Basic conversation strategies for common situations. The language in this book is simple and direct. The layout is user friendly. Each chapter has 2-5 cartoons, with blurbs, to illustrate the conversations. Most chapters have side boxes for additional expressions. Includes practice pages, review chapters, answer key, and CD. Below is the table of contents and a sample chapter, minus the graphics. The sample chapter is entitled Making and Agreeing to Requests. Notice the name Lawrence Zwier. He is the author of the picture process series reviewed on the picture dictionary page of this website, so expect the same level of quality. Also notice the name Jack Richards, who is the linguistic adviser for this book. See his listening books below.

Table of Contents: Getting someone's attention, Getting someone and starting a conversation, Introducing and identifying yourself, Introducing and identifying someone else, Making small talk, Asking about someone's background, Leading into a topic, Avoiding a topic, Ending a conversation, Giving an opinion, Agreeing with an opinion, Disagreeing with an opinion, Avoiding agreement or disagreement, Saying what you like or dislike, Talking about past events, Talking about plans and schedules, Talking about what might happen, Arranging to get together with someone, Making, accepting, and declining invitations, Asking about time, Asking for and giving directions, Giving and accepting compliments, Making and accepting apologies, Making and agreeing to requests, Asking for, giving, and not giving permission, Thanking someone and responding to thanks, Checking if someone understands you, Pointing out a misunderstanding, Asking for repetition, Asking for a clearer explanation, Describing a person's appearance, Describing an object's appearance, Describing a place, Describing health and illness, Describing medicine or treatment, Answering the telephone and asking for someone on the telephone, Leaving and taking a telephone, Leaving and taking a telephone message, Dealing with a wrong number, Ending a telephone conversation

IMPACT WORDS AND PHRASES: 1000 Words and Phrases You Need to Speak English

Contributing authors: Kenny Harsch, Elizabeth Lange, Sonia Millett, Angela Blackwell, Bev Kusuya, Tim Murphey Development editors: Anne McGannon, Michael Rost

Longman

In a word, Impact Words and Phrases is dynamite! The cover says, "An alternative to a conventional course." Indeed. These 1000 authentic, simple, easy to learn, colloquial expressions will empower your students. 42 units, 3 chapters per unit, 10 basic phrases and 10 impact phrases per chapter. The basic phrases are ones your students probably already know, the impact phrases are the ones they should try to learn. Each chapter includes a short cartoon dialog, a brief writing exercise, and a brief discussion exercise. Each phrase is used in a sentence. All the impact phrases are used again as part of the cartoon conversation. The key word index includes the complete sentence. In the appendix, each chapter has a match-the-sentences self test, ie, match the basic phrase with the impact phrase. The appendix also includes 14 learning tips mini chapters full of very effective strategies, applying them to three units. Each learning tips mini chapter is accompanied by a cartoon. Each chapter has a page reference for the corresponding self test. The pronunciation on the audio is natural. "He and I get along well" is a little too formal. "We get along well" is much more common. A lot of people still say "I'm so ticked off," but "I'm really bummed out" is pretty close to archaic. I've never heard anybody say, "I'm very happy about the trip." Kinda reminds me of "I have money for the journey." I've never heard a native speaker say "I have money for the journey," but I've heard a lot of ESLers say it, and they probably got it from a bad book. But these are the exception. The vast majority of phrases in Impact Words and Phrases are still in common use among native speakers. The format is user friendly, but there are a couple of major problems with the design. The picture mosaics are too mod and the color use is an overdose. For teachers using the Impact course book, the table of contents includes a chapter correlation with the same color coded symbols that are used for the units. A sample chapter and a sample learning tips mini chapter are below, minus the graphics. The next time I teach conversation, I'm using Impact Words and Phrases, period.

Sample chapter:

basic: She's my friend.

impact: She's a friend of mine.

basic: He's my closest friend.

impact: He's my best friend.

basic: She's an acquaintance.

impact: She's just someone I know.

basic: He's a classmate.

impact: He's a guy in my class.

basic: She's a co-worker.

impact: She's a woman I work with.

basic: She's fun.

impact: She's fun to be with.

basic: He and I like each other.

impact: He and I get along well.

basic: She and I are similar.

impact: She and I have a lot in common.

basic: We do things together.

impact: We hang around together.

basic: We are old friends.

impact: We go back a long way.

Sample learning tips mini chapter:

Learning Better, Tip #7 - Label Things in English

Successful learners use labels to help them think in English.

You have many chances to think in English. If you write down words and phrases in your home, you can see them often and learn them easily. For example, you can put English labels in different places. On your door, you can put, "It's messy, but it's cozy!" On your plant, you can put "Water me, quick! I019m dying of thirst!"

TRY THIS:

1) Look at the phrases [in chapters 19, 20, and 21, neighborhood, my place, and household tasks, from the unit on home]. Choose some to describe things about your home.

2) Make labels on small cards. Tape the labels in different places in your home.

3) Read the labels often. Enjoy them. Invite your friends over to read your room!

Other learning tips: Good learners talk to themselves in English. Good learners repeat what they want to learn. Good learners get other people to talk (ask questions). Good learners will try new ways of learning. Good learners try to keep talking in English. Enthusiastic learners start conversations in English. Good learners use visualization to prepare. Good learners use body movements to help them remembers. Successful learners keep a record of their learning (cassette journal). Successful learners try to have real conversations. Successful learners organize their learning (make lists). Good learners make things easier to remember (exaggerate). Good learners repeat new things they hear.

Sample entry from the key word index:

time

I do it when I have free time - chapter 6

I had the time of my life - chapter 33

I want to have a good time - chapter 28

I'll always remember that time - chapter 24

It was a tough time - chapter 24

We could kill time at my place - chapter 4

We could spend time at the cafe - chapter 4

We could waste time at my place - chapter 4

You could use it a long time - chapter 34

TUNING INTO THE USA

Stuart Leigh and Rebecca Kalin

Maxwell Macmillan

WHADDAY SAY?

Nina Weinstein

Longman

ESSENTIAL TELEPHONING IN ENGLISH

Barbara Garside and Tony Garside

Cambridge

TELEPHONING IN ENGLISH

B. Jeane Naterop and Rod Revell

Cambridge

TELEPHONE ENGLISH

John Hughes

Macmillan

NEW PERSON TO PERSON

Jack Richards, David Bycina, Sue Brioux Alcorn

Oxford

LISTEN CAREFULLY

Jack Richards

Oxford

TACTICS FOR LISTENING

Jack Richards

Oxford

Jack Richards is a prolific author, and his books are user friendly.

LISTENING BYTES - Listening to Today's World

Steven Gershon and Chris Mares

Longman

DEVELOPING LISTENING SKILLS

Casey Malarcher

Compass Publishing

Two things I like about Compass books: 1) They attack language from several angles 2) They are well designed. Each chapter in Developing Listening Skills has 8 exercises warm up, speaking practice, listening practice, short dialogs, main dialogs, short talks, listening quiz, and reading - followed by a 4 page test. Each page contains only one exercise, and each section within the exercise is clearly labeled and easily distinguishable from the other sections, making it very user friendly. Testing strategies include multiple choice, matching, cloze, description, and pictures. Everyday situations. Natural dialog. Lots of illustrations. Audio, answer key, and transcripts.

LISTENING STARTER

Anne Taylor, Linda Kilpatrick-Lee

Compass Publishing

Book one follows a set of youngsters during adventures at school, home, and the mall. Book two follows the same characters during adventures on vacation. Each chapter has 6 exercises, one page devoted to each exercise: vocabulary preview, key expressions, dialog, note taking, pair work, quiz, and homework. High frequency vocabulary of keywords, phrases, and expressions. Loaded with color, graphics, illustrations, and photos. Reader friendly font. Audio and transcript. Ideal for beginners.

ACTIVE LISTENING:

Introducing Skills for Understanding - book 1

Building Skills for Understanding - book 2

Expanding Skills through Content - book 3

Marc Helgesen, Steven Brown, Dorolyn Smith

Cambridge University Press

From the introduction to Active Listening: Expanding Understanding Through Content:

"How Students Learn How to Listen:

Many students find listening to be one of the most difficult skills in English. The following explains some of the ideas incorporated into the this book to make students more effective listeners. Active Listening: Expanding Understanding Through Content is designed to help students make real and rapid progress. Recent research into teaching listening and its related receptive skill, reading, has given insights into how successful students learn foreign/second languages.

Bottom-up versus Top-down Processing, a Brick Wall Analogy:

To understand what our students are going through as they learn to listen or read, consider the bottom-up versus top-down processing distinction. The distinction is based on the ways learners process and attempt to understand what they read or hear. With bottom-up processing, students start with the component parts: words, grammar, and the like. Top-down processing is the opposite. Students learn from their background knowledge.

This might be better understood by means of a metaphor. Imagine a brick wall. If you're standing at the bottom looking at the wall brick by brick, you can easily see the details. It is difficult, however, to get an overall view of the wall. And, if you come to a missing brick (e.g., an unknown word or unfamiliar structure), you're stuck. If, on the other hand, you're sitting on the top of the wall, you can easily see the landscape. Of course, because of distance, you'll miss some details.

Students, particularly those with years of "classroom English" but little experience in really using the language, try to listen from the bottom up. They attempt to piece the meaning together, word by word. It is difficult for us, as native and advanced non-native English users, to experience what learners to through. However, try reading the following from right to left:

,now doing are you as ,time a at word one ,slowly English process you When

very is it ,However .word individual each of meaning the catch to easy is it

.passage the of meaning overall the understand to difficult

You were probably able to understand the paragraph:

When you process English slowly, on word at a time, as you are doing now, it is easy to catch the meaning of each individual word. However, it is very difficult to understand the overall meaning of the passage.

While reading, however, it is likely you felt the frustration of bottom-up processing; you had to get each individual part before you could make sense of it. This is similar to what our students experience - and they're having to wrestle the meaning in a foreign language. Of course, this is an ineffective way to listen, since it takes too long. While students are still trying to make sense of what has been said, the speaker keeps going. The students get lost.

The Warming Up activities in Active Listening help students integrate bottom-up and top-down processing by engaging them in active, meaningful prelistening tasks. In doing so, the learners "activate" their previoius knowledge of the topic as well as relevant grammar and vocabulary.

Thanks to Brian Tomlinson for suggesting the brick wall analogy to explain bottom-up/top-down processing. Our model for content-based instruction, while differing from one proposed by William Grabe, was influenced by his work."

From the introduction to Active Listening: Introducing Skills through Understanding:

"Although their processing strategy is a negative, students do come to class with certain strengths. From their years of English study, most have a relatively large, if passive, vocabulary. They also often have a solid receptive knowledge of English grammar. We shouldn't neglect the years of life experience; our learners bring with them a wealth of background knowledge of many topics. These three strengths - vocabulary, grammar, and life experience - can be the tools for effective listening.

The Warming Up activities in Active Listening build on those strengths. By engaging the students in active, meaningful prelistening tasks, students integrate bottom-up and top-down processing. They start from meaning, but, in the process of doing the task, use vocabulary and structures (grammar) connected with the task, topic, or function. The result is an integrated listening strategy."

Note: The authors are not saying that bottom-up is an inherently bad learning strategy. They simply saying that bottom-up is not appropriate in every situation. Another way of understanding this analogy is micro/macro: bottom-up can be compared to micro, top-down can be compared to macro.

CONVERSATION / LISTENING