came across the soundtrack for Let's Go 1 an English text for young non-English speakers. The Let's Go series was a staple at Yes School for our youngest students, though they often tired of the format and style by the time they were in their early teens. Since parents insisted on a text for study, even for conversational classes, we were stuck with a number of unenviable options. Let's Go, with its supplementary materials, soundtracks, flashcards and predictable format presented us with a compromise. We could teach through the text with students and add to them where we needed to or whenever the boredom became too overbearing.

In additional, some of the more inventive material in the Let's Go series, such as songs and chants, was transferable to other situations. Once I had learned the chords to a particular song, I could export it and front up with my guitar for a lesson in an elementary or junior high school. Guitars trump cassette or CD players, I have found, in generating student interest. Even the cheesiest material can be transformed, albeit briefly, when rendered live by a foreigner.

The truth is that no text will ever be wholly adequate for ESL students but that some are better than others is obvious. Good teachers with big class loads (and therefore time-poor) will often have to fall back on textbook-based lessons, but they will also add value to each class by going beyond the page to engage their students.