English Book 2 (Upper and Lower)

Author: Zhang Yunqin, Li Yirong, Cheng Lu, Chen Junzhou
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-04-01
Features: Developing higher vocational education, cultivating and training applied talents for production, management, service, and technical lines objectively requires us to attach great importance to the reform and construction of teaching materials for higher vocational education. According to the actual conditions of students and training objectives, compiling and publishing a large number of excellent teaching materials that reflect the characteristics of higher vocational education is our effort direction and goal. English, as an important compulsory and foundational course in higher vocational colleges, requires urgent teaching material development. However, after extensive questionnaire surveys and practical visits, the compilers learned that most higher vocational colleges currently use general English teaching materials with a high starting point, focusing on natural sciences and literary works, which do not match students' English proficiency upon enrollment or their post-graduation application needs. In the training of "listening, speaking, reading, and writing" skills, there is an excessive emphasis on one aspect of training. Some teaching materials also include an excessive amount of tasks, far exceeding the class hours students spend in school, and the exercises do not cater to the Higher College English Application Ability Test for higher vocational college students, and so on. To better reflect the characteristics and requirements of public English teaching in higher vocational colleges and truly take students as the main body, starting from their actual needs, this set of teaching materials strives to embody the following features in terms of writing format, textbook structure, student needs, and classroom teaching:
(1) Closely aligned with teaching syllabus requirements and actual classroom teaching. All contributing editors of this set of teaching materials are experienced frontline English teachers, with 80% being department directors or public English teaching and research section directors currently teaching. Years of frontline teaching experience have given them a deep understanding of the current state of English teaching in higher vocational colleges, enabling them to prescribe the right medicine according to students' actual conditions and training objectives to select and compile teaching materials.
(2) Fresh and innovative material selection. All materials in this set of teaching materials are selected from new newspapers, magazines, and online articles, with strong readability, interesting content, lively formats, and content that fully reflects contemporary characteristics, making it truly "living" English.
(3) Adaptable to students' examination needs. This set of teaching materials fully considers the objective needs of higher vocational college students to take English proficiency exams (Higher College English Application Ability Test) and incorporates various question types based on the "Higher College English Application Ability Test Syllabus and Sample Questions" issued by the Ministry of Education to help students master basic English knowledge and skills.
(4) Combines a comprehensive textbook format and a block-style structure. This set of teaching materials focuses on cultivating students' daily communication skills in listening and speaking training, uses intensive reading and extensive reading materials centered around a theme to train comprehensive skills, and emphasizes writing methods, techniques, and daily practical writing exercises in the writing section, enabling synchronous improvement in listening, speaking, reading, writing, and comprehensive English application skills.
(5) Emphasizes the connection with secondary school English knowledge. Considering that higher vocational college students often have weak English foundations upon enrollment, this set of teaching materials includes review exercises in the first and second volumes to consolidate high school-level English knowledge and skills.
To facilitate classroom teaching arrangements, the compilers offer the following suggestions for classroom teaching:
Listening Comprehension: Includes short conversations, situational dialogues, and passage listening, with most content covering daily life scenarios. Suggested duration: 1 class hour.
Speaking Development: Includes topic introduction, situational dialogues, useful sentences and expressions, oral practice, cultural background, and a humorous story, covering all major daily life scenarios with strong practicality and. Suggested duration: 1 class hour.
Integrated Course: Composed of text, language points of the text, text comprehension exercises, vocabulary, structure, and comprehensive exercises. The first and second volumes also include a comprehensive revision to review and consolidate key high school content. Suggested duration: 3 class hours.
Reading Training: Includes in-class reading and reading exercises, with material selection consistent with the integrated course section. Suggested duration: 1 class hour.
Writing Work: The first volume focuses on basic skills training, such as basic sentence and paragraph organization methods; the second volume focuses on applied writing training, emphasizing the writing techniques and methods of common practical documents; the third and fourth volumes focus on essay writing, further training writing skills. Suggested duration: 1 class hour.
We organized more than 80 frontline teachers from over 60 higher vocational colleges across the country to participate in the compilation of this set of teaching materials, integrating their teaching experience, understanding of students' English proficiency and classroom teaching realities, and their rich teaching materials. After completing the first draft, we engaged experienced professors and foreign teachers to conduct a systematic review of the entire manuscript. The expert team included Yu Dong, Zhou Li, Zhou Zhengtai, Hu Guangzhong, Zhang Yunqin, Rong Huali, Lu Runhai, as well as American teachers Leo Shofield and Jonathan Andrews, among others. We sincerely thank them for their hard work. In particular, the renowned English educator Professor Zhang Daozhen took on the role of chief editor for this set of teaching materials, and we deeply express our gratitude.
Although we have always strived to align the teaching syllabus with the actual teaching practices of higher vocational college English from the drafting of the compilation outline to the final manuscript, due to the limitations of the compilers' expertise and knowledge, this set of teaching materials is bound to have various shortcomings and issues. We sincerely request teachers and students to provide valuable suggestions and feedback during use and send them directly to qiu1965@21cn.com. We express our heartfelt gratitude in advance.