English Book 4 (Volume 1 and 2)

Author: Fan Zhenhui / Yi Yongzhong (Editor-in-Chief)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-07-01
Features: Developing higher vocational education requires cultivating and training high-level applied talents for production, management, service, and technical lines. This necessitates a strong emphasis on the reform and development of teaching materials for higher vocational education. Based on the actual conditions of students and the training objectives, we strive to compile and publish a large number of excellent teaching materials that reflect the characteristics of higher vocational education. English, as a compulsory and foundational course in higher vocational and technical colleges, demands urgent attention in teaching material development. However, after extensive questionnaire surveys and field visits, the editors found that most higher vocational and technical colleges currently use general English textbooks with a high starting point, focusing primarily on natural sciences and literary works, which do not align with students' English proficiency upon enrollment or their post-graduation application needs. Additionally, there is an overemphasis on one aspect of the "listening, speaking, reading, and writing" skills, and some textbooks include excessive teaching tasks that far exceed the classroom hours, failing to consider the Higher College English Application Ability Test for vocational and technical students, and other issues.
To better reflect the characteristics and requirements of public English teaching in higher vocational and technical colleges, truly putting students at the center, and starting from their actual needs, this series of textbooks strives to embody the following features in its writing format, structure, student needs, and classroom teaching:
(1) Closely aligned with teaching syllabus requirements and classroom teaching practices. All contributing editors are experienced frontline English teachers, with 80% serving as department heads or public English teaching and research section leaders. Their years of frontline teaching experience enable them to understand the current state of English teaching in higher vocational and technical colleges, allowing them to tailor teaching materials to students' actual conditions and training objectives.
(2) Fresh and engaging material selection. All materials are sourced from newspapers, magazines, and online articles, with strong readability, interesting content, lively formats, and themes that reflect contemporary characteristics—truly "living" English.
(3) Adaptable to students' examination needs. This series fully considers the objective needs of higher vocational and technical students for English proficiency tests (Higher College English Application Ability Test), incorporating various question types based on the Ministry of Education's "Higher College English Application Ability Test Syllabus and Sample Questions" to help students master fundamental English knowledge and skills.
(4) Comprehensive and modular structure. The series focuses on developing students' daily communication skills in listening and speaking, integrates reading and extensive reading around a single theme to train comprehensive skills, emphasizes writing methods, techniques, and practical document practice in writing, ensuring synchronized improvement in listening, speaking, reading, writing, and overall English proficiency.
(5) Smooth transition from secondary school English knowledge. Considering that higher vocational and technical students often have weak English foundations upon enrollment, this series includes review exercises in the first and second volumes to reinforce high school-level English knowledge and skills.
To facilitate classroom teaching, the editors offer the following suggestions for this series:
Listening Comprehension: Includes short conversations, situational dialogues, and passage listening, primarily covering daily-life scenarios. Suggested duration: 1 class hour.
Speaking Development: Covers topic introduction, situational dialogues, useful sentences and expressions, oral practice, cultural background, and humorous stories, encompassing all major daily-life scenarios with strong practicality and entertainment value. Suggested duration: 1 class hour.
Integrated Course: Comprises text, text language points, text comprehension exercises, vocabulary, structure, and comprehensive exercises. The first and second volumes also include a comprehensive revision section to reinforce high school-level content. Suggested duration: 3 class hours.
Reading Training: Includes in-class reading and reading exercises, with material selection consistent with the integrated course. Suggested duration: 1 class hour.
Writing Work: The first volume focuses on basic skills (e.g., sentence and paragraph organization), the second volume on applied writing (e.g., techniques and methods for common practical documents), and the third and fourth volumes on essay writing (further training in writing techniques). Suggested duration: 1 class hour.
We organized the participation of over 80 frontline teachers from more than 60 higher vocational and technical colleges across the country in the writing of this series, combining their teaching experience, understanding of students' English proficiency and classroom 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, for whose diligent efforts we express heartfelt gratitude. In particular, the renowned English educator Professor Zhang Daozhen took on the role of chief editor for this series, and we extend our deepest appreciation to him.
Although we have strived to align the teaching syllabus with the actual teaching practices of higher vocational and technical English from the drafting of the outline to the final manuscript, due to the limitations of the editors' expertise and knowledge, this series is bound to have various shortcomings and issues. We sincerely invite teachers and students to provide valuable feedback and suggestions during use and send them directly to qiu1965@21cn.com. We express our sincere gratitude for their support.