Media Reviews
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 is 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 The series is called Skills in English and take students in four levels from Elementary to Advanced in the four skills, Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing. Each of the four skills, at each level, can be either used as stand alone or in conjunction with the other skills books. This is a course made up of 3 parts, Reading, Writing and Speaking, and aims to 'build the skills' of the learner in each area, by working through a series of themes, such as Education, Daily Life, Work and Business, Science and Nature, Culture and Civilisation, Sports and Leisure. The themes that are dealt with are the same in all 3 skills and levels. Although I haven't yet used the books as a complete course, I can imagine doing so. Each book covers its particular skills in detail with plenty of room for practice and with a well-structured approach. I have found them very useful as a teaching resource, using them to focus on either a topic or a particular grammar point. In the Writing part of the course, for example, theme 3 deals with 'Hiring and Firing' and gives some good vocabulary for the topic, as well as introducing the area of flow charts. I have used this very successfully in numerous classes, with students producing a flow chart showing some process at their place of work, for example, the disciplinary process in their company. In short, this is quite a good book for the teacher to dip into, but you wouldn't be able to use it as a stand alone resource. Emma Gledhill-Schmitt for the ELTAF Newsletter, Spring 2007 Part of Garnet's systematic Skills in English course with shared topics, Level 3 Writing aims at helping intermediate to upper-intermediate learners of English improve their writing and their scores on skill-based exams like IELTS or TOEFL. Increasing vocabulary is emphasized at the beginning of each unit where known 'red' words are revised and new 'green' words are introduced in gapped texts. In addition, at the end of the book the glossary is repeated by unit and alphabetically. Including a variety of exercises, such as crosswords, puzzles, odd one out, gap-fill, 2-column activities, ordering, explaining visuals and error correction, helps learners master new vocabulary. Although it is not based on a grammar syllabus, grammar underlies its entire framework, whereby the emphasis is on present tense, word order and sentence patterns. The teaching method, based on recent research in English for Academic Purposes, revolves around noticing new skills, then practicing, revising and organizing them. Each unit has four logically sequenced lessons: vocabulary, writing, learning new skills, and applying new skills. Each unit culminates in two writing tasks. Level 3 focuses on the following writing skills: concluding opinions, writing about famous peoples, using passives to describe a process, joining sentences with conjunctions, prepositions, participles and relative pronouns, using demonstratives for textual reference, talking about obligation in the past, and describing charts and graphs. Other writing skills are practices on the other levels. The Teachers' Book furnishes the answers, detailed teaching notes on methodology, language and culture as well as tips on how to exploit the activities. Test Packs, sold in packs of ten booklets, supply answers and guidelines, a revision after unit five and a final exam. Proof of purchase permits access to the website with an alternative final exam. What I like about this book is the coordination between the input and output texts. Input texts, such as articles, essays, rules and examples, tables, diagrams, graphs and charts, help learners produce advisory texts, descriptions, factual articles and essays. The topics selected for the writing assignments, such as learning experiences and learning styles, heredity and environment, recruiting and dismissing people, how to heat or cool a room efficiently, an extraction industry, a civilization, a modern household appliance, a novel or novelist, tourism, disabilities and access to education, are personalized by asking learners to write about them in their own country. For instance, unit 9 on tourism encompasses an input text about Singapore together with a line graph, a pie chart and a bar graph to teach learners how to explain and evaluate trends and statistics in papers precisely and fluently while the 'skills checks' supply useful phrases for describing such visuals. In spite of the fact that this series provides material for tailor-making preparatory courses or learners of English, working through the material with a class looks very time-consuming. Correcting twenty papers per person per course would be tedious. Furthermore, choosing the right level might be tricky. A teacher would probably have to work through a number of levels to improve learners' writing skills enough to enable them to write precisely, coherently and cohesively. However, students who need to improve their ability to write assignments, exams and term papers on a tertiary level could certainly benefit from using this Writing Level 3 Course Book. In 2004 this series won the 'Highly Commended' English Language Award from the Duke of Edinburgh English-Speaking Union. Margret Rohmeder for the ETAS SIG Journal, 26/1, Winter 2008
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