Review- Language to Go Elem and Pre-Int

Language to Go Elementary
Students’ Book by Simon Le Maistre and Carina Lewis
Teacher’s Resource Book by Simon Le Maistre
Course cassette/ CD

Language to Go Pre-Intermediate
Students’ Book by Gillie Cunningham and Sue Mohamed
Teacher’s Resource Book by Robin Wileman
Course cassette/ CD

website: www.language-to-go.com

There seems to have been a spurt of short courses being released by the major publishers recently (here meaning 40-60 hours), perhaps because the mainstream textbook market is already awash with books, or perhaps because of a more demanding public always clamouring for more English in less time. Having used a range of short courses in my time in the UK and then changed to teaching in Italy, I was interested to see what, if anything, set this course apart. More than anything, though, I was interested to find out what made some people so enthusiastic about the books, as I was rather unimpressed on first seeing them while I was still in the UK.

On reading the explanation and justification of the books, it seems that many of the things I first reacted against in the books are actually there by design. The lessons are set out in 40 double-paged spreads, with a repeated formula- vocabulary first, then reading and listening, then language focus and finally a speaking (and occasionally writing) task tying in the language presented before. For example, ‘Green Card’ in the Pre-Int book starts with vocabulary, reading and listening on an immigration interview, which leads onto Present Perfect explanation and written exercises, finishing with a Green card interview role-play. The book describes the lessons as ‘straightforward’, and this is certainly the case. As the book claims, it is certainly possible to run the lessons with minimal preparation time, and the material given for one lesson does fit easily and naturally into the planned 60 minutes. These are factors that teachers with a lack of time and / or experience find invaluable in the books. The feedback I’ve received from other teachers who have used the course seems to fall into a simple pattern- the less years of teaching experience they have, the more they prefer it to other courses. More experienced teachers sometimes complain that preparation time with this book is actually greater as they feel the need to look for a lot of supplementary activities and material. This is because activities like the speaking task are uncomplicated but somewhat uninspired- often of the ‘discuss these questions in pairs’ type, e.g. ‘Is the north of your country different from the south? Which part would you like to live/ work/ study in?’. All in all, despite the influence of ideas such as collocation and task-based learning, this course seems to have been specifically designed as a ‘back to basics’ course for teachers and/ or students who have more of a need/ desire for a lot of language quickly than for something new and exciting.

Language to Go also seems to have been designed more for professional people seeking instant results from their precious time spent studying in their own country (‘international appeal’, in the words of the blurb) than the traditional market of short-course books, that is the summer school market in English-speaking countries. The advantage of the simple repeated layout of the units for such people is that everyone quickly becomes accustomed to what they are expected to be doing at each part of the lesson, therefore saving time and effort on classroom instructions. I certainly found this useful with my group of ‘older’ low Elementary learners, who generally felt quite panicked with being asked to do anything too complicated.

Apart as the Students’ Book, the course components include a Teacher’s Book and a single cassette. Workbook-type exercises are included in the Students’ Book and photocopiable supplementary activities in the Teacher’s Book. There is also the now-obligatory accompanying website.

After the 40 double-page spread lessons (each finishing with a one or two sentence piece of ‘language to go’, hence the course name), the students’ book contains several pages of ‘Information for pair and group work’ (e.g. plans of a hotel for directions), a ‘Practise’ section with one column of exercises for each of the 40 lessons (with key), a Grammar reference section (arranged by lesson), recording scripts and an attached ‘phrasebook’. Certainly a very convenient package of everything you could possibly need. Of these, the detachable ‘phrasebook’ is the most unusual idea. It is arranged into very similar sections to a normal phrasebook, such as accommodation and telephoning, but obviously without the usual translations.

The grammar and vocab syllabus starts fairly traditionally in the Elementary book, with ‘to be’ and other present simple verbs leading on to the continuous, past simple and future tenses. The main difference from 90-hour coursebooks is that some of the lessons are taken up with a function (e.g. permission and requests) without any accompanying grammar point. It also shows the influence of the ‘language in a hurry’ idea of short courses by rushing through some parts rather quickly, such as dealing with present simple questions and negatives all in one 60 minute lesson. The Pre-Intermediate course has more of the same with just one lesson on the simple past and then just one for the present simple and continuous together. The books are generally graded well, but this aspect means that the Elementary level is not really suitable for beginners and that the Pre-Int is easier with a class that has just finished an Elementary course. It also means that although the material given in the Students’ Book does work out as 60 minutes, I often found myself having to spend another whole class on a point my class found difficult. The photocopiable activities are useful for this.

The Teacher’s Book starts with a 6-page introduction which explains the principles behind the book and some activity ideas, shows some equivalences to Cambridge and Trinity exams, and has a guide to the phonemic script. The single-page guides to each lesson provide detailed instructions, language tips and clearly marked answers for the activities, without being over-long. The Teacher’s Book explains everything from absolute first principles (e.g. that students often forget to use the third person ‘s’), making it useable by any teacher, including those in their first class. The ideas for activities such as warmers (‘Way In’) are, as with most things in the books, ‘safe’ options almost guaranteed to produce something but unlikely to set the classroom alight, e.g. ‘They then stand up and mingle, asking the question around the class’. The back of the book contains a writing bank and photocopiable activities, as well as progress tests. The writing bank is very useable and very up-to-date with its genres, e.g. e-mailing, forms and short notes. The tasks do suffer a little from having little boxes of relevant information which it is difficult to know what to do with in class, so I usually set writing tasks for homework, asking students to refer to the relevant writing banks themselves. The photocopiable activities tie in very well with the lessons and are many teachers’ favourite part of the course.

There is generally a lack of much of a game element in the materials, even in most of the accompanying photocopiable materials, e.g. for storytelling students fill in the verbs in the verbs in the story then sort into order as a class. This lack of games seems to make sense in a context where you cannot waste any time at all explaining activities. Again, my older students were happy to do pairwork activities such as asking each other for false names and jobs without the need for added intrinsic motivation. This factor means that most of the lessons will run through without hiccups, but without much of a spark or anything to set them apart from the other lessons in the course. The same is sometimes true of the reading and listening texts. This predictability is obviously less of a problem with a 40-hour course than with a 120-hour one, and I found that despite my initial misgivings it was perfectly possible for me to run a 2 hour a week course almost entirely with the material given, supplementing only with warmer and lead-in ideas.

Language to Go Elementary and Pre-Intermediate are the best books I have used for a short course for students studying in their own country. The simple format and the detailed and easy-to-use Teacher’s Book means that even teachers with little experience or training can use the course. If you have groups of young people, or people preparing for a summer in the UK, you might be better off choosing a book that exploits their interests and needs a little more. If, however, you have a class of motivated business people and general adult students who want to see ‘results’ fast and a clear idea of what they have ‘learnt’ at the end of each class, this course is likely to suit them perfectly. The book is unusually honest in not trying to do the impossible and hit both the ‘adult’ and ‘young adult’ market together, and all the better designed for older students because of it. Even a school in the UK with inexperienced teachers might want to choose this as the ‘safe’ option. Teachers and students who have already spent a lot of time in the classroom, however, both in the UK and elsewhere, will probably want to choose something with a little more ‘spice’.

Review originally published in Modern English Teacher magazine. Republished with permission.

(C) Alex Case/ Modern English Publishing