Gaba Corporation - Textbooks

Textbooks

In February 2002, Gaba launched the Snapshots series of textbooks. The seven Snapshots textbooks were designed to teach grammar points by combining a story about a mixed group of young Japanese and English-speaking characters interacting all over the world. Gaba later created online drills for instructors to use with the textbooks. In June 2003, a second line of textbooks, Planet, was created. The Planet textbooks were designed to teach travel English, with more focus on situations than specific grammar. In July 2004, the Career textbooks were launched. As with the Planet books, the three Career books were focused more on situations, in this case business situations, than specific grammar.

Gaba also used a variety of non-Gaba textbooks for both daily conversation and business English lessons.

From April 2008, the Gaba level system, which had consisted of 13 levels, was simplified to a 10 level system, and new textbooks were introduced. In April 2008 the Snapshots New books began to be released. They were much less grammar-focused than the previous Snapshots books. Each level has twenty lessons, with the tenth and twentieth lessons being review lessons. The other eighteen lessons have five sections. First, a picture on the front page that instructors can ask the client to describe. Second, a dialogue section, then three practice sections where the target language for the lesson is tried out. Finally, there is an application section, essentially a roleplay.

From October 2008, the Business Advantage textbooks were rolled out. They have the same construction as Snapshots New. The only exception is that from level seven and up, the picture at the start of each lesson is replaced by a newspaper article that the client and instructor discuss at the beginning of the lesson.

The new curriculum of Snapshots New and Business Advantage have replaced the older Snapshots series, the latter which is no longer being sold. However, the Planet and Career Gaba texts are still being sold. All non-Gaba textbooks have been phased out.

In February 2011, Gaba introduced the new Travel series. There will be textbooks for level 1 to 4, replacing the Planet textbooks which were used before.