Stories for the New Millennium

Introduction (p. vi-vii)

STORIES FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM is a reproducible ESL/EFL/LITERACY reading-and-discussion text for beginners in English. It offers a number of important design features to make both teaching and learning easier and more enjoyable.

1) Contextualized learning: The short self-contained articles in each unit benefit from a very clear focus that facilitates realistic concentration on inter-related items of vocabulary and grammar that are relevant to the topic and the argumentative purpose.

2) Content that really matters: Each unit examines an element of the modern world experience that will genuinely interest and inform your students.

3) Lively journalistic style: Although the passages are carefully limited to an elementary level of language difficulty, their style remains vivid and authentic.

4) Well-balanced exercises: The exercises offer a good range of activities for each unit, including a pre-reading activity. Exercise types include: getting the main idea, basic comprehension, remembering details, inferences, determining sequence, true or false, matching, vocabulary study, dictionary practice, cause and effect, crossword puzzles, cloze exercises, making comparisons and organizing information.

5) Illustrations: There is a clear and evocative illustration in each unit, this can be used as a pre-reading exercise, for vocabulary brainstorming, or as the basis for discussion.

6) Answer Key: The text includes a full answer key for every closed-ended question in every unit.

7) Reproducible: Photocopying rights are granted to the individual teacher or the single school purchasing the materials. A copy of this book purchased by an individual teacher is that teacher's property and can travel with her from school to school. A single copy of this book may not be kept at a resource center and used to service several schools. To be entitled to copy this book, a teacher in the school or the school itself must own an original copy. Please respect copyright.

This package can be used quite simply as it is presented in these pages. In fact, it was carefully planned to be effective in that way. However, resourceful teachers will most likely want to consider one or more of the following suggestions:

• Pre-Activity: Instead of immediately beginning to read the passage, have students start with a discussion or game to encourage thought about the theme or content of the unit. The picture or title at the head of the unit can be useful in this connection, so can newspaper or magazine illustrations or headlines, or current television or radio news items.

• Order of Exercises: By all means, use all the activities provided for each unit, and allow sufficient time for these to be completed thoroughly (including time for small groups to discuss alternate answers and so on). But build in variety by changing the order in which the exercises are done, and by varying the designation of activities for in-class or at-home assignment.

• Intensity of Work: Be sure to take full advantage of the wide range of different kinds of involvement that these materials offer. For instance, students can be urged to research topics further. In many libraries books, newspapers, videos, compact discs and other things can be found relating to these subjects. Or, to take another approach, the teacher can bring the related materials to the classroom.