People Like Us is a rare and valuable book.  Most culture textbooks are designed for lecture courses, this one is designed for communication courses.  Most culture textbooks provide us with general facts and insights, this one shows us how to establish a relationship with people.  Most culture textbooks are research oriented, this one is activity oriented.  People Like Us shows us how to explore, how to understand, how to relate, how to accept, how to appreciate, how to benefit, and yes, how to be careful.  In the process, our perspective on the world is broadened and we learn how to understand our own culture.  Based on 2-hour interviews with 10 people from around the world.  Audio is authentic and transcripts are unedited.  Integrated skills and integrated activities.  Visual friendly.  Visually appealing with many large color photos and many large color visual aids.  Student book includes communication activities, unit notes, chatfile for language functions and exponents.  Teacher's guide includes lesson plans, answer key for the student book, creative photocopiable activities for 16 select chapters, 2 progress tests with answer keys, and transcripts.  36 chapters in each book, including 4 review chapters. 

Chapter titles:  Greetings, Name and Address, Home Comforts, Buying Food, Family Life, Dating, Personal Space, Gestures and Customs, The Language of Clothes, Time Off, Friends, Food and Drink, Teachers and Students, Gift-giving, Complaining, Going on Vacation, Special Occasions, Work Customs, Weddings, Cultural Identity and Values, Face, People Like You, Meetings and Negotiations, Holidays and Festivals, Men and Women, Table Manners, School, Homeland, Ancestors, Time, Appearance, Home Visits, World Music,  Folk Stories, Making Complaints, Money, Religion, Restaurants / Bars / Cafes, Cell Phones, Annual Events, The Individual and Society, Superstitions, Travel, Children and Childhood, Politics, Street Food / Fast Food / Snacks, Expressing Feelings, Medical Matters, Meal Times, Games and Sports, The Media, Shopping, Values, Directions and Dimensions, Etiquette, Town and Country, Crime and Punishment, Personal Contacts, Proverbs, Arts and Culture, Transportation, Saying Goodbye.

ACCESS READING:  Reading in the Real World

Tim Collins

Thomson / Heinle

Access Reading helps adult learners meet EFF, SCANS, and CASAS standards through a series of well organized, thorough, accessible selections and exercises with an integrated skills approach.  Designed to prepare students for their roles in the community, family, and workplace.  Includes a scope and sequence table of contents, a standards table of contents, a reading strategies table of contents, a teamwork exercise section, a vocabulary index, and a skills index.  A portfolio and skills checklist help students and teachers monitor progress.  Vocabulary index includes unit and page numbers.  Skills index includes subcategories.  Plenty of pictures, illustrations, and boxes.  Visual friendly format.  Supplementary tools include instructor019s manual, tape / CD, and website.

Sample from the skills and sequence table of contents, Book One, Chapter Two, Around Town:  Reading:  Read a profile of an immigrant family.  Reading Strategy:  Use the first sentence of each paragraph to find the main idea.  Graphic Organizer:  Use a chart to organize information.  Study Skill:  Staying organized.  Sample from the standards table of contents, same book, same chapter:  EFF:  Become and stay informed.  Form and express ideas and opinions.  Work together.  Promote family growth and development.  Strengthen the family system.  Do the work.  Work with others.  SCANS:  Teach others.  Work well with people.  Understand social systems.  Acquire and evaluate data.  Interpret and communicate information.  Serve customers.  CASAS:  Communicate in interpersonal interactions.  Communicate personal information.  Use the telephone book.  Use community services.  Understand basic safety procedures.  Use community services to achieve community integration.

Chapter titles from the reading strategies table of contents:  Use pictures and the title to find the main idea.  Use the first sentence of each paragraph to find the main idea.  Scan for specific dates and times.  Read and draw conclusions.  Use pictures and captions to find the main idea.  Use background information to help you read.  Use related words to help you read.  Scan for specific information.  Use the context to figure out new words.  Read and make inferences.

Exercises:  accessing information [pre-reading], giving voice [discussion], accessing information [post-reading], taking action, bridging to the future, community connection, family connection, work connection, enriching your vocabulary [grammar], study skill, review, your portfolio, summing up [skills checklist].

Instructor019s manual includes:  Teaching notes for key parts of every unit, answer key for all exercises and teamwork activities in the student book, reproducible test for each unit and a reproducible answer sheet to help students prepare for standardized testing, information about scientifically based research on learning and reading strategies (including multiple intelligences and diverse learning styles), placement information, lesson plan suggestions, assessment strategies.

TASK READING

Evelyn Davies, Norman Whitney, Meredith Pike-Baky, Laurie Blass

Cambridge

EXTREMELY practical, in-the-trenches selections:  forms, maps, directories, lists, signs and symbols, timetables / schedules, ads, announcements, itineraries, questionnaires, memos, fliers, posters, editorials, menus, profiles, obituaries, travel guides, excerpts, tickets, entertainment programs, even dictionary entries, telegrams, and comics.  The exercises are practical, too.  The book is in 3 parts:  reading for information, reading for meaning, reading for pleasure.  Includes conversations between two foreign college students, Roberto from Brazil and Machiko from Japan, as they acquire and apply reading skills in a variety of everyday situations.

From the teacher019s notes:  01CMost modern courses in English as a second or foreign language offer teachers a communicative syllabus, which gives as much importance to the functional uses of the language as to its linguistic forms.  This book aims to support and complement such courses, by recognizing reading as a communicative rather than a passive activity.  But developing real communicative ability in a foreign language, and being an active reader of it, requires from the learner more awareness and consciousness of learning strategies, than does reading in the native language. Task Reading, therefore, emphasizes these approaches to reading in a foreign language:  1) Transfer of reading skills from the native language to English.  2) The use of authentic or realistic source texts.  3) Pre-text orientation, especially the identification of reader and writer intent.01D