Total English Intermediate

Total English Intermediate

What is new and different about this course book is that it is accompanied by a DVD with a total of 42 minutes of short films that complement the ten topics in the students’ book. Each film clip runs for between 3 minutes and just over 9 minutes. My students always like to use film but it is usually difficult to find suitable topics to complement classroom work. That is where this material fills that gap. One unit that my students really enjoyed was titled Dream Holidays and the film for this runs only for 3 minutes, with about one minute spent on each of the Maldives, New Zealand and Egypt. Because the film was short, we were able to spend time watching it several times and extracted detailed information that would normally have been missed.

This material has been written for young adults and is correlated to the Common European Framework, taking the students from B1 to B2 level. Each lesson is a guide for students toward a ‘Can do’ goal, in line with the Council of Europe’s statements of intentions. Each section has headings that highlight the grammar, such as “subject and object questions” and Can Do “describe a learning experience”. Although I do not work within the European Framework, I did find that my students were highly motivated, and seemed to develop independence as they worked through the activities, and I credit that to the explicitness of the section headings.

In addition to the films, the other things that I particularly liked about this course book were the reading passages. I found them so engaging that I found myself flicking through the book just to read them. Some were funny and quirky, like the extract from Matilda by Roald Dahl, while others had a more serious slant, like The Forbidden Apple, which highlights the changes that have taken place in New York City. I also liked the grammar activities that had a group of sentences followed by a group of grammar rules and the students had to match the sentence with the rules. There are also Active Grammar boxes that give examples, meanings, forms and uses. I thought they were really helpful and a great way to learn grammar in small chunks.

One thing I found disappointing about this book was that the audio cassette/CDs have to be purchased separately, and without them, the listening activities are not possible. The tapescripts are included, and I tried getting the students to role play them which worked well, but they did miss the experience of listening to authentic speakers.

In summary, this engaging book is well targeted at young adults and adults at the intermediate level. The DVD is recorded in both PAL and NTSC and I had no trouble playing the DVD on any equipment I tried it on. There certainly is a great need for visual material that is engaging, so this book, with ten interesting topics that cover thirty lessons plus review and practice for each topic, will suit a wide range of student groups.