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INTRODUCTION
COURSE COMPONENTS – Student’s Book with CD-ROM – Teacher’s Book – Activity Bank Catalogue: course-based activities, includes tests, listening material from the Student’s Book and computer-based presentations in the CD-ROM. SYMBOL indicates the number of the transcript. LEARNER'S AUTONOMY Learner’s autonomy is a key aspect of Advantage. The appendices at the back of the Student’s Book include the Listening Transcripts, the Language Reference, the Writing Reference and a section called Fast Finishers with fun activities for students who finish fast their tasks. The cover of the book also offers a list of irregular verbs. These important reference materials allow students to work independently by consulting these sections while doing the homework in the CD-ROM or while working with the Student's Book. The Student CD-ROM contains the audio material for the listening texts in the Student’s Book, interactive activities for each unit and a section of Useful Tools that presents different material for general knowledge as world currency, clock zones and calculator. As strategies are essential if students are going to learn English on their own, in the Student’s Book they are clearly marked in colored boxes. Each presented strategy is then put into practice in the following activities. Also, the cross-references in the language boxes let students know where to locate extra explanation and practice for the corresponding subjects. The topics presented in the units allow students to discuss in groups their opinions, promoting critical literacy in the classroom environment.
CLARITY All of the components of Advantage are for both students and teachers. The unit sections are signposted in a way that teachers and students know what they are going to do. The CD-ROM shows which unit the student is working with and keeps a record of all the previously done activities. Once the CD is restarted, the information is erased so that the student can have another opportunity of doing the interactive activities. STUDENT’S BOOK The Student’s Book has a clear presentation with every section and subsection clearly signposted. The language boxes bring a cross-reference to the Language Reference and the Writing section is always connected to a Writing Reference number that is located in the appendices. The theory behind the method is for students to examine and discover language (word formation, grammar sections) and actually use language (Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking and Live English). The Student’s Book is divided into the following sections and subsections: Warm Up This section is designed to get students ready for the topic of the reading text by activating schemata and bringing students to an English-speaking environment. This is done by taking surveys, listening to short dialogues, looking at photos and vocabulary related to the unit topic, asking pertinent questions to prepare for a topic, taking quizzes and ranking words in order of importance. Reading The first section of each unit is the reading passage that offers texts which were selected according to students’ preferences. These texts include open, sometimes polemic topics chosen to incite debate and thus motivate students to speak. Topics include music, traveling, art, cultural festivals, ethnic groups and multiculturalism, technology, cell phones, eating disorders, stress and yoga, sexism, advertising, growing up, body piercing and family relations among others. One feature of Advantage is that the theme and structures of the reading text are carried through the entire unit.
INTRODUCTION
AIMS Advantage is a complete toolkit designed to provide teachers with a wealth of resources. The aim of the components and all of the materials contained in them is to help students become autonomous learners, as well as to teach students how to use English correctly.
Strategies are offered to help students have a better performance and comprehension while reading texts, spoken or written. These reading strategies will make students develop necessary 1
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INTRODUCTION skills to understand a text and include predicting content from the title and photos, getting the main idea from the first and last paragraphs, dealing with unknown words, identifying topic sentences, scanning, using key words to get the main idea, etc. A complete list of the reading strategies is included in the Contents page. Before Reading The activities in this subsection prepare students for the theme, vocabulary, structure and syntactical items that they are going to find in the text. The reading strategies presented help students to work with the text in a simpler way, through prediction, using key words, working with vocabulary, etc. While Reading The activities proposed in this subsection are developed for students to do at the same time they are reading the text. They state an objective for the reading activity and also offer reading strategies that include skimming and scanning activities. After Reading These activities come after students have read the text. They are intended to help students understand the text as a whole and therefore, include vocabulary and comprehension work. Students are invited to find synonyms or antonyms, match meanings to words in the text, work with phrasal verbs, etc. Language The colored boxes, although not signposted with the name Language, present both grammar and language work. In Advantage 1 the grammar is inductive, as students look at examples taken, in most cases, from the reading passage, and answer questions to understand grammar rules whereas in Advantage 2 the grammar approach is usually deductive and there is a review of important structures. After understanding the rules, students are invited to put them into practice in one of the structures. In the Language Reference, students also find more detailed explanation about the structure, as well as more activities for practice. When it comes to vocabulary, teachers and students can find different approaches as word formation, phrasal verbs and dictionary skills, which help students to understand how to use a dictionary.
Listening This section provides students with listening activities designed to teach students how to get ready to listen – Before Listening – and to listen both intensively and extensively – While Listening. The After Listening activities check comprehension of the listening passage and might offer questions for discussion in class. To promote learners’ autonomy and to assist students who might have difficulties with the listening passage, the transcripts are included in the Student’s Book. Pronunciation This section in Advantage 1 offers students practice in areas as pronunciation of plural and third person -s, pronunciation of regular past tense, stress and intonation, silent letters, sounds, homophones, and long and short vowel sounds. Speaking In Advantage 1 the speaking activities are more controlled, with suggested guidelines or questions that students can follow to keep a conversation going. Besides, there is a variety of elements of speech that will be useful while expressing in English, as fillers, language used for agreeing and disagreeing, convincing, but there are also topics that students are invited to give their opinion about and discuss without following any guideline. In Advantage 2, the speaking activities offer vocabulary practice and updated topics for discussion, propose interviews, make students state their opinions about specific situations and statements and also present students cultural aspects of different countries and have them discuss about it. Writing This section offers students detailed instructions to help them plan and accomplish their writing tasks with an excellent result. It starts with an example of the kind of material they are about to write and is followed by a step-by-step explanation on how to do it. At the end, there is always a cross-referenced Writing Reference for each unit, with sample answers so that students can check if they have followed all the suggested steps to produce an acceptable, error-free piece of writing. Live English In Advantage 1, this section presents students the language as it is used in real communication. Students are exposed to dialogues containing
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Guess Who In Advantage 2 as students already have lots of discussion activities, there is this different reading section in which students have to guess who the famous person is, by reading some information about him/her. After reading, they can check their answers by looking at the pictures that are found at the end of the book. This section can be also used with those students known as fast-finishers or as a piece of homework. Appendix The appendix is a tool to promote students autonomy. There are sections in which they can check their work and also a section in which they can just have fun with the knowledge they already have of the language. Writing Reference: it presents advice on Getting Started, Structuring Your Essay and Checking for Mistakes. It is suggested that students exchange their writing material and follow a checklist to edit each other’s work. Every unit has a writing template that gives specific step-by-step instructions for the kind of writing exercise in each unit, including checklists for common errors. They are offered for students at any level of ability to follow and produce a more than acceptable piece of writing. Language Reference: grammar is explained in a way that is comprehensible to students, using the contrastive approach to warn students of common errors. Phonetic chart: there is a chart of English vowels and consonants on the last page of the Student’s Book. Students can refer to it while doing the pronunciation activities in each unit. List of irregular verbs: there is a list of the most common irregular verbs on the cover of the Student’s Book. Students can test themselves and each other and use it as a quick reference when doing activities and writing the compositions or essays in the Writing sections. Fast Finishers: fun activities to be done at home or in class for students who finish their tasks faster than others. Transcripts: includes the listening material from the Listening sections.
STUDENT’S CD-ROM The CD-ROM offers interactive activities with the structures learned in the book. It presents a link to the Richmond site and different kinds of activities. These activities can be e-mailed to the teacher or printed to be handed in for the teacher to correct. These activities do not have an answer key. Once the other activities are done, students are able to check their performance and correct any possible mistakes in the screen. USING THE STUDENT’S BOOK The units provide 63 hours of classroom work. It is divided in 9 units of 4 spreads each, plus around 10 pages of Writing Reference, 23 pages of Language Reference and the Fast Finishers pages. Each unit is planned to be taught in 7 hours, divided as follows:
Time
Section
15’ 1h30’ 1h30’ 1h30’ 15’ 1h – 1h30’ 30’ 30’ 15’
Warm up Reading Language Listening Pronunciation Speaking Writing Live English Guess Who
The teacher also has the CD-ROM as a tool for extra practice of presented structures and vocabulary. It can be used in a classroom with computers and all students can do the same task at the same time. USING THE TEACHER’S MATERIAL The Teacher’s Book offers all the answers for the activities in the Student’s book and the transcripts for all activities. The Activity Bank Catalogue is a pack with extra material that is intended to be used in classroom as a different approach to the same topic of the unit. Not to be book-centered in all classes, the material contains photocopiable worksheets and cut outs that can make classes more dynamic and motivate students, as well as suggestions for extra oral practice. The CD-ROM offers activities to be used in tests, as well as data show presentations and all the audio material.
INTRODUCTION
functions such as greetings, shopping, ordering food, buying things, formal and informal conversations, among others. These functions are presented in speaking and/or listening activities and then students practice them in pairs or small groups.
This material was produced by teachers and tested in the classroom to offer teachers using Advantage a complete set of useful resources for their classes. 3
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