all a good idea to use the Teacher's Manual only for looking up the correct answers of the exercises. It should be used more for learning about the aims and methods of the Communicative English Course.
One would think that looking up the correct answers should be the least of the purposes of the manual, since a competent teacher would be sure of most of the answers (except perhaps where multiple answers are possible).
Ignorance of what is contained in the Manual leads to deviation in the spirit, aims, and practices involved in the Communicative English course.
Sometimes the Main Couse Book is ignored. The argument is that nothing from it comes in the examination. Is this true? No.
Wouldn't it be strange if the Main Course Book of a course is not a part of the Course!
True, the content of the Main Course Book, does not fully figure in the examination (except in an 8-mark question in the writing section), but the skills taught through that content do. This is true of all language study.
In language study, a passage or a lesson is given in order to study the language points contained in it, such as comprehension, vocabulary, word formation, sentence structure, style, etc and not for its content. This is basic knowledge for any true language teacher.
The Reading and Writing Skills for which students can now get a maximum of 40 marks in their CBSE Exam are in the MCB.
Teaching the MCB...
The Workbook (WB) contains grammar lessons (usually using an inductive method) and exercises.
It is not a good idea to make students complete all the exercises by themselves at home (even the whole WB at the end of the year!) and to tell them to ask any doubts they have.
There are very few students who would be motivated to complete the exercises and ask doubts in such a situation.
For completing the exercises, some students take the help of the Workbooks they had the "foresight" to inherit from their seniors in the beginning of the year; others may altogether "forget" to do the exercises for they rightly guess that they will not be called upon to turn in their work.
I think, the reason for doing this is that teaching from the Literature Reader (LR) is more like traditional English teaching and hence the teacher can avoid getting too much out of his or her comfort zone, for the demands of teaching a communicative course are many in terms time and class management.
In a communicative course, the appreciation of literature is not the primary aim. The primary aim is the use of language in real-life situations. Teaching literature first is born from a distorted perception of the communicative course. Such a perception is inadvertantly passed on to the students.
One learns first to use a language, and is only then ripe for appreciation of the literature of that language. This is the correct perception.
Under a situation of distortion of the purposes of the prescribed course, a student's problems are inevitable. To this, if you also add a student's lack of motivation, then the problems increase two-fold.
He or she should...
Try to perceive exercises not as "error" or "omission" exercises, but as exercises on grammatical points that figure in these errors and omissions, such as: subject-verb concord, verb forms, non-finites, modals, prepositions, etc.
Make a checklist of these grammatical points, if possible, with the help of your English teacher.
Begin time-bound preparation of these topics FIRST. These are the most important things to learn. After this go into the other material.
If you live in Kannur, you may want to attend my Writing and Grammar Classes for CBSE students (IX to XII). You can contact me here for this.