Friends - Teacher's Book 1. [antikvár]

Intrcduction Welcome to Friends. This introduction: • describes how the course functions for students and teachers; • outlines the principles on which the material was developed; • describes the course and its components. We hope you will find it useful and enjoy working with Friends'. Friends for Students Friends is a four-level English course for upper primary and lower secondary schoolchildren, taking young learners from zero beginner to a pre-intermediate level of EngUsh competency. Students in this age range are in the transitional period between childhood and their teenage years. They are still developing intellectually and emotionally and at their own individual pace. Each level of Friends addresses the learning needs and interests of such students and has been specifically written for their cognitive level. Friends 1 takes into consideration that children between the ages of ten and eleven are very receptive to visual, auditory and kinaesthetic cues. They need to be offered a wide variety of exercises and activities in order to maintain their interest and motivation. It is also easier for them to learn the language step by step. All of these factors are reflected in the design of Friends 1. Language is introduced step by step which makes it easier for students to understand and remember. Songs and games help students to practise grammar in a fun way and ensure that they will not get bored during their English lessons. Fun elements are also included in Friends 2 and Friends 3. Friends also 'grows' with students in terms of the vocabulary and topics exploited. The amount of cultural information is increased in Friends 2 and Friends 3 to add more information to the students' knowledge of English-speaking countries around the world. Friends for Teachers Friends has been designed with busy teachers in mind. Lesson preparation The format of units in the Students' Book guarantees successful lessons. Clear headings and predictable exercise sequences make Friends very easy to teach with litrte preparation by the teacher. Extension ideas and photocopiable activities in the Teacher's Resource Book and the Activity Book offer a flexibility to the basic pattern of the lesson. Festival pages and Culture and Reading Corners provide extra material, which can be used as a break during grammar-based lessons. The Activity Book offers further exercises for homework. As the exercises strongly reflect themes and language from the Students' Book input. teachers don't need to spend too much time on explaining the homework tasks to their students. Evaluation and assessment Teachers are now expected to monitor students' progress and make regular assessments, which has greatly increased an already heavy workload. Friends provides support for assessment in each Teacher's Resource Book which contains photocopiable tests. Yet more tests are available in the Test Books. The Test Books offer extra help with assessment by supplying ready-to-use charts for keeping records of students' grades. Dealing with mbced-ability classes One of the most difficult issues teachers are faced with are mixed-level classes. Friends offers support with this problem. For very able students, more challenging exercises are included in the Activity Book, and more complex test tasks in the Tests Book. Weaker students or students who have never studied any English before will benefit from the substantial amount of revision throughout Friends, the Check Yourself tests and the initially slow pace of the course. Projects and the play will allow all students to contribute to the class, irrespective of their abilities. Even the weakest students can participate and enjoy a sense of real success. Friends has been designed for varied teaching situations. Students will range from zero beginners to pupils who have had up to five years of English in primary school. For this reason Friends offers two possible entry points. Friends Starter entry is suitable for complete beginners or students who have had a small amount of exposure to English, perhaps through oral work or songs. Friends 1 is a suitable entry point for students who have experienced a minimum of two years of primary English. While these students are still very young, they can now cope with the more difficult aspects of Friends 1 due to their previous exposure to the language. The first half of Friends 1 covers the same grammatical items as Friends Starter, but with a wider scope of knowledge and lexis; the second half introduces new language. This dual entry system makes Friends a very flexible course, appropriate for groups of students at varying levels. We hope you will find it useful and enjoy working with Friendsl