New Incentive 1. - Teacher's book [antikvár]

General Introduction Aims Incentive English is a course designed to teach students to communicate effectively and accurately in English, both in speech and writing. Each of the four course books is accompanied by a Teacher's Edition containing the units of the Students' Book interleaved with Notes on each unit, by a Practice Book, and by cassettes. Drills on cassette, and accompanied by a tapescript, are available as an optional addition. In writing the course we have been aware of two distinct currents of thought in English language teaching in recent years. One stresses grammatical accuracy above ail and therefore insists on strict structural and lexical control throughout, even at the expense of realism; another emphasises the psychological elements in human communication and therefore demands active participation from students at ail times, even at the expense of grammatical accuracy. We do not believe that these two schools of thought are irreconcilable. It seems to us that while 'correct' language without a context in real life is not communication at ail, on the other hand incohérent, ungrammatical language is of equally doubtful value, since it is bound to lead to misunderstanding. We have therefore set out in this course to help teachers to make it possible for students to say what they need to say in English, but to say it correctly. Ail course books are necessarily a selective description of the language. Our course is structurally based, since we believe that accuracy otherwise becomes impossible, but the order in which we have presented the structures is determined by the student's communicative needs rather than any preconceptions about linguistic difficulty. We want the student to feel that he is building on his previous communicative experience, not overcoming a sériés of grammatical obstacles. However, this method does not necessarily involve a marked departure from the traditional order of présentation. The main change we have made is to bring into prominence a number of 'formulae' (for example Vd like to, made of) well before the formai présentation of their grammatical base (Conditional, Passive voice). In the same way, we have introduced lexical items to meet the needs of real-life situations, whether or not they appear in any word count. We prefer to show students what English people really say or write in a given context, rather than to paraphrase for them so that their own English is never completely natural. We have given a great deal of attention to pronunciation problems and have progressively concentrated on intonation, which in our experience is the area that présents students with most difficulty. Finally, one of our main considérations has been the need to motiva te students. We believe that this depends largely on the opportunities given to students to make use of English in situations which, even though they take place in a classroom, mirror what happens in the outside world. For this reason, we have placed strong emphasis on rôle playing and group work. These techniques not only provide a great deal of active practice and student participation, but also enable students, in a sense, to [l]