English Result Elementary

English Result Elementary is the first book of this series of General English course books, targeting adult learners with little or no knowledge of the language who intend to start learning English. This series is designed for elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate, upper intermediate and advanced levels, however only the first two books are available at the moment. The package consists of student’s book, a class audio CD, a teacher’s manual and a workbook. The teacher’s manual includes a DVD, and the workbook comes with an interactive multi-ROM and detachable answer key booklet.

The orderly structure of the student’s book makes it easy to follow for both teachers and students. There are 12 topic-themed units, each with five lessons, labelled A to E. Each unit ends with a review page, labelled R. Following the same pattern as the unit itself, each lesson is divided into four main sections, labelled A to D neatly displayed in two pages, and intended to last 80 minutes.

The lesson starts with an attractive visual presentation with coloured pictures and the presentation of different written genres such as cartoons, comic books, news articles, advertisements, games, and quizzes. The main focus of the lesson is then introduced. Sections A to D which follow, focus separately on vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and the receptive language skills of reading and listening, leading to the closing section ABCD: Put it all together, an opportunity for students to use their new skills in an interactive speaking task.

Finally, at the bottom of the page, the lesson ends with a self-assessment bar, which asks students to evaluate briefly what they have learnt in the lesson. This feature is likely to be quite motivating to students, providing a sense of progress throughout the lessons.

Writing is the only skill not covered in the A to D sections of each lesson. However, the final lesson of each unit lesson, labelled E, in a separate page in the student’s book and lasting around 40 minutes is dedicated to writing.

The subjects in lesson E are based on the topics that students have already learnt in lessons A-D, thus providing them with plenty of ideas to use when writing. Step-by-step, students are introduced to very effective guidelines to enable them to attempt to write correctly in English. First of all they are familiarized with the writing style through some reading and listening activities. Subsequently they are provided with appropriate language, writing strategies, useful hints on punctuation, spelling, etc.

At the end of the unit in the review page, students are given some extra practice exercises on the grammar and vocabulary covered in the unit. This takes about 20 minutes.

Each unit provides 380 minutes worth of lessons, which is ideal when structuring a week’s program.

One of the strong features of the resource is that it places equal emphasis on both receptive and productive language skills so that students not only practise conversation in real-life situations, but also give brief presentations on various topics in English.

In particular, the focus throughout the book on developing students’ writing skills along with the other language skills at this elementary level makes English Result Elementary stand out from other general English course books. It is essential to introduce writing at an early level to provide a basis for ensuring that students’ writing skills development keeps pace with the other skills as they reach the higher levels, but writing is usually only briefly covered in low-level course books. Fortunately for students, this is not the case with this resource.

The variety of topics and use of well-known characters from all over the world are among the other appealing features of English Result Elementary. Unlike some other course books, characters are not selected only from England and the United States; therefore it is ideal for multi-national classes as everyone can relate to the characters they know. This increases student participation and interaction.

I really enjoyed teaching the lessons from this resource, as I could see student interest was sustained. I would highly recommend the package to all teachers with any level of experience. There is little preparation time required due to its comprehensive and well-organized teacher’s book. The student’s book can be used easily as the main course book, accompanied by supplementary lessons. The workbook can be given to students to use as homework to consolidate the students’ knowledge.

Overall, English Result Elementary is a comprehensive and inspiring course book which achieves its aims.

Somayeh Stocks is a General English teacher at Greenwich College, Sydney.