Step-by-Step English Listening Starter: Student Book (1)

Author: Zhang Minlun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-02-01
Features: This book has the following characteristics:
1. When selecting materials, attention is given to the authenticity of the language. The recorded materials include male, female, and children's voices of different ages, as well as accents from various regions: British, American, Australian, etc. Sometimes, background noise during conversations is intentionally retained.
2. Each listening lesson is divided into three parts. The first part consists of preparatory exercises, which have two main tasks: a. To provide specialized listening skill training, including the identification of easily confused phonemes, words, and sentence structures, as well as exercises on numbers, times, dates, etc. b. To eliminate some difficulties in the comprehension material of the lesson, including pre-listening of difficult sentences, oral repetition, and dictation. The second and third parts are comprehension materials, along with their corresponding exercises, which primarily aim to develop listening comprehension skills. Considering the process and characteristics of listening ability development, every five units of comprehension exercises focus on a common training objective, such as analyzing key points of news, summarizing the main idea, grasping details, paraphrasing, inferring meaning, and analyzing implicit implications.
3. In addition to providing necessary vocabulary for each comprehension material, cultural background notes are included to enhance students' understanding of the lifestyles and customs of English-speaking people.
4. The textbook includes a "Student Assessment" section. One of its purposes is to promote students' self-awareness, thereby increasing their learning initiative. The second purpose is to assist teachers in understanding students' learning progress, allowing them to continuously improve teaching progress and methods. Additionally, the editors sincerely hope to receive valuable feedback for improving the textbook based on real records of students' use of the material.
5. In the teacher's manual, we outline the guiding principles for exercise arrangements and the training focus of each lesson. Background introductions are provided for the people and events involved in the listening materials, and some teaching suggestions are offered based on the specific characteristics of each material, for the reference of relevant teachers. Written records of the audio materials are also included in the book.