After being trained in ESL, I've learned the reasons why textbooks do things. Let me give give an example from my German class. Usually chapters are about a theme: going on vacation, discussing hobbies, describing your daily routine. On one about families, it starts off with a woman's photo of hers. Students are supposed to discuss the picture to get them into a German mood as well as work on their vocabulary. Afterward they read a paragraph of the woman talking about her family and from the information derived from it, figure out where she and each relation is in the picture. This is for reading comprehension. Finally, students are told to underline words ending in -er and -ste. This is because, like English, the comparative ends in -er and the superlative in -st. So the woman says, "My brother Uwe is taller than my brother Günter. My sister Marianne is the oldest in the family." By underlining the endings, students can notice the pattern and the grammar for the chapter is linked with the theme. Then there are exercises on the comparative and superlative.

As my trainers were teaching this, I remember thinking, "Wow, you guys need to take a foreign language class with this method because this is exactly the crap they pull in my French and German classes and I don't get jack shit half the time." Let me break down what happens from a student's point of view: The teacher is assuming you know the vocabulary for family members, but you don't so when you're called on you can't answer anything. In my French and German class, at least my teacher knows English so I can ask, "What is 'father-in-law' in German/French?" If I'm teaching ESL with a dozen students from different countries, I can't answer that question so they'll be stuck in the dark. Also, I was taught to discourage dictionary use because students have to learn from context. I'm sorry, there's no fucking way to tell from context what the fuck "brother," "grandmother," or "nephew" is unless you know the fucking definition.

After feeling discouraged from the first exercise, you're then put into hell by reading this paragraph because not only are half the words incomprehensible because the first exercise didn't help, you're now given new grammar with no explanation and are expected to unravel it yourself. My trainer said this was called "test-teach-test," i.e. the teacher tests the class with new grammar and sees who's weak and where, actually fucking teaches what he's supposed to, and then tests the class again to assess the improvement. I've found by personal experience you enter this state of confusion because you've never seen this construction before, the teacher explains in the language you're studying so you still don't understand, and then there are exercises you can't answer because you're still bewildered by it all. And then after the class you go home and look up on the internet what you were supposed to learn in class.

Supposedly this approach to teaching works, but personally it just freaks me the fuck out. I feel earlier stages of language learning should be more structured and less open with vocab lists (when did those become non grata?) and more concrete explanations instead of hoping the students get it. Once they have a better grasp on the language, then we can start this bullshit. Because as a student half the time I couldn't comprehend why the textbook was making me do this.