SOLUTIONS

We’re happy with ‘Speaking, Listening and Writing.’ Everyone knows what they’re being asked to do in the Speaking and Writing sections, and there’s always a sufficient amount of guidance. They don’t have any trouble with the Listening tasks, either, because they aren’t too long or too complicated.

In ‘Grammar Fast’, the examples, situations, and the exercises are based on everyday life. It gives students the feeling that they’re learning the real language!

‘Exploring English’ was obviously prepared by people who know what they’re doing. All our teachers – even the inexperienced ones – say it works in the classroom: the activities are clearly directed and just the right length.’

Writing and Homework Tasks worked well. Students liked doing the Homework Task on a particular page and then tearing it out and giving it to the teacher. Sometimes, we did the Homework Task in class. Then I gave them the Writing task in the unit itself for homework. The book is flexible enough to allow you to vary the way you do things if you want to.

We have been using ‘Simple Steps to Good Writing’ 1 and 3 with classes 5th and 7th grades for some years now. We find that it provides a good foundation in basic English for that age group. Because we know that the classes already have a good grasp of what they need to know, we feel confident about doing more adventurous things as well.

We used Book 3 of ‘Speaking, Listening and Writing’ in 7th grade. The students liked it because the topics in it made them feel mature – that’s what they want at that age.

We tried ‘Simple Steps to Good Writing’ for the first time last year. We’ve found that it does the job just as well as other courses do – the advantage is that it makes things more transparent for the teacher, so planning lessons is never a problem: the Teacher’s Editions tell you all you need to know.

‘Exploring English’ turns everything into speaking. Our school started using it last September. It is now May and our preparatory class students are much better at speaking than they were this time last year!’

We started doing ‘Speaking Listening and Writing’ for the first time in two of our class levels last year. We thought there might be problems at first until everyone got used to the books, but in fact, there weren’t any. We’ll certainly use them again next year.

Having the answers shown in the spaces in the exercises, not in separate Answer Key, is a significant advantage because you don’t have to keep looking for the answers on another page. It’s a good thing that you’ve done this for the Activity Books, too.

It’s a good thing that students meet important grammar points like the passive voice, second conditional and modal verbs in Book 2. It means they get more time to learn them, and there isn’t so much new grammar to learn in Book 3.

‘Grammar Fast Plus’ has work in all four skills on every double-page – it doesn’t get stuck in teaching just grammar.