Thanks Alien that certainly has given me something to think about.
[quote=“Alien”]All, not even most, Singaporean educational materials are written in British English, have little or no reference to the EFL Taiwan learning environment due to content and levels, they are didactic, and above all, highly uncreative (as Singaporean education is).
Have just spent the latter part of this summer working with an editorial team to revise a dictionary project that was originally published in Singapore. I would not recommend any Singaporean materials unless they’ve been revised entirely by local publishers, and even then, there’ll be some problems for usage.[/quote]
It appears that the spelling is American English, at least for these materials.
You sure do have a point there. The content for Elementary and Kindergarten levels is ok, just ok. The levels would make things a little difficult to work out a good curriculum.
Bland, and repetitive too.
These have been reviewed by local publishers, however I am not impressed with the standard of review. The Cd’s and other supporting materials are also from Singapore and therefore come with Singapore English all through it. The sound, it hurts my ears just listening to it.
That all being said, it is useable. I have been “stuck” with it myself and it looks like I’ll be having to use it for the next three years. You see, the three kindergartens that I work in with are all using it, so, if I want students to come to my language school I need to use this material. At least for three years, then after that I can push for a change.
The material was selected because of the fact we are in a small town. There is a Joy, Hess, Sesame Street, Kid Castle, International Village, Crown (now gone), Jordan (now gone but destroyed the name), Wen Zao, and several other no brand schools in town. There is a total of 24 Language schools in a town of 70,000 people.
I know that the material was selected because it could continue right up to junior high school level. The main goal of all this seems to be to pass GEPT.
Usage, it’s ok, but you sure do have to play with the levels a lot and come up with your own creative stuff.
I have been in contact, not with the distributors here, but with the company in Singapore about some of these issues and they appear to be very receptive as they are really trying to get into the Taiwan / China market.
Why, if I am already using the stuff, did I make this thread?
Good question. I wanted to find out what others think and find any other weak areas in the system that I should try to fix.
I also wanted to find anyone else out there who has stumbled accross the system.
