1

NEW EDITION

SkillsPROGRESSIVE

in English

Terry Phillips and Anna Phillips

Level 1 Teacher’s Book

Published byGarnet Publishing Ltd.8 Southern CourtSouth StreetReading RG1 4QS, UK

Copyright © 2016 Garnet Publishing Ltd.

The right of Terry Phillips and Anna Phillips to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with theCopyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, ortransmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Publisher. Any personwho does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable tocriminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Second edition 2016

ISBN: 978-1-78260-309-2

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ProductionProject managers: Richard Peacock, Nicky PlattEditorial team: Dr Sally Rabi, Emily Clarke, Sarah MellowesResearch: Lucy PhillipsDesign & layout: Ed Du Bois, Sarah Church, Neil Collier, Mike Hinks, Bob HouseIllustration: Doug NashPhotography: Alamy, Clipart, Corbis, Digital Vision, Getty Images, Image

Source, Photodisc, iStockphoto, ShutterstockAudio: EFS Television Production Ltd, Silver Street Studios

AcknowledgementsThe Publishers would like to thank the following who contributed to the pilotingof the Garnet series at AOU:

1. FLS Deanship: Professor Ahmad Y. Majdoubeh and Professor Saleh Al-Salman

2. Kuwait Branch: Mr. Mohammed Farran and Ms. Hiba Tayyara3. Egypt Branch: Dr. Heba Badreldin, Dr. Manar Shalaby,

Ms. Amira Fouad, and Ms. Marine Milad.4. Lebanon Branch: Dr. Hayat Al-Khatib, Mr. Ralph Sleiman,

Ms. Mirna Abdel Malak, and Ms. Helen Zadourian

Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders and we apologize inadvance for any unintentional omissions. We will be happy to insert theappropriate acknowledgements in any subsequent editions.

Printed and boundin Lebanon by International Press: interpress@int-press.com

4 Book map

Book map

Theme Topics & Vocabulary Listening Speaking

1 Education • Freshers’ week• Systems of education• Living and working at

university• A Personal Statement

Skills:• understanding

definitions

Grammar:• articles• gerunds• present simple be

Skills:• organizing a talk• choosing the correct

tense

Grammar:• present vs past tense

2 Psychology andsociology

• Concepts• Human behaviour• Personality and

behaviour• Extroverts and introverts

Skills:• recognizing time

signposts

Grammar:• past simple regular and

irregular verbs• prepositions of time

Skills:• taking turns: starting

and ending a turn• expressing advice and

possibility• giving advice

Grammar:• modals: can / can’t• should / shouldn’t

3 Work and business • How to be a goodemployee

• Summer jobs• Choosing a career• The interview process

Skills:• hearing and noting

important words• expressing obligation

and necessity

Grammar:• modals: must / mustn’t• have to / don’t have to

Skills:• making a good

impression• extending a turn• expressing wants

Grammar:• yes / no questions• expressing wants

4 Daily life • A time for everything• Larks and owls: sleep

patterns• Work, rest and play• Average people?

Skills:• predicting what comes

next• recognizing introductory

phrases

Grammar:• demonstratives: this,that, these, those

Skills:• linking research and

personal experience

Grammar:• prepositions

5 Technology • What is technology?• Uses of technology• Low-tech technology• Technology and the

environment

Skills:• using signpost words• recognizing quantifiers

Grammar:• quantifiers: many, few,much, less, etc.

Skills:• introducing a talk

Grammar:• choosing the correct

verb form• will and going to

Book map 5

Reading Writing Phonology Everyday English Portfolio

Skills:• preparing to read• recognizing advice and

instructions

Grammar:• Imperatives and must

for advice

Skills:• writing a personal

statement• organizing information

into paragraphs

Grammar:• like / enjoy + V + -ing• want / hope + to + V

• hearingconsonants:/p/ and /b/

• hearingvowels: // and/i�/

Asking about wordsand phrases

Activities and clubs

Skills:• preparing to read:

illustrations• the effect of frequency

adverbs

Grammar:• frequency adverbs

Skills:• gathering and recording

information• organizing information

into paragraphs• describing people• the basics of essay

writing

Grammar:• adjectives for describing

people• linking with and• omission of repeated

subject

• hearing andsaying vowels:/�/ and /ɑ�/

• sayingconsonants:/n/, /ŋ/, /ŋk/

Asking forinformation

What kind of personam I?

Skills:• dealing with new words• preparing to read:

section headings

Grammar:• identifying noun phrases

Skills:• writing about a process• organizing information

into a flow chart• using chronological

markers• giving reasons for

actions

Grammar:• because and so (1)• present simple passive

• hearingconsonants:/�/, /�/, / /

Talking about daysand times

Jobs

Skills:• finding and using topic

sentences• looking for examples

Grammar:• introductory phrases

Skills:• writing about results• referring to tables and

figures

Grammar:• past simple passive

• hearingconsonants: -th, -er, -er

• saying vowels:/e/, /��/, /ə/

Offering andrequesting;accepting andrefusing

Comparing countries

Skills:• recognizing reasons and

results

Grammar:• because and so (2)

Skills:• writing topic sentences• writing a case study

Grammar:• modifying nouns

• multi-syllablewords

• saying vowelsounds

• saying theletter s

Getting aroundtown

Wearable technology

6 Introduction

The series 7The themes 7The sections 7The lessons 7Additional pages 7

Everyday English 7Knowledge quiz or Vocabulary quiz 7Portfolio 8

Approach 8Aims 8Moving from teaching general

to academic English 8Discrete skills or integrated? 8Receptive skills – listening and reading 8Productive skills – speaking and writing 9Syntactic grammar for EAP 9Syntactic grammar at Level 1 10Exercise naming 11Exercise types 11Vocabulary lists 12Skills Checks 12Pronunciation Checks 12

Recurrent activities 13Activating (background)

knowledge / ideas 13Understanding words in context 13Transferring information (to the

real world) / Using new skills in a real-world task 13

Reviewing key words 13Identifying a new skill 13Predicting content 13Previewing vocabulary 13Hearing / Understanding / Studying a

model / discourse structure 13Practising a model 13Producing a model 13Producing key patterns 13Showing comprehension 13Researching information 13Developing vocabulary 13

Developing independent learning 13Developing critical thinking 14Remembering real-world knowledge 14Using / Applying a key skill 14Making and checking hypotheses 14

Methodology 14Everyday English 14Knowledge / Vocabulary quiz 14Portfolio 15Listening 16Further speaking practice / drilling 17Setting up tasks 18Use of visuals 18Pronunciation 18Comparing answers in pairs 18Monitoring 18Feedback 18Confirmation and correction 18Highlighting grammar 18Self-checking 19Gap fill 19Two-column activities 19Ordering 19Tables and charts 19Error correction 19

Introduction: Contents

Introduction 7

Introduction

The series

This course is part of the multi-level Progressive Skillsin English series. The series as a whole preparesstudents to study wholly or partly in English medium at tertiary level, or to join the world of academicEnglish, on the internet and in print.

This new edition has been extensively revised to takeinto account feedback from both teachers andstudents. In particular, Themes 4 and 5 are completelynew. The accompanying Workbook provides furtherpractice in all the skills areas.

The themes

In each level of Progressive Skills in English there arefive themes, covering a wide range of areas of humanknowledge.

Level 1Theme 1: EducationTheme 2: Psychology and sociologyTheme 3: Work and businessTheme 4: Daily lifeTheme 5: Technology

The sections

Within each theme there are four main sections, eachdealing with a discrete skill: listening, speaking,reading or writing. A number of related topics areexplored within each theme. For example, in Theme 1the following areas are explored:Listening: welcome talks for students starting at an

English-medium universitySpeaking: systems of education and qualities of

good teachersReading: living and working at universityWriting: completing an application form and

writing a Personal Statement

The focus in each section is on one specific skill. TheMethodology notes in this Teacher’s Book stress thediscrete skills focus and caution against spending toomuch time on, for example, speaking in a listening

section. This is not because the writers dislike integratedskills. Indeed, each theme ends with a section calledPortfolio, which provides detailed guidance onintegrated skills activities following the completion of aparticular theme. The insistence on the target skill isbecause the writers believe that both the teacher andthe students should focus on improvement in a specificskill in a particular lesson, rather than moving constantlybetween different skills. However, the key word here isfocus. More than one skill will, of course, be involved inany particular lesson. For example, in listening lessonsthere is almost always a speaking output, and in writinglessons there is almost always a reading input.

The commonality of theme across the four skillsections means that, by the end of a theme, studentshave a much deeper knowledge of both theinformation and vocabulary that it comprises than is normally achieved in ELT course books.

The lessons

Each skill section contains two or four main lessons,and each lesson has a clear focus and purpose.

Additional pages

Every theme contains three additional pages:

Everyday EnglishThis page is in the speaking section and builds skills insurvival language and social English. In Theme 1, forexample, this page covers Asking about words andphrases and in Theme 2, Asking for information in auniversity or college setting. See the Methodologysection for more guidance.

Knowledge quiz or Vocabulary quizThis page is in the reading section and tests studentson their acquisition of common core knowledge andthematic vocabulary from the theme. In Theme 1, for example, this page ask students to rememberinformation about Education, including parts of auniversity campus, social customs in the UK and types of school. See the Methodology section formore guidance.

8 Introduction

PortfolioThis section comes at the very end of each theme andprovides an opportunity to integrate skills learnt duringthe course. Students are provided with tasks andresearch information in additional listening and/orreading texts, and asked to produce talks and/or writtentexts. In Theme 3, for example, students are asked toresearch and talk about Jobs. See the Methodologysection for more guidance.

Approach

AimsIn Progressive Skills in English, students learn tounderstand the main types of academic spokenlanguage, lectures and tutorials, and the main types of academic written language, journal articles andencyclopedia entries. They also learn to produce themain kinds of student academic language, oralpresentations, contributions to a tutorial and written assignments.

Moving from teaching general to academic EnglishMany of the teaching techniques and approaches usedin general English teaching can be transferred to theteaching of academic English. The differences aremore to do with the syllabus and course content.Some of the key differences we have noted include:

GrammarMost general English courses are driven by tensegrammar. Since 80 per cent of academic English isin a present tense, the focus needs to move fromtenses to syntactic grammar. For more details onthis point, see Syntactic grammar for EAP below.

SkillsA general English course will focus mainly on oralcommunication. Listening will be extremely varied,from conversations and anecdotes to radioprogrammes. Reading is often relegated to thirdplace and writing to a very distant fourth. For theacademic learner, reading and writing are at leastas important as the other skills. For more details,see Discrete skills or integrated? below.

ContentIn EAP, listening to lectures will be more relevantthan listening to anecdotes and stories. Academicstudents need to learn to ‘grab’ relevantinformation from a lecture after one listening only.Similarly with reading, required content will mostlybe fact or theory or a mixture, rather than fictionand anecdote. Students need to be able to decide

quickly which texts, or parts of texts are relevant tothe task and extract the information. Listening andreading texts in general will be much longer in EAPthan in a general English course.

VocabularyStudents need a wide range of formal language.Academic texts about a single subject tend to use alot of synonyms for key nouns and verbs, sostudents need to deepen and broaden their lexicalrange all the time.

Topics and themesSometimes you find very familiar ‘EFL’ topics inProgressive Skills in English, but then you will seethat the approach to that topic is different. Forexample, in a section on holiday resorts, studentsare not asked about going on holiday or planning aweekend away, but rather why particular resortsare popular, whether tourism benefits the localeconomy and how countries can increase tourismto a particular area.

Critical thinkingStudents are encouraged to ask why and howthroughout the course, and to relate informationfrom a particular text to their own selves or theirown country/area. They are shown the importanceof evaluating information and looking for stance orbias on the part of the speaker or writer.

Discrete skills or integrated?In terms of presentation, Progressive Skills in English isvery definitely a discrete skills course. Research hasshown that students need to have a clear focus, withmeasurable objectives in order to make real progress,and this is only really possible if the skills are initiallyseparated out. However, integration is the norm in thereal world and, since the course aims to mimic real-world skills usage, integration is automatic once onemoves from presentation. For example, in thereceptive skills lessons, as in the real world, studentshave to make notes from reading and listening andthen discuss their findings, thus bringing in writingand speaking to listening and reading lessons. In theproductive skills lessons, as in the real world, studentshave to research before producing, thus bringing inreading and listening skills.

Receptive skills – listening and readingResearch strongly suggests that listening and readingare based on a continuous interaction between top-down and bottom-up processes. Top-down processesprepare the listener or reader to understand theinformation in the text. Bottom-up processes ensure

Introduction 9

than the listener or reader can decode information inreal-time, i.e., as it is actually being heard or read.

Top-down processesBefore we can understand information, we need torecognize the context. We expect to hear differentthings in a restaurant, for example, from a lectureroom, or to read different things in a novel and areligious text. We use context and co-text clues(pictures, newspaper headlines, diagrams) toactivate schemata – pictures, we could say, offamiliar situations. In the process, the brain makesavailable to us vocabulary, discourse structures andbackground knowledge of the real world, whichhelp with bottom-up decoding. We start to develophypotheses about the contents of the text, and wecontinually predict the next word, the next phrase,the next discourse point or the next communicativevalue as we are listening or reading. In ProgressiveSkills in English, students are taught to bring top-down processing to bear on new listening andreading texts. The course works to build schemataand background knowledge which will help studentsto predict content, in general and in particular. In theacademic world, listening and reading normally havea productive by-product – detailed notes.Throughout Progressive Skills in English, students aretaught to take notes and to use these notes in lateractivities to prove comprehension of the text.

Bottom-up processesTop-down processes enable listeners and readers toget a good general idea of what will be heard orread in a text. However, to get a detailed andaccurate understanding, the text must be brokendown into meaningful units. In the case of spokenEnglish, this means being able to turn the streamof speech into actual words, which in turn meansknowing the phonological code of English. Withwritten English, it is slightly easier if your firstlanguage has a similar orthography to English, butwill continue to pose problems for students whoseL1 is Chinese or Arabic, for example. Research hasshown that we use syntax to achieve this breakinginto meaningful units (see below on syntacticgrammar). In Progressive Skills in English, studentsare taught to recognize all the phonemes ofEnglish in context and to identify multi-syllablewords from the stressed syllable in the stream ofspeech. They also learn to identify written wordsfrom the first two or three letters, a key skill whichenables native speakers to understand written textat high speed. Students are also exposed tocommon syntactic patterns and practise breakingup incoming language into subject, verb, object /complement and adverbial.

Productive skills – speaking and writingProduction in speech and writing in the normal EFLclassroom is often more or less spontaneous andpersonal. Students are asked to speak or write aboutthemselves, their lives, families, opinions, etc., withvery little preparation. This mimics real-lifeconversation and, to some extent, real-life informalletter and email writing. This type of production is rarein Progressive Skills in English because it is not themodel for production in the academic world.

Production in academia begins with an assignmentwhich requires research. The research almost alwaysleads to note-taking. From these notes, an oralpresentation, tutorial contribution or writtenassignment is produced. There are normally threestages to this production: drafting, editing andrewriting. In Progressive Skills in English, we teachthe idea of the TOWER of writing – thinking,organizing, writing (for the writer), editing, rewriting(for the reader / listener).

Syntactic grammar for EAPGrammar in ELT has traditionally been seen as largely aquestion of verb tense, and that certain tenses are‘easy’ and others are ‘hard’. Progression through levelsconventionally equates to the ability to manipulatedifferent tenses, from present simple of the verb be atbeginner level to present perfect continuous passivemodal at advanced level. Most best-selling coursesfollow a structural syllabus which is largely a verbtense syllabus. However, English is a syntacticlanguage where meaning is carried by word orderrather than paradigmatic form. We cannot recover themeaning of a word or its role without a sentence ortext context, because English words are not marked inmost instances for part of speech or case. Many wordscan be nouns or verbs depending on context; like, totake an extreme example, can be a noun, a verb, apreposition or an adjective. Any noun can be thesubject or object of a verb; only pronouns are markedfor case, e.g., He told him.

Research has shown that native speakers use theirknowledge of English syntax, together with theirvocabulary, to decode sentences in speech and inwriting. They do this in real time. In other words,native speakers are constantly constructing treediagrams of incoming data which help them to predictthe next item and its role in the ongoing sentence.

It is somewhat strange that this key fact seems to havegone unnoticed for so long by ELT practitioners. Thereason is probably that most ELT classwork, for manydecades, has been based on spoken interaction, oftenof informal conversation, rather than the individual

10 Introduction

interacting with and decoding in real time a formalspoken or written text. Corpus research now shows usthat conversation in English has an average phraselength of just over one word, and very shortsentences, such as I went there, She likes him, He’sworking in a bank. In short sentences like this, themost salient area of difficulty is the verb form whichmust be dropped between the subject and the object,complement or adverbial. However, in academic orformal discourse, the average phrase length jumps toeight words. Analysis of this genre shows that nounphrases are particularly long, with pre- and post-modification of the head noun, and subject nounphrases are often preceded themselves by longadverbial phrases, so that a sentence may have a largenumber of words before the subject and more wordsbefore the main verb. For example:

According to research at the University of Reading into theproblems experienced by children growing up with a singleparent, children from one-parent families in deprived areas havea much greater chance of developing personality disorders.

The native speaker has little problem with thissentence, either in speech or writing, because he/sheknows that the phrase According to is not the subjectand the subject will come along in a while, and thatchildren can be post-modified so he/she must wait forthis noun phrase to end before encountering the verb,etc. The non-native speaker, trained in decoding simpleshort utterances, will have considerable difficulty.

Complex tenses are in fact not at all common inacademic/formal English. Research shows that themajority of sentences in this genre are in the presentsimple, including its passive forms, for the obviousreason that most formal English presents facts,theories or states of being, which are rendered inEnglish by this tense. The next most common tense isthe past simple, because the genre often containshistorical background to current facts, theories orstates of being, which in turn is normally rendered inpast simple. In one particular corpus study, only oneexample of the present perfect continuous was foundin the whole academic/formal corpus. A studentequipped with facility in these two tenses willunderstand the tense information in around 90 percent of academic/formal sentences. However, theymay not understand the noun phrases and adverbialphrases which surround these ‘simple’ tenses.

There is a final key issue which applies in general tolong texts in the EFL classroom. In the main, whenstudents are exposed to longer texts with a formalstructure, they are allowed, even encouraged, toengage in multiple listenings or multiple readingsbefore being asked to complete an after-doingcomprehension task such as multiple choice or

true/false. This type of activity has no correlate in thereal world, where listening has to be real-time – thereis no opportunity for a second or subsequent hearing– and reading should be real-time if it is to beefficient. Comprehension occurs as the sentence isbeing received. However, real-time comprehension isonly possible if the receiver understands the syntacticstructures possible in the language and identifies, inreal time, the structure being used at a particular time.The listener or reader is then ready for the requiredcomponents of that structure and predicts theirappearance and even the actual words. For example,once a native speaker hears the verb give, they willanticipate that a person and a thing will complete theutterance. Even if the ‘person’ noun phrase containsmany words, the receiver will be waiting. For example:The state gives unemployed people with a largenumber of children under the age of 18 still in full-time education ... The native-speaker listener or readeris thinking, ‘What? What does it give?’ Conversely, theconstruction of extended formal text in speech andwriting also requires a deep understanding of syntax,otherwise it is not possible to construct sentences ofthe complexity required by the genre.

While writing the syllabus for Skills in English, firstpublished by Garnet Education in 2003, we werestruck by the points above and began work on theimplications for classroom practice. In Progressive Skillsin English, we feel we have gone some way topresenting a coherent syllabus of relevant practice tobuild the skills required for real-time comprehension.

Syntactic grammar at Level 1By this stage in their studies, students are probablyfully familiar with parts of speech and with the mostcommon syntactic patterns (see tables 1 and 2 below).Since we cannot assume this familiarity, however,these points are quickly revised in the first few sectionsof the course. Thereafter, students are exposed mainlyto basic S V O/C/A patterns, with co-ordination.Gradually, the length of the object noun phrase orcomplement is extended and co-ordination isintroduced but with no ellipsis of subject or verb. Thisshould ensure that students begin to get a natural feelfor these patterns, can recognize them in real time inlistening and reading, and produce them in speechand writing.

Introduction 11

Table 1: Sentence roles and parts of speech

Table 2: Main sentence patterns in English

Exercise namingMany ELT course books give general names to groupsof exercises, such as Presentation or Pronunciation.Progressive Skills in English goes much further andnames the target activity for each exercise in itsheading, e.g., Activating ideas or Predicting the nextword. By this simple means, both teacher andstudents are informed of the purpose of an exercise.Make sure that your students understand the headingof each exercise so they can see clearly the pointwhich is being presented or practised.

Exercise types As is probably clear already, Progressive Skills inEnglish contains many original features, but teachersand course leaders need not be concerned that a

wholly new methodology is required to teach thecourse. On the one hand, exercise naming means thatthe purpose of new types of exercise is immediatelyclear. On the other, many traditional types of ELTexercises are used in the course, with only slightchanges. The most significant of these changes areshown in Table 3 below.

Table 3: Adaptations to traditional exercise types

Roles insentences

Possible partsof speech

Notes

Subject

Object

noun, pronoun

noun, pronoun

extended noun phrasecan contain other parts of speech, e.g., a verylarge piece of research

Complement noun,adjective,adverb

an object becomes acomplement when it hasthe same reference as thesubject, such as insentences with be andrelated verbs, e.g., She isa doctor. He was late.They seem tired.

Verb verb extended verb phrase cancontain adverbs, e.g.,They are still waiting.

Adverbial adverb,prepositionalphrase

note that this role in asentence can be filled bya prepositional phrase aswell as by an adverb,e.g., He works hard. Sheworks in a bank.

We left. S V

She is a doctor. S V C

I am cold. S V C

They were late. S V A

We have been to the back. S V A

I gave her the book. S V O O

They made him president. S V O C

I told her to leave. S V O V

We saw them later. S V O A

Accept responsibility. V O

Traditionalexercise

Progressive Skills version

grammartables

- Parts of sentence are clearly shown withsubject, verb, object/complement/adverbial columns.

- Parts of speech are clearly shown withcolour-coding.purple = nounred = verbblue = pronounorange = adjectivegreen = prepositionbrown = adverb

gap fill In some cases, one part of speech isremoved so students can see the variouscontexts in which, e.g., a pronoun canappear. In other cases, one role in thesentence is removed, e.g., the subject, sostudents can see the different wordswhich can make up this role.

sentenceanagrams

Words are jumbled in a number ofsentences in the traditional way, butwhen students have unscrambled them,all the sentences have the same syntacticstructure, e.g., S V O A. Words in a particular phrase are kepttogether during the jumbling, e.g., in theUK, rather than all being split; this helpsstudents to think in terms of syntacticblocks rather than individual words.

transformation Traditional transformation, e.g., positiveto negative, appears regularly, but inaddition, active to passive is introducedearly on in the course, because of therelatively high frequency of passives inacademic English.

joiningsentences

Sentences are joined by co-ordinators fromthe beginning of Progressive Skills inEnglish, but the second half of thesentence retains all its features, e.g.,subject, verb, negation, for most of Level 1.This is because co-ordinated sentenceswith ellipses hide the kernel syntacticstructure with which we want students tobecome familiar, e.g., Some people do notknow about the problem or care. Thesecond half of this sentence is originally:Some people do not care about theproblem but with the ellipsis, the subject,the negation and the object disappear.

12 Introduction

Vocabulary listsVocabulary is a key part of language learning of anykind but it is even more important for the student ofacademic English. Students need a huge vocabulary inorder to understand or produce the lexical cohesioncommon to this genre. The reading and writingsections in every theme begin with a vocabulary list ofabout 40 items in the right-hand column of the firstlesson. This list contains items from the skill sectionwhich are linked to the theme. The part of speech isgiven in every case for single items. In addition, thereis sometimes information on the precise meaning inthe context of the theme, e.g., area (n) [= location] (asopposed to field of study, for example). There is spaceat the bottom of each list for students to add three orfour more words that they wish to learn.

Most of the items in each list are probably new to themajority of the students in any class. A few of theitems are likely to be known, but are so central to thetheme that they are included for revision.

Normally, about 40 per cent of the words in the list arepresented in the Vocabulary lesson, with somereference made to perhaps another 10 per cent. Theremaining words will be encountered in other lessonsand either specifically taught or understood in context.

You can use the lists in a number of ways:• ask students to look at the list before the start of

the skill section and tick the words they ‘know’; donot test the students this time but encourage themto be honest

• ask students to repeat this activity at the end of theskill section, and again one week and one monthlater. On these occasions, test the students’knowledge, particularly in the relevant skill, e.g., to check that students can spell the words from awriting section

• get students to mark the stress on each word asthey encounter it

• get students to underline or highlight in some wayunusual spelling and pronunciation points

• put students into pairs or groups to test each other• allow students to write a translation beside some

or all of the words

Please note: flashcards and detailed notes on usingthem can be found on the Progressive Skills in Englishwebsite, www.skillsinenglish.com.

Skills ChecksIn every theme, there is at least one Skills Check. Thenaming of this feature is significant. It is assumed thatmany if not all students will have heard about the skillspoints in these boxes, i.e., they are skills checks not

skills presentations. It is the writers’ experience thatmany students who have gone through a modern ELTcourse have heard of the majority of skills points butcannot make practical use of them. If you feel, in aparticular case, that the students have no idea aboutthe point in question, spend considerably longer on afull presentation.

In most cases, the students are given an activity to dobefore looking at the Skills Check, thus a test-teach-test approach is used. This is quite deliberate. Withthis approach, there is a good chance that thestudents will be sensitized to the particular pointbefore being asked to understand it intellectually. Thisis likely to be more effective than talking about thepoint and then asking the student to try to apply it.The positioning of the Skills Checks means that theinformation relevant to an activity or set of activities isavailable for consultation by the student at any time.Because some students have an inductive learningstyle (working from example to rule) and some have adeductive style (working from rule to example), theSkills Checks have rules and examples.You can use the Skills Checks in a number of ways:• ask students to read out the rules and the examples• get students to give you more examples of

each point• ask students to read the Skills Check and then

cover it; read it out with mistakes or with wrongexamples of the point being presented

• at the end of the lesson, ask students to tell youthe new skill(s) they have encountered, withoutlooking at their Course Books

Pronunciation ChecksIn the speaking section, and occasionally in thelistening section, there are Pronunciation Checks. In Level 1, these chiefly focus on phonemediscrimination. For example, in Theme 2 Listening,one Pronunciation Check deals with hearing the twophonemes /�/ and /ɑ�/, while in Theme 2 Speaking,another deals with the actual production of the twophonemes. The examples in these checks arerecorded, so you can give students good models ofthe target point and then drill the items (see Furtherspeaking practice / drilling below). Sometimesthere is additional practice material to be completedafter working through the check.

Introduction 13

Recurrent activities

As mentioned above, all exercises are named. Many ofthese names appear regularly throughout the course,sometimes with slight changes. This is because theseactivities are particularly valuable in language learning.

Activating (background) knowledge / ideasIn line with basic communication theory, the lessonsalways try to move from the known to the unknown.This activity at the start of a lesson allows students toshow that they have knowledge or ideas about the realworld before learning new information. It also enablesthe teacher to gauge what is already known, and buildon it if necessary, before moving further into the lesson.

While students are talking about a particular area, theyare in effect activating schemata, which means they aremore ready for further information in the same area.

Understanding words in contextResearch shows that it is possible to work out themeaning of a small proportion (perhaps ten per cent)of words in a text, if the remaining words andstructures are well known. This activity guides students,perhaps through multiple matching, to showunderstanding of new items.

Transferring information (to the real world) /Using new skills in a real-world taskIt is essential that information is transferable outsideof the classroom. This activity tries to make the bridgebetween information learnt in class and applications inthe real world.

Reviewing key wordsStudents are often given the opportunity to recall wordsfrom the previous lesson(s) of a skill section. This helpsstudents to move information into long-term memory.

Identifying a new skillThe methodology of Progressive Skills in English, asdetailed above, is that students are presented with atext in the Real-time lesson which contains somerecycled skills points and one or more new skillspoints. The students are not directed formally to thenew point(s) but may notice while they are doing thereal-time activity. Then in the next lesson, they areformally directed to the point(s). This is in line with theprinciple of noticing before learning.

Predicting contentListening and reading are real-time skills. The listenermust be ahead of the speaker; the reader must beahead of the text. Activities in this type of exercisehelp students to get ahead.

Previewing vocabularyThis is a pre-teaching activity. Sometimes keyvocabulary is required in order to complete a task laterin a lesson. This key vocabulary is presented and needsto be practised thoroughly so it is fully available tostudents during the coming lesson.

Hearing / Understanding / Studying a model / discourse structureProgressive Skills in English follows the principle thatstudents must see or hear what they are later asked toproduce in speech or writing. In this exercise, theywork with a model in order to recognize key features,such as discourse structure.

Practising a modelClearly, once students have seen key points about a model they should be given the opportunity toproduce the text.

Producing a modelThis is the third stage, after ‘understanding’ and‘practising’. Students are given a task which requiresthe production of a parallel text.

Producing key patternsThis is related to producing a model, but is at thesentence level.

Showing comprehensionComprehension in the real world is a real-time activityand is something which happens in the brain: it is notdirectly observable. However, it is essential that bothteachers and students see that comprehension hastaken place. But remember, this sort of activity is a testof comprehension not a sub-skill in comprehension.

Researching informationProgressive Skills in English is not convergent. Studentsare only sent back to their pre-existing ideas ofknowledge at the beginning of lessons, in Activatingknowledge / ideas. Progressive Skills is divergent.Students are sent off to research and bring backinformation in order to give a talk, take part in atutorial or produce a written text.

Developing vocabularyStudents of academic English need constantly todevelop their vocabulary knowledge. This exerciseextends their existing vocabulary.

Developing independent learningClearly, the ultimate aim of teaching a language is thatstudents become independent learners who do not needa teacher to acquire new linguistic knowledge. This activitygives students a particular sub-skill to aid this process.

14 Introduction

Developing critical thinkingWe must take students beyond the ‘what’ and the‘when’ of information. We must get them to react toinformation and to ask why something happened orwhy it is important.

Remembering real-world knowledgeProgressive Skills in English is based on the theorythat people need a framework of knowledge in orderto understand new information as they read or hearit. Therefore, they need to remember real-worldknowledge from lessons, not just vocabulary, skillsand grammar.

Using / Applying a key skillSkills are learnt. Then they need to be applied. Thisactivity always connects directly to Identifying a newskill in an earlier lesson in the skill section.

Making and checking hypothesesReal-time listening and reading is about making andchecking hypotheses. This is what makes it a real-timeactivity. Students need to learn a wide range of pointsabout discourse, vocabulary and syntax which helpswith making hypotheses. They then need to be giventhe opportunity to check these hypotheses.

Methodology

Everyday EnglishThese additional lessons are designed to giveuniversity students some survival English for universitylife. The language and topics are freestanding so thelessons can be done at any time during the skillsection or theme, or can be missed out completelyshould you so wish. The page could last a wholelesson or you could spend a shorter time and onlywork on two or three of the conversations. Theformat of all the Everyday English lessons is similar,with between four and six mini-dialogues on a similartopic or with a similar function.

Here are some ways of exploiting each stage of the lesson:

You may wish to highlight the grammar of some ofthe forms used in the conversations, but in generalthey can be learnt as phrases without going into toomuch explanation. Indeed, many of the forms that weoften spend a lot of time on in class could probably bebetter learnt as fixed phrases, since their usage ineveryday life is so limited, e.g., How long have youbeen learning English?

Ask students if they think the conversations take placein a formal or informal context. In Theme 1, forexample, the conversations are obviously between twostudents so are more informal. In Theme 2, some ofthe conversations take place with members of staff, sothese conversations are more formal. If conversationsare formal, it is always important to remind studentsto use polite intonation.

Once any tasks set in the Course Book have beencompleted, and you have checked studentsunderstand the conversations, you can use theconversations for intensive pronunciation practice.Use one or more of the following activities:• Play the audio, pausing after each line for students

to listen and repeat, chorally and individually. • Drill some of the phrases from the conversations,

chorally then individually.• Students practise the conversations in pairs, from

the full transcript or from prompts.• Students practise the conversations again, but

substituting their own information, words orphrases where appropriate.

• Students extend the conversation by adding furtherlines of dialogue.

• Students invent a completely new conversation forthe situation, function or photograph.

• Add some drama to the conversations by askingstudents to act out the conversations with different contexts, relationships or emotions (e.g., one student should act angry and the otherstudent bored).

Monitor and give feedback after paired practice. Youmay want to focus on: • intonation of yes / no questions• stressed words in short answers, e.g., Yes, it is. Yes,

it does.• accurate use of auxiliary do in present

simple questions.

Knowledge / Vocabulary quizAlthough this is an optional part of each theme, theidea behind it is central to the approach of ProgressiveSkills in English. We have found from our work withuniversities around the world that students often failto understand a text not because the English grammaris above their level, but because they do not have theframework of real-world knowledge or the breadth oftopic-specific vocabulary in order to comprehend. Thispage makes these items central, but revises and teststhem in a variety of enjoyable ways. There are severalways in which this page can be used. TheMethodology notes for each theme suggest aparticular way or ways on each occasion, but broadlythe page can be done as:

Introduction 15

• a quiz for individuals, pairs or groups where itappears, i.e., at the end of the reading section

• a quiz, but later in the course, when students havehad a chance to forget some of the knowledgeand/or vocabulary

• a quiz, but before the students do the theme; keepthe answers and see how much they have learntafter doing the theme

• a self-study test; students write their answers andhand them in, or self-mark in a later lesson in class

• a phase of a lesson – the teacher sets the task(s) inthe normal way and feeds back orally.

PortfolioThe main features of the Portfolio lessons are:• versatility

It is possible to spend anything from part of a singlelesson to four lessons on the activities; in addition,some, all or none of the work can be done in class.

• integrated skillsAll four skills are included in this lesson, though thefocus will shift depending on the activity.

• academic skillsThe focus is on researching, digesting andexchanging information, and presentinginformation orally or in writing.

• learner independenceAt all stages from research through to oral orwritten presentations, the teacher should be in the roles of monitor, guide and, if necessary,manager, and should try to avoid being the‘knower’ and ‘controller’!

Here are some ways of exploiting each stage of the lesson:

Activating ideasUse the photographs in the book or show yourown. Make sure students have the key vocabularyfor all the activities.

Gathering informationThe course provides listening and reading texts. Youcan suggest extra internet research if you wish. Theinformation is often presented as an information gap,with groups listening to different texts thenregrouping in order to exchange information. At first,you may need to suggest the best way to take notes,e.g., in a table with relevant headings. Later, however,you should encourage students to design their ownnote-taking tables and headings. At all stages,encourage students to help each other withcomprehension or any problems, only calling on youas a last resort. The research stages can be done inclass or for homework. However, check the researchhas been done effectively and reasonably thoroughlybefore moving on to the presentation stages.

Oral presentationsTo start with, these should be no more than a fewsentences long. The organization of thepresentations is crucial and will depend on howmuch time you have and the number of students inyour class. • Formal and teacher-centred

Set another activity for the class, or ask anotherteacher to do something with your class.Remove one student at a time (or one group, ifthe presentation is a collaboration) to anotherroom so that you can listen to the presentation.

• Student-centred to some extentStudents give presentations to other groups ofstudents in the class. You may have betweentwo and four presentations going on at thesame time. Monitor as many as you possiblycan. Make a note of students you have listenedto and make sure you listen to differentstudents next time round.

• Student-centred and informal approach,requiring a mature class Students give presentations to their groups asabove. However, the ‘listening’ students givefeedback after the talk, rather than you.

It is important that if you have students listening totalks, they are not simply ‘passive’ listeners. Theywill switch off and get bored. Wherever possible,therefore, assign tasks. This is relatively easy ifstudents are listening to new information: they cancomplete notes or write answers to questions.However, if they are listening to talks similar totheir own, give the ‘listening’ students feedback orcomment sheets to complete (see below).

Table 4: Example feedback form for group tasks

Did the speaker ... Always Sometimes Never

look up from notes?

make eye contact?

speak loudlyenough?

talk at correctspeed?

use good intonationpatterns?

use good visuals /PowerPoint slides?

give all theimportant points?

introduce the talk?

conclude the talk?

16 Introduction

Please note: many of the above suggestions fororal presentations in the Portfolio lesson, includingthe feedback form, are also relevant for lessons inthe speaking sections.

Feedback on oral presentationsYou can choose between giving formal, writtenfeedback to individual students, and more informaloral feedback to each group or the whole class.Formal written feedback could be based on achecklist of speaking sub-skills such as thoseprovided by IELTS or Cambridge ESOL for the FCE.Alternatively, you may prefer to devise your ownchecklist with broader headings, e.g.,• accuracy• fluency• pronunciation• grammar• vocabulary, etc.

Informal feedback should include some positiveand encouraging statements, as well as showingstudents what they need to work on. With thescaffolding in Progressive Skills in English, studentsshould not make a large number of mistakes inproducing spoken or written work, so it should beeasier than otherwise to focus on a small numberof areas for improvement. Make a note ofgrammar or vocabulary mistakes you hear whilemonitoring the class. Write the incorrect languageon the board. Elicit from the class what the mistakeis and how to correct it. Drill the correct sentence.Practise any words, phrases, sentences or questionsthat you noted were poorly pronounced.

Whichever method of feedback you choose, givethe class one or two targets to work on for the nextoral presentation, e.g., ‘Look up from notes moreoften.’ Even better, ask students to each setthemselves a target for next time. Suggest ideas,which can be discrete (such as about thepronunciation of a particular sound) or muchbroader (such as about making clearer notes).Students should make a note of their target for nexttime and you can check it if you wish.

Dealing with writingIn the Portfolio, you can adapt the final activity asyou wish. You may like to give further practice ofwriting a full assignment-type essay, but there areother writing activities that are worth doing:• notes only, possibly in a table• PowerPoint slides• a poster or wall presentation, particularly if you

can display these publicly• a one-paragraph summary

• a complete project on the topic, containingseveral different articles with accompanyingvisuals; this can be worked on individually orproduced together in a group.

Giving feedback on writingFor work set for completion in class:Monitor and give some help to individuals. Make anote of common errors, i.e., mistakes that two ormore students make. Then give feedback to thewhole class. You can use the technique describedabove for feedback on oral errors; write theincorrect sentences the students have produced onthe board and elicit the correct version.

For work that you collect in: It is important not to get bogged down in detailedcorrections and/or piles of written work waiting tobe marked. For this reason, do not set too muchwritten work as home assignments! You could, ofcourse, ask students to comment on each other’swriting in a phase in a later lesson, but this onlyworks with relatively mature classes. Always setthe length of the task: 200–400 words is probablyenough for Level 1 of this course.

Establish a marking key with the class early on inthe course. For example, sp = spelling, p = punctuation, gr = grammar, and use thegrading grids provided for each theme’s finalwriting task. This means you are able to highlightthe problem areas but leave students to make the corrections.

Focus on only two or three key areas each time youmark. Initially, these may simply be presentationand layout, e.g., using paragraphs, but later couldinclude using more complex noun phrases or moreformal language. Later you can focus on sub-skillssuch as organization and discourse, cohesion,longer sentences, etc.

We have tried to provide model answers whereverpossible, even for open-ended activities like thewriting and speaking assignments. Always showthese to the class and discuss possible variations, inorder to avoid the models being too prescriptive. Ifyou have students with good writing skills, ask theirpermission to show their written work to the classas example answers.

Listening‘How many times should I play the audio of lectures?’This is a question we are often asked by teachers. Onthe one hand, we need to train our students to dealwith the real-life lecture situation, in which students

Introduction 17

will only have the opportunity to hear the informationonce. On the other hand, students may simply notunderstand the lecture after only one playing. So whatis the solution?• Firstly, it is important to make sure all the pre-

listening activities are carried out effectively so thatstudents can begin to predict the lecture content.

• Next, play the first section of the lecture once onlyfor completion of the exercise or activity; this is akind of ‘test’ to find out how well students wouldperform in the ‘real-life’ situation. It also trainsstudents to listen for as much information as they can on the first hearing. Check how wellstudents have completed the task and elicit thecorrect answers.

• Once you have confirmed the correct answers,move on to the next section of the lecture and corresponding exercise. Repeat the above procedure.

• When students have heard all the sections of thelecture, replay the complete lecture, with orwithout the transcript. This is where learning takesplace, because students have the opportunity tosee why they missed information or did not fullyunderstand during the first playing.

• Finally, as a follow-up, students should beencouraged to listen to the complete lectureseveral times on their own at home, both with andwithout the transcript.

What other strategies can the teacher use?• Remember that the key to comprehension in a

foreign language is prediction, so students musthave time to assimilate what they have just heardand predict what is coming next. You can pausethe lecture any number of times during the firstlistening if you think your class needs this extratime. But, of course, pause at logical points –certainly the end of sentences and preferably theend of topic points.

What other strategies can the students use?• Nowadays, most lecturers in the real world provide

pre-lecture reading lists and notes, PowerPointslides and visuals, and handouts. Summaries arealso often available on the university’s portal. Thereare PowerPoints available for the lectures on theProgressive Skills in English website. Studentsshould be made aware of all of these resources andencouraged to use them.

Further speaking practice / drillingIn the notes for individual speaking lessons, we oftensay ‘practise the sentences with the class’. You can useone or more of the example drilling techniques below.There are many other techniques, but we have just

given a sample below. (The examples are all based onTheme 1 Speaking.)

• Simple repetition, chorally and individuallyHighlight the pronunciation area you want to focuson when you model the sentence or question, e.g.,showing the intonation pattern with your hand, orusing an intonation arrow on the board.

• Question and answerWhen do you take national exams in your country?We take them at 16 and 18.(Do not simply accept 16 and 18 in a controlledpractice phase – encourage a full sentence.)Alternatively, you can practise short answers. Tellstudents if you require yes answers or no answers:Is a nursery school for young children?Yes, it is.Does primary mean ‘first’?Yes, it does.Do most children leave school at 18?Yes, they do.

• TransformationThese examples focus on forms of the presentsimple tense.Many children begin school at seven.Sorry, but they don’t begin school at seven. ORActually, they begin school at five.

• SubstitutionSay a phrase or sentence and ask the class torepeat it. Then give prompts that can besubstituted as follows:History is a very important subject at school.usefulHistory is a very useful subject at school.isn’tHistory isn’t a very useful subject at school.universityHistory isn’t a very useful subject at university.DramaDrama isn’t a very useful subject at university.

• PromptsThese can be given orally or they can be written onthe board. They are particularly good for practisingquestion forms:Nursery / young children?Is a nursery school for young children?When / take / A levels?When do you take A levels?

18 Introduction

Setting up tasksThe teaching notes for many activities begin with theword Set … This single word covers a number of vitalfunctions for the teacher, as follows:- Refer students to the rubric, or instructions.- Check that they understand what to do: get one ortwo students to explain the task in their own words.

- Tell the students how they are to do the task, if thisis not clear in the rubric (as individual work,pairwork, or group work).

- Go through the example, if there is one. If not,make it clear what the target output is: fullsentences, short answers, notes, etc. Many activitiesfail in the classroom because students do not knowwhat they are expected to produce.

- Go through one or two of the actual prompts,working with an able student to elicit the requiredoutput.

Use of visualsThere is a large amount of visual material in the book.This should be exploited in a number of ways:- before an activity, to orientate the students; to getthem thinking about the situation or the activity and to provide an opportunity for a small amount of pre-teaching of vocabulary

- during the activity, to remind students of important language

- after the activity, to help with related work or torevise the target language.

PronunciationOnly the speaking section of each theme directlyfocuses on oral production. In this section, you mustensure that all the students in your group havereasonable pronunciation of all target items. Elsewhere,in the other skill sections, it is important that you do notspend too long on oral production. However, do not letstudents get away with poor production of basic words,even if the focus of the lesson is not speaking.

Comparing answers in pairsThis activity is suggested on almost every occasionwhen the students have completed an activityindividually. This provides all students with a chance togive and to explain their answers, which is notpossible if the teacher immediately goes through theanswers with the whole class.

Monitoring Pairwork and group work activities are, of course, anopportunity for the students to produce spokenlanguage. This is clearly important in the speakingsection but elsewhere, these interactional patternsprovide an opportunity for the teacher to check threepoints:

• that the students are performing the correct task,in the correct way

• that the students understand the language of thetask they are performing

• the elements which need to be covered again forthe benefit of the whole class, and which pointsneed to be dealt with on an individual basis withparticular students.

FeedbackAt the end of every activity there should be a feedbackstage, during which the correct answers (or a modelanswer, in the case of freer activities) is given,alternative correct answers (if any) are accepted, andwrong answers are discussed.

Feedback can be:• high-speed, whole class, oral – this method is

suitable for cases where short answers with nopossible variations are required

• individual, oral – this method is suitable whereanswers are longer and/or where variations are possible

• individual, onto the board – this method is suitablewhen the teacher will want to look closely at thecorrect answers to highlight points of interest or confusion.

Remember, learning does not take place, generallyspeaking, when a student gets something right.Learning usually takes place after a student has gotsomething wrong and begins to understand why it is wrong.

Confirmation and correctionMany activities benefit from a learning tension, i.e., aperiod of time when students are not sure whethersomething is right or wrong. The advantages of thistension are:• a chance for all students to become involved in an

activity before the correct answers are given• a higher level of concentration from students –

tension is quite enjoyable!• a greater focus on the item as students wait for the

correct answer• a greater involvement in the process – students

become committed to their answers and want toknow if they are right and if not, why not.

In cases where learning tension of this type isdesirable, the detailed teaching notes say Do notconfirm or correct (at this point).

Highlighting grammarThe expression Highlight the grammar is often used inthe teaching notes. This expression means:

Introduction 19

- Focus the students’ attention on the grammar point,e.g., Look at the verb in the first sentence.

- Write an example of the target grammar on the board.

- Ask a student to read out the sentence/phrase.- Demonstrate the grammar point in an appropriateway (see below).

- Refer to the board throughout the activity ifstudents are making mistakes.

Ways of dealing with different grammar points:• for word order, show the order of items in the

sentence by numbering them, e.g., 1 2 3 4They often have a special party.

• for paradigms, show the changes with differentpersons of the verb, e.g.,I goHe goes

Self-checkingOn a few occasions during the course, the teachingnotes encourage you to ask the students to checktheir own work. This can be done by referringstudents to the full transcript at the end of the course.This is an excellent way to develop the students’recognition and correction of error. Listening, inparticular, obviously happens inside someone’s head,and in the end each student has to understand his/herown error or misunderstanding.

Gap fill Filling in missing words or phrases in a sentence ortext, or labelling a map or diagram indicatescomprehension of both the missing items and thecontext in which they correctly fit. It is generally betterto provide the missing items to ensure that all therequired items are available to all the students. Inaddition, the teacher can vary the approach to gap fillsby sometimes going through the activity with thewhole class, orally, pens down, then setting the sametask individually. Gap fills or labelling activities can bephotocopied and set as revision at the end of the unitor later, with or without the missing items box.

In Progressive Skills in English, gaps often contain thesame kind of word (e.g., nouns) or the same role in asentence (e.g., the subject) in order to reinforce wordclass and syntax.

Two-column activities This type of activity is generally better than a list ofopen-ended questions or gap fill with no box ofmissing items, as it ensures that all the targetlanguage is available to the students. However, theactivity is only fully effective if the two columns are

dealt with in the following way. Ask students to:• guess the way to complete the phrase, sentence

or pair• match the two parts from each column• cover column 2 and remember these parts from

the items in column 1• cover column 1 and remember these parts from

the items in column 2.

Additional activities are:• students test each other in pairs• you read out column 1 – students complete with

items from column 2, books closed• students write as many of the items as they can

remember – Course Books closed.

Ordering Several different kinds of linguistic elements can begiven out of order for students to arrange correctly.The ability to put things in the correct order stronglyindicates comprehension of the items. In addition, itreinforces syntactic structure, particularly if:• you present a number of jumbled sentences

together with the same underlying syntax• you keep elements of each phrase together, e.g.,

in the UK rather than breaking everything down toword level.

This type of activity is sometimes given beforestudents listen or read; the first listening or readingtask is then to check the order. To make the exercisemore enjoyable, and slightly easier, it is a good idea tophotocopy the items and cut them into strips or singlewords. Students can then physically move the itemsand try different ordering. The teacher can even makea whiteboard set of sentences and encouragestudents to arrange or direct the arrangement of theitems on the board.

Tables and charts Students are often asked to transfer information into a table. This activity is a good way of testingcomprehension, as it does not require much linguisticoutput from the students at a time when they shouldbe concentrating on comprehension. Once the tablehas been completed, it can form the basis of:• a checking activity – students compare their tables,

note and discuss differences• a reconstruction activity – students give the

information in the table in full, in speech or writing.

Error correction It was once thought that showing students an errorreinforced the error, and that students would be evenmore likely to make that error in the future. We nowknow that recognizing errors is a vital part of language

20

learning. Rather than reinforcing the error, showing itcan serve to highlight the problem much better thanany number of explanatory words. Students must beable to recognize errors, principally in their own work,and correct them. For this reason, error recognitionand correction activities are occasionally used.