Skills in English Level 2, Writing, Teacher's Book

Skills in English Writing Level 2 Teacher's Book The Garnet Education Skills in English series was highly commended in the Duke of Edinburgh English Speaking Union English Language Book Award in 2004. This course is part of the Skills in English series from Garnet Education. It is designed to help students to cope with writing assignments in English requiring between five and ten well-structured paragraphs. At Level 2, students learn how to: * write an introduction; * write a topic sentence; * link sentences; * use pronouns; * give an opinion; * state reasons; * compare things; * and write a narrative. In addition, students acquire key vocabulary in the following thematic areas: * Education * Daily Life * Work and Business * Science and Nature * Physical World * Culture and Civilization * They Made Our World * Art and Literature * Sports and Leisure * Nutrition and Health. Key features of this Teacher's Book are: * a facsimile of the related Course Book page, for ease of reference; * an introduction to the approach taken in the course; * lesson-by-lesson notes; * a full answer key, including model answers where appropriate; * language and culture notes, where these will assist the teacher in understanding learning difficulties or confusions of the target students; * methodology notes, where the value of an exercise, or the way to conduct it, may not be self-evident. As well as preparing students for entry into English-medium study, the Skills in English Course is ideal for students who wish to improve their scores in skills-based examinations for university entry requirements, such as the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). Rather than focusing on exam preparation, Skills in English teaches the necessary skills as part of a systematic programme of language development. Skills in English courses are also available in Listening, Speaking and Reading. See the Skills in English website at skillsinenglish.com for additional materials and help. Key Features * Reading texts a maximum of 500 words * Listening texts a maximum of 800 words * Speaking tasks up to five paragraphs, with writing assignments between five and ten well-structured paragraphs * Test booklets containing theme tests, a revision test after five units, plus an end-of-course test * Teacher's Book containing full answer keys, methodology notes and transcript of listening material * Language and culture notes available for Arabic, Chinese and Japanese learners Accompanying Course Book, Student Test Pack and Teacher Test Booklet also available.

Review: "The common-core knowledge in this series is the next big step for ELT to take in the 21st century." David Crystal "Extremely well-planned and constructed and very impressive." Duke of Edinburgh ESU English Language Award judges "At last a course that truly prepares students for IELTS by developing the necessary skills from the pre-intermediate level." Kevin Higgins, Professor of English, Asian University of Science and Technology, Thailand "Skills in English has formed the backbone of our 2008 Intensive English Course and I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a skills-based course with an academic focus." Gabriel Roberts, University of Wales in Cardiff "I would thoroughly recommend this series to any centre running academic English courses." Tessa Moore, University of Nottingham "We have finally found a textbook which caters for international students at tertiary level." Sophia Michael, Intercollege, Cyprus "A very useful addition to the EAP tutor toolkit, which has received positive feedback from students too." Lezli Ataker, Nottingham Trent University "Attractively presented, with interesting topics and a number of language tasks which engage the students' interest and enhance the four language skills." Buckinghamshire Chilterns University "The topics are very interesting because they reflect today's world and what surrounds our students." Daniela Rizzuti, University of Calabria, Italy "Very appropriate for mixed-ability groups having different degrees of confidence in their English abilities." Aston University, UK "We are now using this series very successfully." Judith Sclare, EFL Unit, University of Glasgow "The single most useful tool you could buy, if you are going to invest in a resource for embedding ESOL into a mainstream Science or other study curriculum, or if you are resourcing a Language Support provision." Liverpool Community College "The topics and tasks are appropriate for all learners and the course is preparing them well for future university study." Helen Armstrong, University of Teesside "This is a skills-based course with three levels for beginners to upper-intermediate level. The course is designed to prepare students for skills-based examinations such as the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). There are four books per level. Each book covers a skill; reading, writing, speaking and listening, and there is a Teacher's Book and test package within the set. All the books are linked by the same continuing themes and are designed to be used interchangeably. I loved the flexibility this course offers with the possibility of choosing the skills covered in each lesson, all linked by the same theme. There are four lessons in a theme and each of the four lessons are based around a learning technique within the skill being covered. These techniques are continued throughout the book. The writing skills book covers vocabulary, writing, learning new skills and applying new skills. There are also skills checks throughout the books which are either grammatical or directly based on the skills being covered. In the listening book, for example, there is a skills check for making notes and another for using comparatives. The books are set out very clearly and have a good amount of written and visual elements. They are easy to understand and in general each new lesson starts on a new page so it is easy for the student to follow. If I had a criticism of the book it would be the length. There are only ten themes per book and although there are four lessons per theme there is the tendency to cover two lessons at a time from just two of the books depending on the length of the lesson. I did particularly like the themed wordlists that identified the words by their grammatical name, and there are final summaries of the wordlists at the end of the book which are organised thematically and alphabetically. The Teacher's Book is also very well set out and very clear to follow. There are, however, a lot of blank pages after every lesson which is ideal for writing notes but tends to be irregular. The Teacher's Book is great because it has a small copy of the Student's Books in the corner so you do not have to keep referring to the Student's Book, which is really ideal in this course as there are so many books. There is also a methodology note which is very helpful and useful to refer to. In general I really liked this course and I would recommend it to anyone preparing for a skills-based exam. Rather than focusing on exam preparation, the books focus on the skills needed for skills-based exams. I thoroughly enjoyed using this course and there was a lot of positive feedback from the students." Louise Gladwin for the ETAS Journal 25/1, Winter 2007 "Garnet Education has an interesting series of books out called Skills in English, by Terry Phillips. A four-level, skills-based course designed to prepare students for studies in English at higher education, Skills in English introduces the skills needed to understand talks and lectures in English. The publisher says it's ideal for students preparing for skills-based examinations such as IELTS. Each of the four skills has its own book at each level of the course. This means that you can focus on one particular skills, such as writing, or use all four skills books together to create a complete course. The unit themes are shared across the four books so that you can move from one book to another and not lose focus of the common unit theme. It's an interesting idea, which is probably why it was 'Highly Commended' in the Duke of Edinburgh English-Speaking Union English Language Award. However, there is so much packed into each book that it's hard to imagine how anyone could get through all four books on a course. We focused on the writing books that have a very clear structure. Each unit consists of four lessons: vocabulary; writing; checking skills/learning new skills; applying skills. The pages are quite dense and the rubrics and layout are sometimes confusing. However, it is very thorough, the exercises are multi-layered and cognitively-engaging, and the texts are interesting. The methodology feels modern, and we liked the fact that the Book Map includes an input text type as well as an output text type - a nice idea. The publisher says the Skills in English is not designed for use by one specific institution or country. However, it does feel as if it was originally written for a Middle Eastern market, and there are some texts that teachers in some other parts of the world might find rather surprising. One text from a parenting magazine, for example, looks at role models and includes the following passage: 'Teach your teenager to admire good role models, for example, religious leaders. If she admires bad role models, like rock stars, she may copy their behaviour." iT's for Teachers, issue 102, Nov-06