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Hi there, my name’s Jack Scholes.
I’m English. I’m a teacher, teacher trainer
and writer of materials for English language teaching.
Welcome to “For Real”.
For Real is a new course. It’s an exciting new series
in three levels from elementary, pre intermediate and intermediate,
and it has been specifically written for teens and young adults.
Now, many teachers, friends of mine ask me “How can I motivate my students?”
Motivation is of course the key to successful teaching and learning.
How can you motivate your students especially at this level?
Well, first of all,
I think you need to have rich up-to-date materials
with up-to-date language and the kind of language that
young people are using in English speaking countries.
You also need to have topics which are of interest
to students of this level, on this age of course.
The emphasis has to be on communication.
If you ask young learners, young adult learners,
why they are learning English, or what they really want to do with English,
I’m sure they’ll tell you they want to do things in English
that they do in their native language.
So it has to be communicatively, emphasis has to be on communication
and the kind of language
that is typical of young people of that age in English speaking countries.
“For Real” develops all the four skills of course,
and one area which is particularly important is reading.
Now, I know many teachers complain that students don’t read.
But in fact, they do read a lot.
They may not be reading the classical literature that we would like them to read
like Shakespeare in the original, but they are reading a lot.
They reading on the Internet specially, they read things like text messages,
so if we provide the students with stimulating articles, photo stories, emails, blogs,
stories that link to their real lives, then for sure they will be motivated and interested.
What about grammar?
Grammar of course is very important.
The grammar in “For Real” is clearly presented
with lots of extensive practice and it’s explored using both,
deductive and inductive methods.
What the authors have done is something very interesting.
They have taken basically a grammar syllabus
and they weaved it with functional objectives.
So it’s not really grammatically related. It’s performance related.
It’s what you can do with that language.
Let me give you an example.
The grammar by the way is all based on the CEF, the Common European Framework.
Let’s take an example.
You have a function which is “making requests”.
For example “household shores”,
you know those jobs in the home that adolescents love to do of course.
Making a request then is the function.
The grammar I need for that is a verb plus an object,
plus the infinitive. For example, “I want you to do the washing up”.
So they learn the grammar weaved in with functional objectives.
Another area that’s very important for students to be motivated
at this age level is to promote learner independence.
Encourage the students to evaluate their own performance.
In “For Real” what you have is, based in the CEF,
the students themselves will be able to
evaluate in a very positive and realistic way,
how they are learning.
So it’s not that they are expected
to be native like speakers or listener or readers.
Not native like, but at the level of CEF at which they are learning.
And they are given the opportunity to say about themselves
things I can do now,
and the only three alternatives are “very well”, “ok”, “with difficulty”.
Many students at this age level prepare for examinations
like the Cambridge examinations or Trinity,
and “For Real” offers you preparation for these examinations and specific
skills that are needed.
But it’s very interesting that
whether you are going to take the examination or not,
what you learn are very useful and relevant communicative competences
which will serve you well
whether you take the examinations or not.
C L I L "CLIL" stands for “Content and Language Integrated Learning”.
This is an area which is of great interest in many schools and teachers
and this is available in the “For Real” series.
What you do basically is you have content subjects
like Geography or Science or History
and you learn about those subjects through the medium of the English language.
So at the same time, as you learn about the subject,
you develop all your language skills.
What about for the teachers?
Very specifically for the teachers, this new series “For Real”
has everything you could possible need.
Very detailed teacher book, of course.
You have lots of extra material like tests and resources.
You have all the audiovisual materials.
You have DVDs.
And if you have the interactive whiteboard in your schools,
you also have the interactive books
which you can use with the interactive whiteboards.
Simply, to sum up, with “For Real” you have
motivation which is the key to success,
and you have
“F” for flexibility,
“O” for options,
“R” for real language,
another “R” for recycling,
“E” for exam practice,
“A” you have all you need
for “L”, your learners motivated.
Thank you very much.
Enjoy!