Longman New English Listening and Speaking (Student's Book - Upper Level)

Author: Hergen
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-08-01
Features: Longman New English Listening and Speaking is a listening and speaking textbook specifically written for Asian English learners by Longman Publishing. Since its publication, it has quickly become a popular textbook for learning English listening and speaking in Asia. Due to its widespread popularity among learners, the textbook has been revised several times based on extensive feedback from students and teachers, making it even more perfect. The NewGoldEdition being introduced this time is the latest version of this series.
Target Audience: This textbook is primarily designed for adult learners, especially those who have studied some English but still struggle to communicate directly with foreigners in daily life or work. The series consists of two volumes, with the beginner level aiming to enable English learners to fluently communicate with foreigners on topics related to daily life or work after completing the course.
Writing Objectives: The primary objective of this textbook is to develop learners' English communicative competence. Communicative competence refers to the ability to flexibly use English based on communication contexts, purposes, and audiences. To this end, the textbook is designed based on the philosophy that learners can only truly master English through meaningful communication; it emphasizes "learning by using" and highlights "learning for use."
Key Features:
1. Authentic, natural, and idiomatic learning materials. The textbook aims to teach learners how to use English fluently and correctly in social life, work, or leisure activities. It focuses on basic communicative functions and topics, providing authentic, natural, vivid, and practical oral materials. All the materials are real-life content that learners are likely to use in communication, making them immediately applicable.
2. Close integration of communicative functions, topics, and language learning. Each unit in the textbook includes one or more key functions (e.g., self-introduction, asking personal information, greetings, expressing doubts, apologizing, etc.), teaching learners how to initiate, develop, and conclude conversations in daily life, as well as how to express their opinions. Functions and topics are closely linked, with grammar and vocabulary learning incorporated. Through repeated listening and speaking exercises, the textbook lays a solid foundation for learners to participate in various communicative activities.
3. Balanced focus on listening and speaking, integrating language learning with skill development. Effective communication requires understanding the other person first. The textbook starts with listening, designing various listening tasks to repeatedly train learners' listening comprehension skills, enabling them to communicate based on what they understand. Meaningful communication also requires sufficient language support. This textbook integrates language learning with the development of listening and speaking skills, incorporating language learning into conscious communication, allowing learners to experience and understand the expressive function of language structures in meaningful contexts, avoiding rote memorization and simple application.
4. Innovative and engaging activities, with thought-provoking and challenging elements. The textbook places great emphasis on learners' personal experiences and journeys. Many activities, tasks, and exercises are based on learners' own experiences, making these oral practice activities highly thought-provoking and challenging. The goal is to provide learners with opportunities to use the language they have learned to narrate their experiences, express their thoughts and opinions, and thereby internalize the English they have learned, truly achieving practical application.
5. Rich and practical content, closely related to daily life. Each unit covers a topic that is closely related to daily life, with rich and idiomatic language. Additionally, through numerous pictures, tables, and illustrations, the language materials and communication scenarios are vividly presented, undoubtedly sparking learners' interest and greatly enhancing the textbook's practicality.
6. Well-structured unit organization, following a progressive learning principle. The textbook is designed from listening to speaking, with duet-style conversation activities (Duet) as its core. "Information gap" exercises are interspersed, combined with personal experience activities, to increase learner engagement and training effectiveness. The language review (LanguageCheck) module highlights key knowledge and structural training. Ensemble activities are mostly fun tasks that emphasize interaction among learners, though they include "operation" instructions, yet remain challenging, aiming to build learners' confidence and improve fluency. Solo activities within each unit are application-based exercises that incorporate listening, reading, and writing, serving both as review and reinforcement while emphasizing the integration of learning and application.
Classroom Hours: Each volume of the textbook requires approximately 40–60 classroom hours. If there is ample time, the teacher's book and the dedicated learning website (www.efcafe.com) developed for this textbook provide additional learning materials for both teachers and learners to fully utilize.
Learning Suggestions: Being able to speak fluent, correct, and appropriate English is every learner's dream, but many English learners often suffer from "high expectations and low execution." The textbook may seem easy at first glance, but when it comes to speaking, they lose confidence. In reality, from the perspective of language itself, understanding something is still knowledge, while being able to use it is what forms a habit. To turn knowledge into habits and make it applicable, it requires conscious, meaningful, and repeated training, as well as full physical and mental engagement. The textbook is accompanied by CDs for in-class and extracurricular training. Repeatedly listening to and reciting these materials should not just aim for comprehension but should enable the material to come out effortlessly, which can only be considered true mastery, and language habits can gradually be formed. Since language is a carrier and expression of thought, language expression is the expression of thought. A person's language habits should not be neglected for their quality. Therefore, speaking appropriately, expressing accurately and fluently should be the learners' highest goal. Wishing everyone an enjoyable learning experience!