About the Book
Table of Contents:
Contents Theme 1: Education, Revising and Remembering Theme 2: Daily Life, Relationships Theme 3: Work and Business, Making Decisions Theme 4: Science and Nature, Cycles and Processes Theme 5: The Physical World, Comparing Countries
About the Author :
Terry Phillips has worked in ELT for more than 35 years as a teacher, teaching supervisor, manager and language school owner. As a consultant, he has worked in more than 20 countries in all parts of the world, advising state and private language institutions on all aspects of school management. For the last ten years, he has been a full time freelance writer with his wife Anna, producing more than 160 published books in ELT. Although he and Anna have worked for all the major publishers, all recent works have been for Garnet Education, including the multi-level EAP course, Skills in English. The course was highly commended in The Duke of Edinburgh's English Speaking Union Award for 2004. It is taught in a large number of universities in the UK and around the world. Terry and Anna are currently working on New Skills in English, a fully revised and updated version of the course. Terry is also the series editor of the new English for Specific Academic Purposes series for Garnet Education, which aims to prepare students to entry into a particular faculty for English-medium tertiary education. The series recently won the ESU award. Anna Phillips has worked in ELT for more than 30 years. She has worked as a teacher of both multilingual and monolingual classes, with teenagers and adults, in both the UK and abroad. Anna began writing materials for special courses as a senior teacher working for the British Council in Oman. Later, as Director of Studies and Owner-Manager of the International House school in Oman, she spent much of her time adapting and developing materials, owing to the lack of suitable course books for the needs of the students. During this period Anna was also extensively involved in teacher training, both in-service and also for CELTA and DELTA. She was also an examiner for CELTA and travelled extensively throughout the Gulf region in this role. In 1989 Anna completed her MA (TEFL) from Reading University. Since returning to the UK, Anna has worked with Terry Phillips on a large number of textbooks for a variety of publishers. Most recently, she and Terry have been working on the Skills in English series. Anna's particular interest is making course books more 'user friendly' for teachers who are not native speakers of English, and so she has been very much involved in developing resources for the teachers using the UAE version of Skills in English. Anna is currently working on New Skills in English, a completely revised and extended version of the current series.
Review :
"The common-core knowledge in this series is the next big step for ELT to take in the 21st century." David Crystal "Extremely well-planned and constructed and very impressive." Duke of Edinburgh ESU English Language Award judges "At last a course that truly prepares students for IELTS by developing the necessary skills from the pre-intermediate level." Kevin Higgins, Professor of English, Asian University of Science and Technology, Thailand "Skills in English has formed the backbone of our 2008 Intensive English Course and I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a skills-based course with an academic focus." Gabriel Roberts, University of Wales in Cardiff "I would thoroughly recommend this series to any centre running academic English courses." Tessa Moore, University of Nottingham "We have finally found a textbook which caters for international students at tertiary level." Sophia Michael, Intercollege, Cyprus "A very useful addition to the EAP tutor toolkit, which has received positive feedback from students too." Lezli Ataker, Nottingham Trent University "Attractively presented, with interesting topics and a number of language tasks which engage the students' interest and enhance the four language skills." Buckinghamshire Chilterns University "The topics are very interesting because they reflect today's world and what surrounds our students." Daniela Rizzuti, University of Calabria, Italy "Very appropriate for mixed-ability groups having different degrees of confidence in their English abilities." Aston University, UK "We are now using this series very successfully." Judith Sclare, EFL Unit, University of Glasgow "The single most useful tool you could buy, if you are going to invest in a resource for embedding ESOL into a mainstream Science or other study curriculum, or is you are resourcing a Language Support provision." Liverpool Community College "The topics and tasks are appropriate for all learners and the course is preparing them well for future university study." Helen Armstrong, University of Teesside "The Skills in English Course Book, Level 2, Part A centres around skills required for academic learning. This series covers elementary to advanced levels focusing on all four skills. The focus is on the following lexical themes: Education (revising and remembering); Daily Life (relationships); Work and Business (making decisions); Science and Nature (cycles and processes) and The Physical World (comparing countries). Each section includes vocabulary, grammar practice, new skills for learning and the application of these skills. A variety of activities are covered in each section and are consolidated with reading texts, grammar skills and vocabulary lists all found in the resource book. Transcripts for all listening activities and answers to tasks can also be found here. Further practice exercises can be accessed through www.skillsinenglish.com. As most course books go, the material contains many standard features such as multiple choice questions, matching, gap filling, fact finding, reordering, comprehension tasks, etc. Due to the broad subject scope, vocabulary building and diverse practice, I feel this book can certainly assist students in acquiring skills required for surviving in an academic environment where lectures, tutorials, research and assignments are done in English. The Resource Book is well-organized and colourful, which makes reading and learning more enjoyable. The only downside that I noticed was that the colour coding used for vocabulary was at times somewhat confusing. My overall impression is that this publication is well-planned and impressively presented. I would recommend this book for students preparing for academic pursuits. Most of the sections are self-explanatory and can be used in both a classroom and as a self-study guide." Marga Schramm for the ELTAF Newsletter, Summer 2009
