Textbooks for the new FCE

[Brian-Scotland]

Can anyone advise me on any good coursebooks for the new First Certificate. Also, is the new exam very different from the old one? If so, in what way(s)

[richalmers]

Hi Brian,

I'm teaching the new FCE in Spain and am using FCE Gold Plus by Pearson Longman. It also has a very useful work book FC Gold Exam Maximiser and multimedia CD ROMS. I like using it and the students (17-20 years) do too. It demands a fair amount of work from the students, and you are unlikely to cover everything in a course. It has great writing guides for all FCE writing types, and a comprehensive grammar reference section.

The differences in FCE are as follows:

Paper 1 Reading is shortened and has fewer tasks.
Paper 2 Writing is shorter and uses emails instead of a letter in Part 1 and a review in Part 2.
Paper 3 Use of English is shorter and has had the error correction removed and replaced with Key Word Transformation as Part 4.
Paper 4 Listening is the same length, but has only one possible task for each part.
Paper 5 Speaking has not changed much. Students only have to "compare" pictures rather than contrasting them.

You can get more information at the cambridge esol site. www.cambridgeesol.org

Hope this helps.

[systematic]

"english grammar in use" is quite good

Raymong Murphy's grammar books are excellent, as any practicing TEFL teacher will know. They have, however, absolutely nothing to do with the FCE and are not course books. One wonders if 'Summerlove', an e-commerce merchant, has ever seen a copy.
This post by Summerlove, an affiliate for the WhiteSmoke software, is part of her series of promotional spam for a doubtful product. She has received several warnings for making similar posts on many forums.

Many forums (1), blogs, and customer complaints have provided long lists and a significant amount of evidence that the WhiteSmoke software may be a clever marketing scam. Certainly the claims, and the not-mentioned disadvantages, in their website are enough to awake suspicion on the part of any discerning surfer.
A Google search will reveal the details. Readers can make up their own minds.
It's entry in the Wikipedia was designated a candidate for 'immediate deletion', and was removed by the Wikpedia admin.

(1) http://www.englishforums.com/English/WhitesmokeComReview/drdvg/post.htm