My vote goes for the “comic” song Hello Mudder, Hello Fadder in one of the editions of Headlice Upper Intermediate, which starts with the inspired warmer suggestion to explain that Fadder is supposed to be how some Americans pronounce father and goes downhill from there. I see bad materials as a welcome challenge nowadays, but this got skipped over and over again after the first time I tried it, and in a shared class I stretched out the previous half a page for 90 minutes so I could leave this for the other teacher to do.
Other candidates:
In a book especially for Japanese learners, a minimal pairs exercise on a vowel sounds distinction that Japanese never have problems with (pen and pin, I seem to remember), but with the recording using such a strong Kiwi accent that I couldn’t tell which one was supposed to be which
Young learner units that get their characters and then the kids in class saying things like “I read a book on Tuesday” as Present Simple practice. Could be useful as a test of autism, but not much good for communication.
Want to add any before we have the final vote?
TEFLtastic 
Texts about people with unbelievably boring lives, who also happen to have unbelievably stupid names like, oh, I don’t know, maybe Seamus McSporran from American Deadway Elementary.
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My favourite *group* of exercises is from the classic “English for Secretaries” (1979) where (if I remember right) there’s an activity where you have to help a secretary write the obituary for a recently deceased member of staff, followed by a roleplay where you have to run what you’ve written past your boss who clearly can’t remember a single thing about this person. “Didn’t he…?” “no, actually he was..”.
There are also lots of men in kipper ties looking serious at their desks while attactive perky women stand primly behind them, notebook in hand. I’ll see if I can scan some of it sometime.
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I never minded Haggis MacSporran (who was also in the British version), so it’s kind of ironic that I got a personal ticking off from Liz Soars on Lindsay Clandfield’s blog for claiming he was a made up character!
That sounds fab CP! Maybe with Mad Men and now the PamAm stewardesses thing being all the rage something that retro could be the next big thing.
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I will never forget this particular shocker from World Class –
‘Imagine you are a talking dog. You go to the park and meet another talking dog. Ask him his name, how old he is, etc.’
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Wasn’t it Streamline that had the lesson about strong language that didn’t actually have any strong language in it?
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Language Leader Upper Intermediate Teacher’s book. Warmer for a lesson on the topic of culture shock. And I quote…
“Focus students on the photo [of some sheep in a field] on page 114 and elicit that the black sheep is different from the others.
Put students in pairs and imagine what the black sheep would say if it could talk (e.g. ‘I feel lonely’).
Give them three minutes to think of as many things it might say as possible.
Elicit ideas from the class and ask students to vote on the best idea.
…ask students if they think the black sheep might say ‘I miss my own culture’.”
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Okay, so here you are. English for Secretaries in all its glory. I have a few other ‘classics’ in a pile in the corner of the room that I may add to this if there’s any interest.
http://theghostoftextbookspast.blogspot.com/
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fabulous! Just given it a mention in my latest post.
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