About use of the textbook

Some of you have probably wondered why we used the textbook so little this year. I have explained this somewhat before, but I'll explain it more here. You have already all studied English for at least six years, so I think you all have a good English foundation. What you need now is to use English independently so that you can develop more fluency. Just doing grammar exercises from a textbook will not give you this fluency. Instead, it's better to focus on activities like projects which expand on topics or points covered in the book. For example, instead of just using the textbook to talk about topics such as culture shock (unit 11), you researched another country and thought about cultural differences between that country in Japan. For this last project, instead of just reading about some random public concerns in the book (unit 12), you researched issues in Japan which are more familiar and important to you. In addition, you used your thinking skills to come up with your own solutions. It's still good to have the textbook, however, as now that the IM course will be finished soon, you can now use it as a reference. It will be good for self-study to review some of the language oints you worked on. So, once again, we didn't use the textbook so much because I wanted to make independent speakers out of you.